Hello again, everyone. Long time no blog.

I am just now managing to recover from I guess what you might call a flare-up of my old back injury.  For a little while, it was pretty bad.  But it is getting better.  I have been utilizing the collection of canes that Kelly and I got not quite six years ago when I managed, in the space of a few months, to badly injure my right knee and then my back.  Probably the worst injuries, at least in terms of recovery time, that I have ever had.

But this current episode makes no sense to me.

Normally, when someone suddenly injures their back, they can point to something and say “that did it”.  But there was nothing like that for me.  There was no single event that I could definitively point to and say, “this is why I hurt my back again”.

So it started on a Sunday night a few weeks ago – November 9th.  At first the back pain was minor, and I thought nothing of it aside from taking some ibuprofen.  The next day I went to work and over the course of the day it was hurting more and more, as I began to have trouble standing up from a sitting position and sometimes even just walking around hurt.  So I managed to get through the day, and then said “well, I will take it easy tomorrow (Veterans Day is a paid holiday for me, for the first time in my life) on my day off.  I had planned to go down to Fall River to visit the cemetery where my grandparent are buried, but I just didn’t think I was up to the drive or the walking.  So I stayed home.

By the morning of Wednesday, November 12th (our anniversary and my brother Greg’s birthday) I was in excruciating pain.  I called work and told them I was not going to make it in.  Then I called my doctor to see if he could fit me in that day, but he was all booked up, so his office recommended I go to the walk-in clinic instead.  After examining me, they decided to send me to the emergency room.  They essentially said that my blood pressure was through the roof due to the pain, and that they thought the ER could help me more effectively since they could administaer drugs and then put me in an observation room.  So that is what we did.  The ER was great, everyone was quite considerate and helpful.  And thank God for Patricio, who was able to drive me home in my own car (Kelly had to leave for a job interview – it was that kind of day) while I was reeling from the heavy painkillers and muscle relaxants that they gave me.

So I ended up having to take a few days off, but returned to work last week using a cane.  I hate being like this.  Kelly has said that I am the worst patient, and I believe her.  I wish it wasn’t true but it is.  I hate being helpless. It’s kind of that whole thing that Amanda Palmer did her TED talk about and then wrote about in her book.  I can relate.

Anyway, back to blogging.  Finally.

-Geoff