adventures by me

So I made a terrible mistake Monday during my work from home; I stood up and my back decided enough was enough with that kind of bullshit (standing, apparently?):.

Short version: Agony, called my doctor and made a telepointnment for Tuesday, got worse, got worse, called the triage nurse, who called an ambulance when I started sobbing, who came to check my vitals and recommended heavily I not go to the hospital unless there was no choice.

(They were awesome btw; they were really clear without saying outright 'COVID and you may be lying there for hours like this before someone sees you not kidding. Your doctor will see you today somehow so try that first.' And yeah, they were right.)

When I called my doctor's office back, the nurse listened to roughly thirty seconds of my probaly not entirely understandable babbling, then apparently spoke to someone, so they fit me in twenty minutes later. It was literally a ten minute video appointment since my doctor's office went digital and she'd read all through the drama with the nurses and ambulance and was ready with a muscle relaxant, an anti-inflammatory, and some kind of gel. Then mom and Child (somehow) packed me into the car to stay at mom's house for a couple of days because I literally could do nothing but not move to avoid agony and that times ten if I got tense. As you can imagine, not being tense was pretty much goddamn impossible.

Verdict: I strained my back and possibly a disc but very unlikely. By...standing up too fast from a cross-legged seated position on the couch with poor back support and poor posture, something I literally do every day for work so yeah, this was coming.

The muscle relaxants and anti-inflammatory finally fully kicked in this morning, so I could move provided my back didn't. On the upside, I now understand entirely what people mean when they say 'lift with your legs and not your back' by dint of horrifying pain every time I used my back.

There are two comfortable positions: "hunchback of notre dame" and "broom nailed to back" and I can't do much in Quasimodo mode so I'm coming out of this with much better posture. So far I have mastered: standing up (mostly, with a convenient table or Child in place, sometimes on my own!), sitting down (can do on my own!) and walking, provided I keep my back straight (or alternate: Quasimodo, but nothing in between those two or screaming). The hardest part is remembering when I stand up to check my posture before taking a step (or agony), and checking my posture again before I sit down (see: agony). If I'm not straight, I feel it from my back straight down to both achilles tendons; talk about effective classical conditioning.

I honestly has no idea how many movements connect to a three inch area of my goddamn back and for that matter, how many alternatives you can learn so very fast to avoid that.

I am glad I have been sleeping in two-three hour intervals instead of full nights the last two weeks. Sleeping does stiffen everything, but I notice a big difference between a one hour nap and a three hour sleep and do not want to even guess what six hours would be like. I am going to set a couple of alarms tonight just in case.

One day, I'm going to have a fun adventure.