I Threw My Back Out

I threw my back out, really far out. I mean I can’t believe how bad it is. I cannot walk. I cannot breathe without severe pain, or sit up with ease, or lie down comfortably, or laugh too quickly. I sleep and wake with enormous dread that I might have to get up in the middle of the night, climb or walk down stairs, anything.

I am not sure what brought this on. It is paralysis, to the extent that I can see myself wanting to do something, yet knowing in my heart that it isn’t possible. I am not permanently injured, but the pain feels never ending, like it will forever be a part of me. However, I can feel its transience. It becomes dissatisfied with the area between my shoulder blades, so it moves on to the front of my neck. It remains there, but sends an army of muscle tension to my lower back. There is a coup at my lower back, and the pain rushes back up to the original site between my shoulders. Also, in frustration and rage at this internal warfare, I bit my lower lip, which feels like it is ballooning out in front of my face. My whole body wages war against me, and I feel like I would like to surrender, but how do you surrender your own shell?

There will be less complaining soon. This is the peril of age, when your body starts to rebel against you and there is nowhere to run because you can’t run. Is this the twilight of life when I start to be able to tell the weather from how much fluid has accumulated in my knee? If I were a farmer, I would have some excuse for this muscle wear and tear. If I were a long distance runner, then I could take this type of thing in stride. Unfortunately, I am the most sedentary person there is. Movement seems to always be an enormously daunting task, even when I’m in the most perfect health.

I cannot understand those people who “just have to get out there – it’s a beautiful day!” Who are these freaks? Nature is best experienced through the photographer’s lens, the storyteller’s excitement, the artist’s canvas. You go ahead, I’ll just stay back here.

Laziness seemed to me to be the virtuous choice. A sedan chair is the best way to get there. But unfortunately, I am seeing slowly and clearly that I have been wrong all this time. I have betrayed my own body by not using it. Now I atrophy and feel my cells cry out in torment with every belabored move. I should be better in time, and then I will have to take up some slow water aerobics class just to catch up. Physical therapy looms large in my future. I see parallel bars and mounting frustration, as I scream to the instructors that indeed “I WILL DO IT MYSELF!!!!!!!” I see now that I have to move sometime, and that time has come.