Journal

Old Man

Allow Me To Explain

I said on Monday that I picked up an injury last week. On Friday morning, just after I woke up, I had the computer up running, I sat down, checked some news, stood up, looked out of the window, saw nothing, went back to the chair, sat down and ouch. The pain in my back was rather, shall we say, excruciating.

With an enormous amount of difficulty, I went to lie down on my bed, wondering what had happened. I didn’t think it was anything serious, because I couldn’t have hurt myself too badly with the innocuous act of sitting down. I thought it was temporary, in fact, but I was proven quite wrong when I tried to stand up again. Then I sat down one more time, except far more gingerly, but the pain wouldn’t go away.

After that I ventured downstairs, very, very slowly. I told my dad about what had happened and slowly came to terms with the fact that I must have sprained my back somehow. I tried sitting down for a bit, but I wasn’t quite used to my amazing new injury just yet, so I couldn’t find the right posture and it hurt. I stood up again and went to a bed, on which I lied for a while, thinking I would get a bit of respite before heading into the shower.

I probably shouldn’t have done that because I couldn’t stand after lying down. It was as if my back had adapted to lying down and locked itself into that configuration. It just refused to go back into standing and walking mode again. It took me about an hour and a half and lots of frustration before I managed to get a shower. During that time, I also informed Jolie about this fairly embarrassing turn of events because I was intending to meet her for lunch that day.

At breakfast, I found a couple of useful postures to adopt to minimise the pain, and then I went out to the living room to set up my workstation. I carried my notebook to the area and powered it up. Then I played some games in the couple of sitting postures that I had figured out. When I realised that it was too distracting to work (the weather played a partial role in this too), I used the notebook almost purely for communication purposes and sought to pack up one shelf of books that I was intending to give away, with the help of my dad, of course.

I survived the first day primarily by figuring out these various postures, whether sitting, lying down, or walking. I also had some help from pills.

I regained some of my flexibility on the following day, and the pain was approximately 30% of that on the first. I managed to do a reasonable amount of work. It was even better on Sunday, where most of the pain vanished and it was simply an odd stiffness that persisted. On Monday, I even went for some exercise, although the stiffness remained, and yesterday, it was nearly gone.

Nearly. It’s strange because with each day it seems to surprise me how much better it’s become while managing to refrain from a complete recovery. As if it’s doing it on purpose.

I guess it’s just one of those things, when you’re just going at the right speed, the right posture, the right everything (or maybe in this case, the wrong everything), and it all falls into place on cue, and snap. Either that or I’m just getting very old.  Still, lesson learnt. Sit carefully.

d

© 2009 a modest odyssey.