"Oh, my back"

I'm finally feeling a little better after hurting my back five days ago. I was walking our dog Charlie and I simply bent down and turned slightly and that's all it took. I felt a sharp pain and quickly straightened up. I probably moved too fast in reacting but I don't know if that made it worse or not. Fortunately, I was almost home but with every step I took, it got worse. I had a hard time getting into the house and taking my shoes off. I knew I wouldn't be going to work that day (it was Monday) so I sent an email to work letting them know. I figured I'd work from home but that turned out to be wrong.

I was able to get a doctor's appointment that afternoon and they ruled out anything serious because my legs were fine and I could feel my toes and fingers and felt no tingling. They prescribed a few drugs: 1) a steroid to speed up healing, 2) a muscle relaxant to stop muscle spasms from making things worse and 3) a pain pill for the big baby who isn't used to this sort of thing. The pills helped but so did an ice pack. I had mistakenly used a heating pad but I was told that was a mistake. "Ice, ice, ice," said the nurse practitioner who treated me, "A heating pad just draws blood to the region and makes it worse."

Well, I ended up being out of work for three days and the two days I went in (Thursday and Friday) were not the highlights of my life. I had hoped to get some work done at home but I couldn't concentrate (partly from the discomfort in my back and partly from the drugs) so I was falling behind. As I've mentioned before, one of those sad facts of life is that you can never really take time off from work. You just borrow time from work. That goes for vacation time or sick time. When you're not working, the job isn't getting done by someone else. It just sits there and it gets later and later. So, when you finally do get back to the work, you have to work extra hard to finish it and get caught up. I was able to get a lot done in the two days I worked but I'm still behind.

I finally took Charlie for a walk this morning but did no bending when I needed to clean up after him. I gently lowered myself by kneeling, scooped up what needed scooping, put it in the bag and gently extended my legs again. I was sore when I got home but things are improving. I'm praying that I'll feel better on Monday when I try to finally get caught up on the project we're working on. Even though I borrowed three days of time from the project, I'm trusting it won't charge interest.

[Update - I didn't mean to imply that using heat on an aching body was bad. The nurse practitioner that I saw just said to not put heat on it for the first two days. She said, "Ice, ice, ice," for the first two days. Then heat is helpful after that. Anyway, this is not a medical blog and I am not a doctor. I'm just repeating the instructions that was given to me for my specific situation.]