Yesterday was a normal day until about noon. The kids and I had run some errands, then went over to a friend’s place for a visit. When we got home, my back started feeling funny. When I went to put Aidan in his baby hammock (it’s lower than a crib), it’s like my back gave out on me. I was in excruciating pain all afternoon. Der came home from work early to help me with the kids and to let me rest (isn’t he great?!). He took the kids and I laid down for a nap for a couple hours. We were both hoping that my back pain was just from stress and tiredness but it was still as sore as before. So, as much as I didn’t want to go, we went to the hospital so we could see what was going on. I honestly couldn’t sit without it being extremely painful and walking wasn’t very fun either. And forget about holding the kids, it was so painful. We got to the hospital around 5:15 and I didn’t leave till three hours later. The doctor checked my reflexes and ruled out any kind of urgent problem and then put me on a drip of anti-inflammatories. The positive thing about the IV was that this was the first time that the IV needle went in painlessly and without a lot of prodding and poking. Once I wasn’t in quite as much pain, I went for an X-Ray of my lumbar area and then went back down to the ER to wait for the results.
The doctor came in and explained that what the X-Ray showed was a slight degeneration of a disc that was caused by extra strain on it. So, I was told that I need to rest and take it easy and take some anti-inflammatories for 5 days. And he said the road to recovery for the disc would be slow because the solution is strengthening the muscles around it and losing some weight. I’m glad I went in and got the X-Ray done because now I know that there could be disc issues later on down the road. It’s a good motivation for me to lose this weight that I’ve been talking about doing but haven’t done. But it’s not the disc that’s causing me the pain. Where the disc is located is higher up on the back, around the middle of my back. Where my pain is is in my lower lumbar region – all around the base of the spine and the S/I joint (which is where I’ve had back problems for years). So the trip to the hospital didn’t give me any answers about this pain but it did give me some relief with the pain killers yesterday. I did a tiny bit of stretching and yoga this morning and it got me a little more mobile but I think it’s just going to be a long go of it to get myself better. This sucks just before the long weekend when we were going to go hiking and 3 weeks before we’re heading home (meaning a 10 hour flight to Toronto and then another 3 hours to Regina).
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