I decided a few days ago, as I looked at four unpublished posts, that perhaps I’d start another writing challenge in July to motivate myself back into writing & publishing here again. As I declared to my sister “I am in a funk” and needed something to kick start myself.

However, life had other plans. As it so often does when you layout a goal for yourself.

Monday evening, my back started to hurt. It was subtle at first. It felt like I was sitting wrong in my chair. There was a weird pressure in the middle left of my spine and it was an annoyance. I said something to my husband about it, wriggled around, and didn’t think to much about it, other than it was getting mildly worse as the night moved along.

Tuesday morning, it woke me up. By that afternoon, it was a pain. By bedtime, I was unable to lay on that side, take a deep breath, and was reaching for anything I could for pain. Now, as I have mentioned, I have a bit of experience with back pain. When I get pain, it usually has to be pretty pronounced for me to really complain about it.

That night, I tossed and turned, and two hours later, I was getting out of bed. Sleep was fitful, elusive, and after a couple of broken hours, I realized I had gotten all I was going to get. I made a coffee, a piece of peanut butter toast, found a Robax (from a recent go-round with my husband’s bad back) and headed down the TV room.

The day has been poorly. Ice/heat/meds with the odd 20 minute nap when my body gets so exhausted and I finally find just the right combination of pillows and meds and I fall asleep until the pain awakens me a short time later.

A couple times I have thought “I should try writing like I planned,” but the pain has really been distracting. I’ll admit, I’ve been near tears a few times, and the shortness of breath (from pain) has made today a little less than fun. But, as I sit here, realizing I likely have another long, sleepless night ahead of me, I thought I may as well see about writing something.

Do I know what’s wrong? No. Should I go to emergency? Also no. Whatever this is isn’t going to kill me. Short of better pain meds and access to better and more immediate testing, there isn’t anything they can do for me. I did consider “Urgent Care” however the only “Urgent Care” closed at 10pm (this was at 10:30pm).

I suspect it is a bulging disc at T11/T12 around the end of my lower fusion site that has tweaked a nerve. Irritated by some spinal twists I was doing for a class I was putting together. While I was very careful, when it comes to the spine, sometimes any is too many. There is a pronounced lump around the site on my spine so I have also annoyed the muscles too, but it is more than muscular as I can feel a tingling under the surface and just massaging the ‘knot’, while uncortable, doesn’t ‘undo’ the issue or relax it in any way.

I will call my GPs office at 9 am plead my case and see what they say. He has no quicker access to testing either but an xray will rule out a cracked vertebrae (always a risk with fusions) and if he says ‘go to emergency’, then we will. They may also say it is a two week wait to see him. It’s a roll of the dice.

But that sounds like a ‘tomorrow’ problem. For now, I think I am going to find some “Icy Hot”, my deep relaxing meditation music, something for pain, and see if I can find a comfortable spot in the bed.

If not, I will get a jump start of the post for July 2!