NHL player is facing the toughest decision of his life.

Is playing hockey worth a lifetime of pain? That is the question Nathan Horton is being forced to ask right now.  Horton is attempting to recover fro ma degenerative back condition and his recovery is not going according to plan. Horton spoke to the Columbus Disptach about his condition:

“I can’t stand up like a normal person; I can’t bend over,” Horton told The Columbus Dispatch. “I can’t run. I can’t play with my kids. To get in and out of the car, I’m like a 75-year-old man … so slow and stiff. I can’t sleep at night. I try to lay down and my back seizes up and I can’t move, so sleeping is out. I’m like a zombie in the daytime.”

There's a solution to Horton's pain, surgery that would fuse his vertebrae to a titanium rod would allow Horton to live a pain free existence, but there's a catch. The surgery would mean that Horton, a former Stanley Cup champion, would say goodbye to his career as a professional hockey player.

“I don’t want to have surgery, because of what that means,” Horton said. “I don’t want to live with this pain, but I don’t want to make that decision. It’s hard for me to say that, at 29 years old, I’m done. I mean, really? Done at 29?”

For the time being Horton is continuing his efforts to make a recovery without the surgery, but as time goes on and his condition worsens he risks more and more long term pain. He knows that he is on a very limited time frame, and each that goes by he is being forced to ask that difficult question.

“At some point soon, we’ve got to make the call,” he said of the surgical procedure.

He may not wear your teams colors, but tonight say an extra prayer for Nathan Horton in this unimaginably trying time. Horton has 420 points in 626 career games in the NHL.