a piece of popcorn tumbles to the ground.
shooting back pain keeps me from bending down
to pick it up. i eye it from my chair,
debating whether I should leave it there.
Stretching my foot to nudge it with my toe,
I crush the tender kernel into snow
and smearing it, make an even bigger mess--
Some things are better left alone, I guess.
2/25/2014
2/24/2014
a real pain
Helping some neighbors move out of their house on Saturday, I leaned a little too far forward while cradling the top of a chest of drawers we were easing down the stairs, and I felt a sharp, familiar twinge in my lower back. Here we go, I thought.
I was dismayed, but not filled with dread. I'd been through this before. Five years ago, I was bending over to put on a pair of shoes when it happened the first time. Within half an hour I was crawling around on all fours, uncertain if I would ever be able to stand again. That time, a visit to the chiropractor the next day set me aright. The chiropractor gave me his assessment of the problem: too many hours sitting at a desk cause the cartilage discs between my vertebrae to compress. A nerve gets slightly pinched and then the muscles tense up in an effort to protect the compromised spine from further damage. During the immobilizing pain, I want to curse out my muscles for overreacting, but for all I know, they are saving me from something much worse.
One chiropractor gave me stretches and muscle-strengthening exercises to perform to help ease the pain and increase my resistance to future injury. I do the stretches when my back bothers me, when it is feeling a little tight or stiff, but invariably, once I've successfully warded off another trip to the chiropractor, I fall out of the habit.
This is my third or fourth time around this circuit. All day Saturday as my condition seemed only to worsen, I stayed grimly optimistic that the stretches I had learned combined with ice packs and rest would have it licked in no time. Sunday I endured increased stiffness and walked around the house with a hiking stick. Today I visited the chiropractor, and though the pain feels about the same as ever even after receiving professional help, I continue to believe that this is a temporary ailment. I continue to think that some combination of things I do will make this better and that in the coming days I will not stew over how I am going to get downstairs, or think twice about bending down to pick up something I've dropped. I won't give considerable thought to how I'm sitting or the position of my legs. Even in the absence of any permanent or even long term relief, my faith in a restored sense of ease and physical mobility remains secure.
At what point will it begin to wane? At what point do I discover that this will not go away? Where on that sliding scale of age and pain do I begin to define the new normal? My grandfather has learned to walk again after replacing knees. A man who was like a second father to me spends most of his life lying down because any other position is unbearably painful. A friend seven years my senior complains of persistent knee pain that flares up with the slightest exertion. A friend my same age complains after two weeks of sight-seeing in Turkey of aches and pains and not being as young as she once was.
My back will heal, if only temporarily. I'm confident that within the week I'll be moving more comfortable and thinking less and less about my back. But someday this is going to catch up to me in a way that will not be so easily treated. Whether that is when I am 40 or when I am 60 depends a lot on how quick I am to forget.
I was dismayed, but not filled with dread. I'd been through this before. Five years ago, I was bending over to put on a pair of shoes when it happened the first time. Within half an hour I was crawling around on all fours, uncertain if I would ever be able to stand again. That time, a visit to the chiropractor the next day set me aright. The chiropractor gave me his assessment of the problem: too many hours sitting at a desk cause the cartilage discs between my vertebrae to compress. A nerve gets slightly pinched and then the muscles tense up in an effort to protect the compromised spine from further damage. During the immobilizing pain, I want to curse out my muscles for overreacting, but for all I know, they are saving me from something much worse.
One chiropractor gave me stretches and muscle-strengthening exercises to perform to help ease the pain and increase my resistance to future injury. I do the stretches when my back bothers me, when it is feeling a little tight or stiff, but invariably, once I've successfully warded off another trip to the chiropractor, I fall out of the habit.
This is my third or fourth time around this circuit. All day Saturday as my condition seemed only to worsen, I stayed grimly optimistic that the stretches I had learned combined with ice packs and rest would have it licked in no time. Sunday I endured increased stiffness and walked around the house with a hiking stick. Today I visited the chiropractor, and though the pain feels about the same as ever even after receiving professional help, I continue to believe that this is a temporary ailment. I continue to think that some combination of things I do will make this better and that in the coming days I will not stew over how I am going to get downstairs, or think twice about bending down to pick up something I've dropped. I won't give considerable thought to how I'm sitting or the position of my legs. Even in the absence of any permanent or even long term relief, my faith in a restored sense of ease and physical mobility remains secure.
At what point will it begin to wane? At what point do I discover that this will not go away? Where on that sliding scale of age and pain do I begin to define the new normal? My grandfather has learned to walk again after replacing knees. A man who was like a second father to me spends most of his life lying down because any other position is unbearably painful. A friend seven years my senior complains of persistent knee pain that flares up with the slightest exertion. A friend my same age complains after two weeks of sight-seeing in Turkey of aches and pains and not being as young as she once was.
My back will heal, if only temporarily. I'm confident that within the week I'll be moving more comfortable and thinking less and less about my back. But someday this is going to catch up to me in a way that will not be so easily treated. Whether that is when I am 40 or when I am 60 depends a lot on how quick I am to forget.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)