Our house reeks of Bengay and I when I stand, the upper portion of my body veers off at an angle, yes, I have thrown out my lower back again. It is something that has plagued me for the last 40 years. I remember the first time it happened; I was working for the BC Forest Service and I was reaching over a rack to pick up a coil of fire hose. When I lifted, lightening, pain streaked through my lower back and I couldn’t do much of anything for a week.
Like the cartoon, it often happens to me whenever I use a shovel, but its hard to not do that when you live where we do in rural BC. Another time I remember it happening was when we were just beginning a vacation to Dinosaur Provincial Park in Alberta. We had stopped in to visiting friends in Banff, and I was on the floor playing with one of their kids. We were taking turns tying each other up with a small rope, I bent forward, arms outstretched with the rope to tie him up and again, lightening. Joan had to do the driving to the park while I tried to avoid pain in the lowered passenger’s seat.
Throwing my back out doesn’t always happen with a streak of lightening. I first noticed my present back problem on Tuesday night as I was driving home from out music jam. I don’t know if I did something when I was picking up my amp or carrying the instruments, there wasn’t any obvious start to the condition, but I just noticed things not being quite right with my back as I drove home. Once I got home things deteriorated rapidly.
When I first experienced throwing out my back I used to have to just wait it out until I slowly recovered. Then someone said I should make an appointment to see a chiropractor. We drove up to Prince George and the chiropractor laid me on my side and suddenly pushed down on one of my bent legs and AMAZINGLY, I was no longer in pain. After that every time I messed up my back, we drove up to the chiropractor, but his “adjustment” didn’t always work. Often when it worked, we had to make the drive home for 2.5 hours cramped up the car on the bumpy highway, and I would be just a crippled up when we finally got back to our house.
These days I just wait it out. I have a inversion table which allows me to hang upside down, that helps. I rub stinking Bengay on my back with to relax my muscles in hope things will go back into thier proper place. I spent most of yesterday in bed hoping that just staying horizontal might cause an improvement, but it didn’t. Today I am back just trying to live my normal life. It usually takes a couple of weeks for me to recover, although once I had low level pain that lasted for a year and a half. Naturally, I am hoping for recovery in a week or so.
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