May 28 2015 Thursday
Pain
humbles me
I do everything fast. I do not procrastinate. I hate my desk cluttered. Documents are cleared every day before clocking out. Deadlines are met promptly. Matters affecting others are dealt with first and foremost. Trivialities are handled right away as they are easily forgotten. My limbs are still dexterous. I can make all the basic yoga poses. Wearing the right shoes, I walk fast. I get out of bed when I wake up. I don’t lie in. I am proud that at my age, I am still agile and very much alive.
But last weekend, my back pain
humbled me. Since two days ago, it has tailed off to an intensity I can bear.
Now when I am writing about my
anguish, I realize that it’s very tough to translate my personal experience
into language others can understand. I will try.
It started on Friday night. As
usual on all Friday evenings of a work week, I was exhausted. I went to bed
early. But when I sat on the bed ready to lie down, pain gripped me at the end
of my spine, more severe to the right and a little less so to the left. It was
like someone was drilling me round my waist with an ice-pick! I had already let
my back land on the bed inch by inch hoping to lessen the agony. But even such
gentle moves brought excruciating pangs. I screamed! My hard of hearing mom
dashed into my room. Upon knowing my situation, she took out two pain relief
patches and pressed them on my back comforting me with words like “they work
magic”.
I went through the night taking the
soldier or rather the corpse posture because the slightest movement would bring
another round of twinges. Yet it is the foetus posture that sends me to sleep
quickly. So you can image what a night it was for me – getting glimpses of
sleep in between tortuous ordeals!
Unfortunately I had a heavy
schedule for the weekend. I attended the events surprising all my friends with
a “slow version” of me – walking with small steps, standing up and sitting down
with both hands on the table. In other words, I had to slowly manipulate each
segment of my spine whenever I changed postures.
I have survived the pain test on
the daily change of the patches administered by my mom!
