I have a bad back. Awh. It hurts when I do things like breath, sneeze, bend. One of the less joyful experiences is moving my bowels. That's when I'm reminded that I'm basically an organic tube peristaltically squeezing food from one end to the other, miraculously able to survive by doing so.
Today's Friday the Thirteenth. That fits. Yesterday my back was sore when I woke. Today I'm a medium invalid. That's because I was a good boy yesterday at first sign of back trouble. I resisted the indications of mortality with stretching exercises; groan, relax, groan, relax, then peddled off from here to there on my bicycle. If only I hadn't felt so much better afterward, I wouldn't have been tempted to clean the apartment. The evil part of recovery is an urge to dust, spiff up, and rearrange. Galactic karma balanced the reduced entropy in my rooms by concentrating pain and inflammation in my low back. I hefted an ancient printer from its abandonment in a corner behind the computer table to a nesting place on a shelf. I couldn't kneel down, grab it, and lift with my legs, no, I had to confidently reach toward it by bending over and snatching it up. Where is that move in the Olympics? If the Royal Ballet competed as weight lifters, you'd see it. Of course, every man in the troop is half my age and able to spring six feet straight up in the air from a second position plie'. No matter. I was recovered, exercised, dieted, vitamin pilled, minerally satisfied, chiropractically adjusted, rested, psychoanalyzed, and positive.
Halfway up the printer snatch-and-jerk move, my low back sort of folded like a pocket knife. I sagged and got enough knees under me to hang on to the printer, not that it's worth that much, but I'm conditioned to defend digital assets. I make my living on computers. I held on as a parent might, attempting not to drop their child. Pain shot from back to front like a boot kick. Somehow I put the printer on the shelf by holding my breath. I didn't make a peep. That requires contraction of the diaphram, impossible at the time. (Avoiding a grunt, windless, one might make a Bruce Lee kind of cat squeal using throat muscles alone, but I can't produce such a high pitched sound anymore. The upper end of my vocal register has worn away like old teeth.)
I tried sitting until I recovered the ability to pant. That restored vision by sweeping away sparkles that dazzled my eyes. I knew I had damaged myself, but didn't know how badly. I began a series of experimental movements that resembled a man trying to remember where he has put his keys and wallet. With some relief I discovered that I wasn't torn, only bent out of shape. But the pain increased as lumbar muscles swelled. I considered a little light yoga, but that was right out. Then I withdrew my attitude from the Sixties and considered taking three or four Ibuprofens. I decided no. My previous efforts to dismiss back pain after rising resulted in such improvement that I had injured myself. If I felt better again, Lord knows what kind of harm I could do.
With two hours of rest and by walking around a bit, I felt as if the boxing match with nature had ended and I could get well with aid from a Chiropractor I had seen only the day before. Walking helped so I walked, carefully, tourist-like, to his office. The adjustment actually gave me a sense of relief, though the back crack itself was a blow on a bruise. He recommended an ice pack and rest.
At home I found an old ice pack I store in the freezer, a cotton sheathed pouch about four inches wide and a foot long. It's meant to become a pliable flat band of ice that can be formed against the body. But after its last use, the water, completely melted, had collected in the center and refrozen as a solid lump. The ice rock in a sling resembled more the kind of weapon gladiators swing on the end of a rope. Useless.
I tried to rest by sitting. While my back did feel better, after an hour of reading it began to cramp. I phoned my partner and part-time lover to ask for sympathy. She is an expert in back pain, as well as front pain, leg pain, head pain, chest pain, and eye pain. Among the old we aren't so old, but I don't remember pain being such a topic when I was young. I may have been whacked or cut, in fact I suffered some broken bones, but I don't recall pain being such a significant topic of discussion. That's probably because it didn't come bundled with fear, not the same sort of anxiety about impending doom that accompanies pain in later years, as if pain were a sign of St. Peter warming up his trumpet.
My partner, the pain expert, reminded me of a massage belt she had given me years before. I thanked her and hung up. I stood by gripping the table edge. Using arms along with other miscellaneous ropes and pulleys from the knees down, I expertly cantilevered myself up without once calling on the middle of my body to do any more than complain.
The belt was right where it had been stashed, forgotten but functional. It's a padded sort of long felt wad with a velco strap that ropes around you. An electrical line connects it to a little plastic control box which, in turn, plugs into any convenient electromotive force. Two switches turn on vibration and heat. I decided to lie flat on the floor, sandwiching the belt underneath me, pressing the vibrating nodules into the sore spot. I located myself in front of my TV, armed with remote controls, and flicked on a movie I didn't care if I watched or not. At least it involved large men beating each other which was some relief since I could distract myself by enjoying the suffering of others.
The vibrators produce a lot of electrical interference so the large men banged away while long white streaks flickered across the screen. Gradually heat relaxed my back muscles and the electric razor motors in the belt -- that's what they sounded like -- wore away the pain with A below middle C. After nearly an hour of that I was able to roll over and stand without flinching.
I could return to reading but wasn't good for much else the rest of the day. In the evening I repeated the vibrator treatment while indulging myself in another American movie and listening to sounds of more large men whopping the goo out of each other.
This morning, Friday the Thirteenth, has started like yesterday revamped, that is, I repeated in the last dreams before awakening my yester-efforts at house cleaning, but in a dormitory-style common room. Other slobs, not me, had dropped paper all around a flooded floor. I could tidy the place by merely sweeping two inch deep water down a big drain hole. Easy clean, nothing to lift, no pain, and others to blame. God bless dreams.
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