Back Problems and Perspective

I'm gettin' REAL tired of not feeling like myself.

A week of back problems has culminated with it going WAY out today. It's sort of back in, but it's real fucking sore. Radiating pain from the lumbar region.

It'll settle down, I'm sure. Sadly my chiropractor's off on Fridays but I've gotten in bright and early for tomorrow, 10am, so I'm going to get up at 7, have a hot bath, stretch, ice, have a hot bath, ice, and then head to see him. God. Exciting Saturday, no?

I suspect it's several reasons it's gone out. One, I climbed the stairs last week, and I was stiff as shit. I tried stretching often, and for what I perceived to be enough time, and thought I was doing fine by Saturday, then Saturday something just tweaked and got uncomfortable. But I stretched it out and it seemed okay. Then I had company stay with me, they got my bed, and I got the couch. Not good.

But it wasn't bad, just uncomfortable.

Working, however, changed that. Nothing quite like being seated for several hours to screw with your low back. But, you know, I plodded through work, trying to take some painkillers each day, stretching in the morning, when I got home, and before bed. All it did was maintain the status quo, not solve it.

Then this morning, schwing, out it goes. Bad enough that I was in tears on the phone when calling in sick for work. Which made me feel like a loser, but shit happens.

It settled down (by that I mean: hurt a lot but not enough to have me in tears, plus something seemed to go back into place, so that it was muscular and not skeletal, which means it's more likely to start getting resolved) and I figured a bike ride would probably help to "reset" the muscles and take the pressure off...

So, I tried that. For a while afterwards, it sort of did help, but only because I literally spent an hour stretching hamstrings.

But now it's back to the same it was before the ride. I'm on the floor, not lying down because I just ate, but I'll be horizontal before long again, I'm sure.

Whatever. This too shall pass.

I suspect the causes are a few: It's been a stressful few weeks, so I've had things to deal with and haven't been as active. I slept on the couch a couple times too many. I haven't been doing ab exercises, which help keep the low back in shape. I've been sitting on a shitty chair at my computer desk, and since I saw a cockroach by my desk last week, I've been all freaked out about having my feet too far under it, so I've been sitting back a bit, and I guess the posture was worse than I thought.

In any case, I'll be dealing with all of those "causes" and it'll be all right soon. By Monday I should have settled down. I'm doing *EVERYTHING* right, and that's all I can do.

But it's still real fucking annoying.

Gained a little perspective when I was bitching about it this morning, though...

A woman whose blog I've just started reading, it turns out she's got maybe a month to live because she's got some unmentioned kind of cancer. Her husband's taking time off to be with her, she's got kids, and she says that in four weeks she's either gonna be here, or she's gonna be a miracle.

Well, as annoying as my back is... I'm fortunate in so many ways. I know it. I'm grateful for it.

And this too shall pass.

Her cancer, however, probably won't.

A little perspective can do us all some good.