A warning...

A year ago, I seriously injured my back by digging holes to plant the azaleas.  It took about a month to heal.  Yesterday, I felt the same searing pain start as I leaned forward.  I wasn't straining. I wasn't even bending. I was just leaning forward!

I immediately froze and then slowly straightened up.  For a moment, I was transported back to being stuck in the back yard, wondering how I was going to get myself back inside.  However, I was able to walk and immediately took myself upstairs to take some Toradol.  I thought the powerful NSAID I used with my migraines might help, but it ultimately did not.  I then made my way downstairs and promptly put an ice pack against the back of my pelvis.

I don't know what a pinched nerve feels like, but I do know what neuropathy does.  This pain is searing ... almost tearing ... and nothing electrical or burning or pulsing like neuropathy.  So, I decided it must be muscular somehow.

When I lived in Alexandria, for a while there I kept getting neck pains that I learned were actually spasms in my back.  My doctor there, when I once came in just as one was happening, treated me with some sort of ice spray, which stopped the spasm right away and then had me work on using heat to relax the muscle against the pain I was still feeling.  Hence, the ice pack.

I iced my back for hours and hours and then I switched to heat for hours and hours.  And I broke down and took some ibuprofen, even though I know that my beleaguered kidneys do not respond well that that most beloved of pain drugs to me.  I took two high doses, back to back, and then stopped.  So, perhaps doing so was not too much of a danger.

You see, the thing is that I have been in shock, for a week now, struggling with a mixture of disbelief and despair about my teeth.  How in the bloody world could I have another cavity just four months after discovering that I had three?  As my mother continues to point out, I've always had the best teeth in the family.  And it was really, really, really difficult listening to the dentist telling me what fantastic shape I was keeping my teeth in—how pleased she was with my home dental care—and yet make plans to fill my tooth then and there.

So, this whole searing back pain for no reason at all has me also in shock.  I keep thinking I cannot have a bad back on top of everything else! 

I've been working on my abdominal muscles, doing the two exercises the physical therapist I saw last year directed, as well as two exercises to work on my backside, since your back is supported by your abdominal and backside muscles.  As a result, I have noticed that it is easier for me to sit up in bed.  I guess you could say that I was feeling a bit better about my back.

Not so much anymore.

I didn't walk yesterday, because I could feel the pain in my back every step I took, though not whilst on the stairs.  However, I cautiously got on the treadmill today and was able to walk.  I did skip the abdominal exercises, just to be safe.

I think that stopping the movement that was hurting me immediately and getting ice on it immediately helped to stop whatever was happening with the upper left side of my pelvis in my lower back.  And the ibuprofen.  Or probably that I am starting my second week of high dose steroids.  Or maybe it is all of that.  Or none.

In any case, I spent most of yesterday and all of today holding my proverbial breath against another injury to my back.  I am giving thanks that it was, I suppose, just a tweak.

A warning, it seems to me, though of what I am not certain.