Last Friday, I began a four day weekend. I took a couple of days off to get caught up on some chores and organize a few things in my life.
I was super excited for the weekend. Work has been extremely rough lately. My mood has been sour and the weekend prior I realized something needed to be done. All the meditating and journaling just weren’t doing enough for me. I felt like I was losing the battle with my mental health so I made an appointment with my doctor Friday morning to discuss some options.
I’ve tried anti-depressants twice before, just a few weeks both times. I found them to be useless. I wasn’t excited about the idea of trying another medicine but I didn’t know what else to do. I’ve been struggling for so long, I just needed something to even up the odds for me.
My doctor’s visit went well. It was quick and painless and I walked away with a prescription. When I got home, I stepped out of my car and I noticed my back tighten up. Then once in the house, I bent over to pet the kitty and it tightened even more.
I begun working out this week due to my back causing me issues last weekend. I’ve struggled with back pain for years and it went away last year when I dropped some weight and was working out regularly. After feeling my back tightened up, I went downstairs and lifted weights in an attempt to get ahead of the pain.
It didn’t work.
Within an hour or so, I could barely move. All my stretching and techniques were ineffective. My chiropractor‘s office was closed, so I called around to the few that were open on Friday, but no one would see a new patient.
Desperate for some pain relief my wife ran to the local sporting goods store and picked up an inversion table for me. Putting it together was a nightmare with my back, but we got it done and it provided some slight relief.
Saturday morning, I got up and headed to the only chiropractor I could find which was in a mobile bus at a flea market. It was called The Crack Shack.
It sounds worse than it actually was. I thought the adjustment was solid, however, it really didn’t help with the pain.
I spent the remainder of my four-day weekend on my back in agonizing pain. I would say it was one of the most painful experiences of my life.
Tuesday morning, I went to work, but had to leave after a few hours due to the pain. I decided to head to the doctor, which in the past has not been very helpful when dealing with back pain. But the doctor at the urgent care gave me a hard-core shot of pain reliever and a prescription for 800 mg ibuprofen and some muscle relaxers. It’s been about 36 hours since my trip to the doctor and I’m feeling much better.
There has been an interesting benefit to this pain. I have felt so bad, I’ve stayed off my devices. I haven’t checked Mastodon nor have I spent much time doing anything online. I have some emails I need to respond to and I saw my previous post about Blogging About Blogging stirred up some discussion online via my RSS reader but honestly all I could think about was how much I wanted my back pain to end. The pain made me focus so much on what mattered to me at the time and it provided some clarity I wasn’t expecting.
I’ve also slept… a lot. I’ve had a couple of twelve hour days of sleep which is unheard of from me. Part of me wonders if all this back pain was my body telling me to slow down and rest. It knew it was gearing up for a super busy, productive weekend and instead it put me down.
In a weird way I’m thankful for it. It forced me to let go of so much over the past week.
I’m going to continue this little Sabbatical for a bit, at least through the weekend. I think I need more time for back to heal and maybe my brain.
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