By Esther C. Baird
First Published in the Tri-Town Transcript Apr 7, 2016
It was my birthday in mid March. And if your world is anything like mine, then when you turn some unmemorable, middle-aged number, it’s a giant party for days on end. Roll out the red carpet, pop the champagne, throw on the party dress and . . . or wait, whoops, no. That’s not what I meant. I meant, have a totally unscheduled and bizarre late-March snow day, a broken dishwasher, and then the icing on the birthday cake . . .?
Regular Reader, I give you my birthday present to myself: a back injury.
I had been working out in the pre-dawn hours like I do every morning. It’s before our two girls wake up to start the calm and peaceful process of getting ready for school that is neither calm nor peaceful. The particular program I was doing involved a twisting lunge while holding a weight. Ok, listen, I acknowledge that torsion and heft are not the best mix. They are kind of like oil and water . . . except sometimes you can get a really nice salad dressing out of that combo, and in fitness, the same principle applies.
Until it doesn’t.
In my case, I had about a two second window between the audible rip sound, and the reality of how it would feel. It was enough time to get the weight to the floor, and brace myself for the nerve endings to catch up.
When they did, I swooned. I’d suggest that a swoon is not a full faint, it’s like a wobbly knee, vision darkening, ears ringing, down but not fully out, thing. So yeah, I did that. Twice.
Also, as anyone who’s ripped a thing in their back knows, you are instantly rendered unable to move any part of your body without being ACUTELY aware of how it is, in some way, related.
Ask me how my lips are attached to my back. Fingers? Cheek muscles? I’m just saying – you can’t blink without pain.
I eventually made it to my doctor who threw out concepts like ‘specialists’ and ’possible fractures’ and then, ‘learning to slow down.’
So I saw the specialist and she ruled out a fracture, but what had she ruled in? I didn’t know. I just knew that I was sleeping on the floor by night, and velcroing an ice pack around my back by day. I stood through meetings at work, and when I had to drive (which, I mean, I’m a mom so that’s basically always,) I did so with my seat pushed so far forward that I was snacking on the steering wheel.
I was a cranky, but trying to stay upbeat. This too would pass. Except would it? People kept telling me, again and again, that this was sign that I needed to slow down. That my body was telling me to act more my age. That I couldn’t keep up the same pace forever. I scheduled a massage and the masseuse told me I needed to create more space in my life to ‘pause’ – – she could tell I was holding onto my tension in my muscles and I needed to work on ‘releasing it’.
Huh.
That was all super, super, helpful and I considered all the advice. But I went ahead and decided that I’d rather NOT slow down. I chose the option that said acting my age meant going at the pace I wanted to, and where I stored my tension was my own business. But, thanks.
My specialist doctor agreed. She told me that being active and in shape was what was helping me recover quickly, (quickly relative to a turtle or this election cycle). And we both tacitly ignored the irony that I wouldn’t have been injured at all had I been not so active in the first place.
So Happy Birthday. I’m healing up as fast as I can while being smart. Basically I think that means I shouldn’t do any more dishes. And until further notice, I’ll be storing my tension in the broken dishwasher!