My first blog post! For now, I will cover my backstory, then will post with updates as the company progresses! You can visit at Get Well Games
In 2013, I had back surgery and knee surgery, and I was laid off from my job. But it has turned out to be one of the best years of my life!
In January, after years of being pain free, I coughed after getting out of the shower. I felt a pain in my back that I had never felt before, different from the sciatic pain I had in 2004, when I required 2 microdiscectomies. My right thigh muscle seemed to turn to jelly overnight, and if I stood on it the wrong way, I fell down. Meanwhile, after earning an MBA from Columbia, I had spent years in the corporate life with some success, but my current job was managing a product that was fairly unimportant to the company. Add on a 1 hour commute in heavy traffic, and I was pretty unhappy.
For the back pain, I tried physical therapy and chiropractic care, and was able to alleviate it somewhat, but the muscle weakness was getting worse. Even rougher, I managed to injure my knee in one of the falls caused by my uncooperative leg muscle. After an MRI revealed a severely herniated disc causing nerve damage, my orthopedic specialist suggested a discectomy as soon as possible. I had the procedure and went out on medical leave.
Recovery was rough. While my leg nerve was no longer being impinged, it did not get better right away. Walking was difficult due to my knee injury and the pain from the surgery was severe. Still, I dragged myself on walks and my parents drove me to physical therapy, so I slowly recovered.
As I healed, I realized that I didn't want to go back to my job. I had lunch with a neighbor, and he told me a story about a woman who had struggled with depression, and helped herself get better by creating a board game around battling depression. It helped her to have her avatar in the game overcoming obstacles she had in real life. I've always loved games, and I had plenty of free time, so I decided to make a game about healing back pain.
Initially, I thought of some type of board game that involved the pain scales you also see in doctors' offices. The goal of the game would be to move yourself down the pain scale until your pain was gone. I was thinking about the game while taking one of my many walks through a local park, and I realized it would be hard for me to play it. At this point, I could only sit up for 15 minutes or so before experiencing a lot of pain. I tried to think of ways to play it lying down, when I came up with the idea of making it a card game. I began to develop the idea in a notebook, which I could write in whether I was sitting, lying down, or standing up.
As I slowly improved, I was able to walk a little farther to a local pharmacy where I purchased a pack of index cards. While lying in bed, I used a pencil to create the HEALTH, PAIN and ACTION cards. Initially, they just had numbers on them, I added the explanations later. My daughter and mother both love card games as much as I do, so they were my initial testers. We spent many hours lying on my bed playing the game. At first, there were too many HEALTH cards, and it was too easy to win. Then there weren't enough and it was too hard. I eventually settled on a good ratio, but still found the game needed something more. I started adding in the explanations while I thought of a solution. As I looked at the HEALTH cards, I realized something: getting prescription medication, joining a gym, having surgery and many other cards would require resources to use in real life. I added in the MONEY and INSURANCE cards, and then the game was a lot of fun. Not too easy to win, but not impossible either. I came up with the name Back Up, and my good friend Mark suggested adding the "!", so Back Up! was born. I'm planning on creating other games around healing, so decided to call the company Get Well Games.
It took 3 months, but I finally recovered from my surgery. I went back to work on a Thursday, and was laid off that Friday! Still, I can't say I was too upset. At first, I thought of looking for a more traditional job, but I decided to give myself a few months of working solidly on Get Well Games and Back Up! to see what I could make of it. I registered Get Well Games as a company, and dove in to working on Back Up! It has been the best work experience of my life! I love to be able to do everything from design, to copyright registration, sales and web development. Back Up! debuts in October 2013
