Back ache and black outs Dec. 16, 2023
I threw my back out yesterday.
This isn’t just a sign that I’m getting old. I’ve had back
issues since those days when I worked at a baker back in the 1980s – apparently
causing a weakness from one particular incident on one particularly wet and
cold night when I swung the huge mixing bowl onto the work table, and heard and
felt the crunch in my back.
Since then, I generally get struck with the ailment in
winter, after a batch of cold and wet weather, such as we had here a few days
ago. I also made the mistake of trying to take a bath yesterday morning rather
than my usual shower, and believe this may have contributed to the issue.
Some episodes are worse than others. One time in the early
1990s, the episode was so horrible, I had to crawl from bed to bathroom and
back, eventually getting treatment.
The most memorable of these, however, came over the New
Years weekend 2001-2002 when I had to postpone going to Pennsylvania to see my
kid. Because I had told my mother, who was then in a nursing home in Union
City, that I was going, I didn’t think anything about not getting the typical
ton of calls from her, only to discover she had died on New Years Eve.
This no doubt contributed to my back problems, and required
me to see the doctor and get treatment before the wake and later the funeral,
making me look and feel like an old man before my time.
The odd part of that was that my wife could not make any of
these, but my ex-wife came instead, along with my kid, and at one point,
standing in the front row of the church I attended as a kid I started to laugh –
mid ceremony – drawing odd looks from my family and friends.
This was not pain. This was the sudden realization that my
mother’s life long wish that I reunite with my first wife had been granted if
only for those few hours of her wake, funeral and eventual burial.
Strategies for dealing with the ailment differ now. I have
heat pad and a back massager to help cope with the early aspects, although ultimately,
I have to seek professional help.
The fact that this ailment tends to strike around the
holidays makes it seem like a Christmas tradition, something I should expect,
such as coal in my stockings.
Needless to say, life goes on, and the chores need to get
done. So, I’ll be doing the regular food shopping we traditionally do on
Saturdays, and will most likely take our afternoon walk to the waterfront
overlook as we do following shopping, back problems or not.
Fortunately, we managed to avoid the black out some people
in New York suffered yesterday. We’re not trapped in an elevator or a subway.
My wife’s mother got trapped in a subway during the blackout
of 1965, but fortunately the train had just left the station and so she and
other passengers were able to walk back to the station and exit out onto the
street above, dark and scarry, but out in the open.
We have not had a blackout since our first week in this
house (knock on wood) and so, we’re luckier than many people in towns near us,
who undergo these fairly regularly. We had a few at our hold house, but mostly
during the summer, where we got to sit out on the front porch and look up and
see the planets and stars – no usual for this close to New York City.
Anyway, life goes on, and I’m just glad to be alive.
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