I’ve griped on here a couple of times about lower back pain, and even described my history with it in a a blog post, but a week or so ago, it hit me harder than ever. I had been for a quick shuttle Sunday, and felt fine. Monday I had to go to Hornby Island for work, and things just seem to slowly “come apart” all day. By Tuesday I needed about 15 minutes of hobling around to feel close to normal, and had to drive to Parksville and back. Wednesday involved a trip to Cortes Island, and things seemed to be getting even worse, but as long as I kept moving it was still mostly tolerable.
Well, Thursday morning, I was done. I had a flight booked to Abbotsford for a meeting, and even went to the airport. When the small charter plane I was supposed to take arrived, I had to call it. I couldn’t do it. I had been walking around trying to loosen up for about 30 minutes, and it wasn’t working. I painfully climbed into my car and headed directly to the chiropracter, hoping they could fit me in.
As luck would have it, there was an opening, and I was seen right away. I described what happened, and after reviewing my file, it was reccomended quite strongly that I needed to get an x-ray, and maybe even a CT scan “Just to rule anything out…”.
Everything looks great from this angle.
So, time to finally see the family doctor who I have been signed up with for about 3 years…fortunately they had kept me on file. She agreed with my chiropracter so off to the hospital I went.
From this angle you can see the damage. Follow the vertebrae down my spine and you will notice that the lowest one has almost no spacing left between it and the one above.
The final verdict – disk damage – probably an old disk injury that has become so aggravated that I was pretty much incapacitated. I’ve been pretty high on pain killers and anti inflammatories for the better part of a week and a half now. Woke up with my socks still on this morning and no memory of going to bed!
Physio set up for Monday, and lots of interesting exercises in my future. I guess its time to take this a little more seriously and not just suck up the pain…I’ll keep you all posted on how things progress. There will be skiing!!!