Last week I hurt my back while putting on pants. They weren’t complicated pants (whatever that means) and it wasn’t just a ‘ouch that hurt a little bit’ pain. It was a ‘looks like I’m stuck in bed requiring assistance when I need to go to the toilet’ kind of pain.
It fucking hurt.
I read an entire book (that wasn’t written by J.K Rowling) in less than a day, I used a heat pack in the middle of spring and ate all the Panadol in the house (okay, not all of it. I buy it in bulk because it’s cheaper…but I ate some of it. Down the hatch just like candy).
I lay there and wondered if this was just how I was now; I was absolutely pathetic.
I think I could have handled it if I’d hurt myself doing something cool like jumping off a building or doing a cartwheel. Heck, I would have been alright with it if I’d at least done something to trigger it at all, but I was just a regular twenty-eight-year-old lady putting on some pants on a Sunday morning – after having spent two hours procrastinating about going to the gym.
Perhaps the injury was subconscious; maybe that’s how little I wanted to go to the gym. Though, maybe I’m just getting old.
When I was a teenager I had awful growing pains, I guess I’ve come full circle and now I’ve gone and got myself some aging pains.
It wasn’t so long ago that I was thinking about all the injuries that my mum has had over the years and I was thinking to myself how she must have been cursed and how I was the blessed one. I think I may have cursed myself by doing that.
Eight long hours (give or take, I suppose) I lay flat on my back while the sun shone outside. All I could do was whinge in the general direction of my boyfriend.
To his credit he was an absolute legend, making me a tasty sandwich and offering to source something a little stronger to numb my pain (which I politely declined in order to preserve both of our integrities, though I suppose he surrendered his long ago). He even offered to wipe my butt, should I have any troubles with that while taking myself to the loo, which sounds like true love but felt like a potentially relationship ending move.
I politely declined that offer too.
Finally, he offered to order me an Uber, should I require urgent medical assistance. Now THAT is the definition of true love.
I dosed up, went to bed and woke up mildly better. I shuffled to the bulk billing doctor in the morning and was prescribed anti-inflammatory meds, glad to be told that it “probably wasn’t cancer” – always my first conclusion after viewing WebMD.
A week later and I’ve been told to go see; a chiropractor, a myotherapist and an osteopath by caring friends and family who have seen me wince in pain.
Predictably I have taken up none of their advice.
I did, however, go to an optometrist and ordered myself some funky new glasses because glasses make you look smart.
I also went to a Body Balance class and did most of the poses so I guess there’s hope for me yet, though I’m not ashamed to admit that the part I enjoyed the most was the relaxation at the end and the bit where the instructor told us that we were all beautiful strong and superior human beings for making it to the gym on a Sunday morning (a vague interpretation of her words).
Alicia Norton 