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17 july 2002

new review! sort of a bon voyage to a favorite place...

crooked

Alright, so the past couple of days have me rather...mm...restless. I want to move around, pronto. I do not sit around well, especially when sitting primarily on one side of my rear end.

So let me tell you what happened, or at least what we think has happened, or whatever. I'd been spending a few days packing the most difficult room of my home, which would be the den. It's filled with books, numerous kitschy items, and more books. It's like an office, only a lot gnarlier and not quite as respectable as the usual person's office.

It's a wreck.

I pack, pack, pack, and then decide that it's bedtime for me. But that's not happening right away, because my back is all wacked. Like, lower-back soreness and other things that I have denied and/or associated with oldness. It hurts a bunch, but I get a nice little massage, and off I am in snooz-ola mode. I feel swell.

The next day, we're off to a nice get-together at someone's home on the lake. The company is stellar, the food delicious, and the jet-skis filled with petrol. Off we went! Woo-hoo! It was a perfect day for zooming around the lake, overcast with moderate temperatures so we wouldn't sunburn. Or, so I wouldn't sunburn. Whatever. We stay late into the evening, eventually making our way home. It was a good, relaxing, fun day.

Morning breaks. I get up, take my shower, drink my coffee, and begin to dry my hair.

And then the fun begins.

As I brought up the hair dryer to the left side of my head, my back started spasming, my left leg got shooting pains, and I was rendered bent-over, damp-headed, cursing girl in pain. I don't get back pain. Or at least, I didn't get back pain. Not like this. As an added bonus, it made me positively wacky for anything to touch my left side.

I sat on the bed in something of a ball, then something of another ball, then legs propped on pillows, then I'm like standing on my head or some crap like that, more spasmy stuff, aaaaaaaagh.

I get a handful of 6 acetaminophen and ibuprofin shoved into my hand and gulp it down. It turns out that, once the meds take effect, we are able to narrow down my pain to one place on my spinal column area, and big tender pain on my sacriloblah-blah joint. (It's the place where your pelvic bones meet in the back. This would be your anatomy lesson of the day. Since you get so many of those here, right?)

The rest of my day is spent lying down, with periodic and comical episodes of "walking". It was slow and at an odd angle, but it got me to the loo and back, so yay me. I read and napped. Shoveled down some more anti-inflammatories, which I have to say really did the trick.

So I woke up today still pretty sore, but made it a point to be more mobile (and therefore less bored.) Luckily, my back is pretty flexible and I'm in decent shape, so I recover from stuff alright. I ought to be in the gym soon enough, just with caution. I was able to make a nice dinner and dodder around without losing my balance so much. If that left side continues to be super-tender in a day or so, I'm going to see a chiropractor or something. I don't have time for this mess, you know? Blagh.

This whole episode has given me an exponential amount of respect and sympathy for anyone who has to deal with any sort of back pain for an extended period of time. If you've never had it before, you have no idea how unnerving, painful, and unbalancing it is. Remember those old Weebles toys? Yeah, that's about what it's like. Wobbling, but not falling down.

Nice.