My back had been bothering me after sleeping on a hard air matress over the weekend; just tweaky, didn’t think too much about it. Then, yesterday morning, I bent over to pick something up. Something shifted painfully and I almost fell over.
Yesterday was filled with pain.
Not only was there the general pain of throwing out my back, but everytime I moved or walked the muscles spasmed making me do my best impression of someone getting tasered.
I got to see my chiropractor twice so he could do some electro-muscle stimulation, which helped in the long run (in the short term it was just bad — I looked worse coming out than going in). Thankfully, I still had a few vicodin left over from my scooter accident 2 summers ago. That helped me get to sleep last night.
This morning I am doing better. The pain is about half of what it was (of course, all sorts of other things hurt this morning, too, from compensating for my weak back), and the spasms aren’t leaving me sweating and out of breath. My manager is allowing me to take a couple days off work, so I don’t have to worry about that. I get to spend my day trying not to move too much and icing my back for 20 minutes every hour. The husband has a midterm this morning, but then he’ll be working from home this afternoon so I have a helper monkey.
Last time I did this was about 7 years ago. This time is worst in its own ways, while not being as bad in others. The first time, I had horrible sciatica to go with the back pain and the pain was constant, but no spasms. This time, sitting or laying down doesn’t hurt too bad, but when a spasm happens it’s bad.
I messed myself up good this time.