I haven’t written for a few days. It seems to be a cycle I’m in. I think it has to do with facing some of the things I’m less than content with in my life at the moment. Then, again, who knows for sure. The fact that I haven’t been writing at all, on here or otherwise, sort of bothers me and makes me wonder if maybe things are a lot worse in my head than I thought or am aware of.
I had yesterday off, and I have today off. Yesterday, I did nothing but lay in bed. I was bored beyond description. I stayed in bed all day because something went wrong with my back at work the day before. I have no idea what went wrong but my back started hurting around my sacrum, got progressively worse, eventually growing to the point my hip, thigh, and about 4 inches of my spine above my sacrum were screaming whether I was moving or not.
I went to the Y after I got done with my clean and sat in the steam room, then an extremely hot shower, in an attempt to get my back to release enough that moving even the slightest amount wasn’t excruciating and not moving didn’t hurt at all. Unfortunately, this did not work out as I had planned. It reduced the pain a little bit but I was still miserable.
I took some Advil. A couple of hours later, I took some more since the first round didn’t even touch the pain. This was dinner time. About an hour after dinner, Lance remembered he had some 600mg ibuprofen, and I took one of those. I was able to fall asleep a couple of hours later but was woken up by the pain in the middle of the night when I shifted positions. I took another 600mg ibuprofen when I got out of bed yesterday morning to make my coffee.
My back isn’t hurting like it was, now, but is still extremely tender and feels like it has the potential to reach the status it was at on Friday very easily. Moving is something I am doing with extra care and if something ends up on the floor, it may just stay there if I can’t pick it up with my toes or Lance isn’t there to help. The pain/tenderness is centered around my sacrum and the 4-inches of spine above my sacrum, now. Today will be spent trying to get this to feel much better than it is. I have the common areas at the condo complex tomorrow, which means vacuuming stairs, which just isn’t going to happen if my back is still feeling this way in the morning. Thankfully, Lance has nothing scheduled for tomorrow so I can get him to help me get the stairs done.
I have my follow-up appointment with my doctor tomorrow morning for the Wellbutrin. I’m going to talk with her about my back then if it is still feeling like it is right now. I’m hoping it’s not feeling like it is right now.
It is so weird having this type of pain. I’ve always been a strong, active person, never really had any physical pains, at least nothing worth mentioning. Normal “I’ve worked my whole adult life in one form or another of manual labor” aches and ‘pains,’ but nothing like this. I have to say back pain like this has got to be the worse. It limits every other movement you make.
One of the odd things, coincidental things, is that I had just picked up the schedule for the different yoga classes at the Y. I had been thinking I should probably start strengthening my core. I’m not as young as I once was and, like I said, manual labor has been the working theme for me, so I felt it was time to do some preventative actions to avoid physical break down. Apparently, I got on that train a little late. I’m going to take this back pain incident as the final warning and get my butt in some yoga classes.
On a side note, one of the side effects of Wellbutrin is it can help you stop smoking by reducing tobacco cravings. I have been noticing that I don’t want a cigarette as much as I did. In fact, most of my cigarettes get put out a few drags into them because I realize I don’t really want it. I have to say that I am quite pleased by this and am just letting it happen without trying to put much thought into it. Thinking about quitting smoking seems to be where I have found my pitfalls in the past with trying to quit. I’m now down to under half a pack a day, with most of those being smoked a little at a time. Looks good. I hope the end result is no more cigarettes, but as I said, I’m trying not to put much thought into it. My fingers are crossed.
Dragonfly Gypsy USA 