For months Richie Sadlier found himself staring at the ceiling for all but two hours every day.
Recovery from spinal surgery was slow. It was gruelling. It was 22 hours out of 24 lying in bed.
His dodgy hips forced him to retire from football at the age of 24, after more than 100 appearances for Millwall and one cap for Ireland.
READ MORE: Damien Duff is looking to create a new Lansdowne Road memory with Cup final win
But his back had been giving him problems since he was a teenager.
The older he got, the more debilitating it became.
“Sitting down, I would have to shift position every couple of minutes to alleviate the pain,” he told Mirror online.
“Just being on my feet, doing any kind of socialising for any length of time - all of those things were a challenge.
“I was pulling out of loads of things with friends and family or Fiona (Richie's wife), because I knew I couldn’t do it.
“I'd go away with Fiona to a lovely town and it’s, let’s go walking in the hills, let’s go sight-seeing, let’s walk around the town for hours, and I’m going, ‘I can’t’. Or if I do, there’s a time limit.
“Or going to gigs where you are standing in Marley Park for a few hours, they were real endurance tests for me.
“It gets to the point where you are so sore that you are going, ‘I’m not enjoying this, this is fucking sore, I’m done’.”
So, with his 43rd birthday fast approaching Sadlier, as he put it, "bit the bullet".
All the yoga, pilates, core work and the several spinal epidurals that he had received, just weren't enough anymore.
“By my mid- to late-30s I was in constant pain and I knew that an operation was a solution,” he said.
“But I wanted to put it off, because I knew the recovery was three or four months in bed, more or less, lying down for 20 to 22 hours a day.
“I did everything. Surgery was a last, last resort.”
Sadlier went under the knife late last November, knowing he was about to put his life on pause for several months.
“I’m self-employed, so forget about work and earnings,” he said.
“Also, the nature of the work I do, working as a therapist, I really grappled with that bit, because the one person who is meant to be there for you is your therapist.
“Yet here I was making a decision to put my own welfare ahead of everyone else’s, my clients included.
“I grappled with that for years. That was another thing that kept coming up in my head as a reason to put it off.”
After the operation he spent five days in hospital, before returning home.
“I just accepted that I was going to be lying down for months,” said Sadlier, a regular on our television screens as a football analyst for RTE and one of their top pundits for the upcoming World Cup.
“I closed down the psychotherapy practice, I told RTE to forget about me, and I started on an exercise recovery programme.
“I’d walk five minutes twice a day for the first week, and then 10 minutes twice a day in week two, 15 minutes twice a day in week three.
“That moved up until I got to about 45 minutes and then they said, right, just do two of them a day. But for 22 hours a day I was told to be lying down.
“I was on really strong pain meds for the first six weeks, I’d say, certainly for the first few weeks, then they tapered off. I was kind of numbed. I wasn’t in any pain.
“I had loads of operations before and the pain management bit was, when you are sore, take these tablets.
“But this time it was a pre-emptive pain management thing. They said, rather than waiting until your pain is eight out of 10, even if it’s three or four, just take the tablets and let’s keep you at a three or four.
“So I wasn’t in any physical discomfort, I was never in pain. But the freakiest thing was when I got to around seven weeks, I had a week where my head just went.
“I felt like, you know you want to break out of a prison or you just want to, whatever… I can’t do this anymore. I had a wobble for about a week and then got back into it."
With the support of his wife Fiona, Sadlier got through the long months of being stuck in bed.
“It’s 11 months now since the op and I was told that it was a nine to 12-month recovery. And everything has gone really smoothly,” he said.
“I have had no falls, no setbacks, I didn’t rush back to do anything, there have been no mishaps.”
A key reason behind his decision to go under the knife, Sadlier explained, was a hugely personal one.
“Myself and Fiona have been trying to get pregnant for years and I kind of knew that the version of me before the op would be pretty useless as a dad,” he said.
“I couldn’t really carry too many shopping bags or a car seat. I can’t hold a baby for too long.
“Then when you get to the toddler stage when you have to have quick reflexes and you have to bend down, I thought I won’t be able to do any of that.
“So I’d be like a burden to Fiona and of pretty limited use to the child.
“So we are putting all this time and effort into trying to get pregnant, and if it happens and we have a kid, I’m going to be in trouble.
“So it was kind of like, I need to do this in the hope that if we do get pregnant and have a child, I’ll be mobile and strong enough to be able to parent in a normal way.
“And now everything has fallen into place. Fiona got pregnant in May, the op was a huge success, I’m now pain free and the 12-month recovery point after the op comes two months before she is due.
“There will be lots of ways that I will be useless, but it won’t be because of my back.”
READ NEXT:
Rhys McLenaghan names 'greatest female boxer of all time' Katie Taylor as his sporting hero
Robbie Keane and Jack Grealish among footballing figures to wish Shay Given's son a happy birthday
Simon Cotter rejects claims Ireland will take a casual approach as Fiji prepare for Aviva showdown
Stephen Bradley opens up on why Damien Duff had to leave Shamrock Rovers
Get the latest sports headlines straight to your inbox by signing up for free email alerts
