On Throwing it Out (“It” being your back)
I’m somewhere between being a young-old-man and being an old-young-man…but, in many ways, I’ve been an old man for a while. I like golf, I don’t understand the music kids today are listening to, and I’ve been throwing out my back for almost a decade now. Now, I can tell you about all kinds of injuries, from concussions to strains and sprains, from hyperextensions to broken bones. Getting hurt sucks, whether it’s a paper cut or a broken nose, but for my money, few things are as bad as throwing out your back.
The first time I hurt my back I was but a babe of twenty-three and like any 23-year-old whenever I did anything I did the absolute SHIT out of it. So, when I threw out my back, I threw it out the window, down a flight of stairs, across a bed of nails, and straight into a trash can. I hurt that thing so badly I could barely walk for over a month. And, as any athlete or sports fan knows: the greatest predictor of future injury is past injury. So, I’ve been throwing my back out ever since.
If you’ve never hurt your back, first take a moment and just knock on some wood, throw some salt over your shoulder, and light a prayer candle of the religion of your choice because it’s SUCH a bummer. The moment you throw it out is like the moment you knock over a glass full of some liquid that will definitely stain, directly onto something that is VERY easily stained. The world seems to move in slow motion for a moment as you realize something very bad is currently happening and you are absolutely powerless to stop it. Then things speed up and suddenly you have no idea what movements will hurt and which ones will be totally fine.
Once you hurt your back, life becomes the equivalent of walking through a pitch-black room where the floor has been randomly scattered with Lego bricks. You have to move so, so, carefully. Every step must be perfectly measured and executed with the utmost caution, and then you turn your head the wrong way, and BAM, suddenly you’re living in hell and you have a beachfront condo on the lake of fire and guess what baby, it’s murder hornet season.
Really, it’s the uncertainty that makes back injuries the worst. When you sprain your ankle, you know that if you put weight on it, it’ll hurt. When you pull a hamstring, you know that if you stretch it, it’ll hurt. If you throw out your back…who fucking knows! You might be able to walk like you’re fine, you might be able to bend down and touch your toes, you might be able to pass your friend the salt WAIT NO, that one hurt.
You end up like a dog that’s been scolded but doesn’t know what it did wrong. You don’t want to move, you don’t want to breathe, you just want to remain as still as possible and hope the world forgets you exist. Then a few months later when the memory of your last back injury starts to fade, you do it allllll over again.
So, what about you? Any experiences with back injuries (god I hope not, it sucks)?
I loved the beachfront condo on the lake of fire during murder hornet season
As the author knows, and I think, some who read this wonderful blog, I destroyed my knee playing softball when I was 35, and have to do yoga pretty damn often or everything goes out of alignment (one leg is now slightly shorter than the other and I slowly get crippled and blah, blah, blah), but the accident wasn’t the worst day. That was several days later. Here’s why: When it happened, Susan was in New York on an important business trip and I didn’t tell her because I didn’t want to mess up her trip and the damage was done and she couldn’t have done anything anyway. I figured she’d find out when she got back and I’d have more information from consulting surgeons and I thought I was being both noble and, I’ll just say it, heroic. Well, she didn’t see it that way. She was pissed. Hugely pissed that I had not told her. But I was going to have to have major reconstructive surgery so she couldn’t really yell at me because I was clearly a wreck. So she kept it in until the morning I was to go to the hospital for the surgery, and while she was taking out the trash all the repressed anger jumped on her back with both feet and sent her into spasms that left her on the floor in agony. When her brother, Peter rang the doorbell to drive us to the hospital I was upstairs on crutches with my leg in an immobilizer. I couldn’t figure out why she wasn’t answering the doorbell. I mean, she knew I was on crutches. So I hobble to the top of the stairs and call for her and I hear this weak, strangled, “I’m coming.” And then I see her crawling across the floor toward the door and struggling to reach up and open it. Peter looked at her on the floor and then me trying to work my way down the stairs and it was like the scene of the Confederate wounded and dying in “Gone With The Wind.” Which is a long way of saying, ya gotta be careful with repressed anger, ‘cause that can mess up your back, too.