For the past several days my back has been killing me. It's my lower back. Yes folks, I have the most common ailment of modern man who walks upright, lower back pain.
I think this was brought on my hours of sitting at this computer knocking out my daily blog posting, researching my family tree, catching up on my e-mails, paying bills, and stopping for an occasional
I rose from my chair too suddenly yesterday and I almost fell over backwards. The pain was excruciating. It hurt so bad that I almost did the complete circle back to feeling good. The pain actually took my breath away.
Years ago I used to have this problem all the time with my desk job I had at the bank where I worked. I sat almost all day. One day I had to go upstairs quickly to put out a fire and I couldn't wait for the elevator so I rushed up the stairwell when I had a back spasm to intense that I almost fell down the stair backwards. Talk about a wake up call.
That was enough to persuade me to go to the doctor, something I rarely did back in those day when I was young, vibrant, pretty (no smirking please) and invincible.
I see the doctor. He examines me and asks me how old I was. I think at that time I was 42 years old. He said basically that I was getting old and this was to be expected because man was not meant to walk upright. He said we were supposed to walk like chimpanzees with our knuckles dragging. Well, I must admit I have walked like that on several occasions after a long night at my local gay bar hangout. But I didn't think I walked like that at work .
He prescribed a medication called Naprosyn, an anti-inflammatory drug. Well, it worked. In fact it worked too good. I remember those horse pills costs $1.00 each, which was fairly expensive back in the 80's for medication. I took them for a few months and they did eliminate the pain but I began to worry about getting hooked on painkillers so I weaned myself off of them. I like to be in control and I didn't feel right knowing something was going on with my back and I wasn't feeling it.
Over the years since then I've had occasional flareups but with all my walking I've kept those episodes to a minimum. However, lately, with all the cold weather we've been having around here I been using those painfully cold winds blowing against my face as an excuse not to take my daily walk. Now I'm paying the price. I've also put on about eight pounds....around my waist. I'm getting that "muffin" look around my waist.
I think we all know what the answer is here don't we folks? Get off of my behind and get walking.
Tomorrow, I promise (if it's not too cold).
P.S.
Yeah, that's my back in the picture (I wish)
