The Torture of Back Pain

About 6 years ago I “irked” my back doing…well frankly I have no idea what happened to my back or what I could have done to avoid it…and every so often it kicks out and tries to kill me with pain. Yes, I should have done something about it immediately after the pain began, but I was working 2 jobs at the time and was saving up for university, so dishing out cash for a chiropractor or physiotherapist was way on the bottom of my To-Do list. Plus I had never had back pain before and figured it would just go away on its own and leave me be.

So like I said, every so often I will do something that tweaks it ever so slightly which in turn leaves me with a stabbing pain deep within my spine that takes my breath away with every twist, turn and bend. If I take it easy and don’t do anything stupid, I am lucky that the pain subsides a few days later and I get to resume my normal life.

Did I really just say the word “lucky” when referring to back pain?

Unfortunately, I feel like my luck may be running out. A few weeks ago my back was hurt after I was lifting some bags of potting soil from the trunk of my car. As usual, I rested and took it easy until the pain backed off then went on with my merry life. Then on Friday while at the gym, I lifted a barbell from the rack and my back went, “IRK!” and my brain went, “UH OH!”

I felt like a woman who was going into premature labour. “No not yet! It’s too early! I need more time before this happens!” Usually I have months or even a good year before the back acts up again. It appears clearly to me now that my back troubles stem from lifting items from waist height. Ugh.

So I have spent the past 4 days in agony. Sunday afternoon was the worst. I spent a good 3 hours on the living room floor, twitching in pain while watching bad Sunday afternoon TV and allowing the hot and sunny day to mockingly pass me by. Every time I moved even a tiny bit, I would be overwhelmed with a sharp stab of white pain which left me feeling nauseous and completely helpless. Back pain is horrible! I cannot fathom how people with chronic back pain get through each and every day without either being incredibly high on pain meds or incoherently inebriated to the point in which the pain is just simply numb from hard liquor.

It’s the little things that we do each day that the people with no back pain take for granted (myself included when I’m not hurting), such as: walking downhill. Walking down a hill or stepping off of a curb basically takes zero thought and not much coordination to the general public. But if you have any kind of pain in your back, that descent is a highly thought out, carefully calculated and coordinated ordeal involving some holding of breath and several twisted and grimacing facial features. Another one is shaving your legs. Yes shaving your legs is never all that much fun to begin with and is a pain in the ass when you’re in a hurry; but try doing it without the ability to bend over! They need to invent a razor that swings from some sort of rope that you can toss down your leg and pull back up without gashing your Achilles. And don’t even get me started on applying lotion afterwards. I would have given my left ear to have a bottle of that new spray-on body lotion.

So now I have to start considering finding a chiropractor or physiotherapist around here who can get me properly mobile again. It took every ounce of my will-power to not dope myself up with pain killers and jump on my bike this weekend! The weather was so incredible and I couldn’t do anything about it but lay on the floor in my own self pity. Basically the only thing that kept me from saying “Screw it!” and going for a ride was knowing that I am heading to Trail next week for a visit (YAY!) and I need to be able to make that drive without weeping openly in pain. Sitting in a car for 10 hours would be complete and utter hell. 

However, I do work in a hospital…perhaps someone could pull some strings for me. Maybe I could get a morphine drip to help me through the drive?