Right around the time I turned 22, I ruptured a disc in my lower back. I'm not sure how it happened, although it's very possible I twisted wrong while getting in the car or something equally ridiculous and boring. I tried to blame it on sleeping on a friend's pull-out couch, but that seems dubious, at best.
I started at Walgreens that summer, and lifted and moved boxes all the time - being a new assistant manager was not the glamorous work I thought it would be. As I did all this work, things got worse. I began to walk hunched over, unable to straighten up fully. My twenty-minute drive home had to involve a stop somewhere along the way because of the pain running down my leg.
I got X-rays and an MRI done - even so-called "open" MRI machines are terrifying, by the way - and when the results came out, even I (with my untrained eyes) could see the disc contents pressing against the sciatic nerve. Gross. Surgery was scheduled, then pushed back due to a death in the surgeon's family. Finally, I went through with the operation.
After another couple of weeks, I was free to go back to work and resume normal life. I kept up with the physical therapy for a few weeks, but eventually kind of forgot about it. More lifting and stretching led to more back pain about two years later; before it got too bad, I went to the doctor and he recommended physical therapy rather than a second surgery. Therapy went well.
A year after that, I was at work, being peckish with my employees, and the pharmacist said "Why are you in such a bad mood? Is the weather affecting your back?" I stopped what I was doing and really thought about it. It was an epiphany. When the weather is chilly and rainy, the little arthritis I have in my lower back acts up - not enough to make me hunch over or unable to get out of bed, but just enough to affect my mood. If I had continued my therapy after my surgery, would the little arthritis monsters have had time to set up shop around the ol' L4/L5 area? I don't know.
The point is, it's been chilly and rainy for the past four days.
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3 comments:
I need the surgery....but with no guarantee that it'll work for me, it's hard to look at spending that sort of money! ARGH!!
Why did I think that "peckish" meant hungry?
Peckish could mean hungry OR irritable. This means that I get peckish when I'm peckish.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/peckish
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