Back Pain

I am currently shut down for repairs.

Last night I pulled James' stroller up the big hill on Colby Street so that he wouldn't be stuck pointed into a bright sunset for ten minutes while we walked to the playground. Somewhere along the way I tweaked a muscle on the left side of my upper back, and by the time I went to bed I knew something was wrong.

I woke up several times during the night. Once I went downstairs to hunt for aspirin, and around 3 AM I even roused my longsuffering wife to rub my back. Around 5:30 it was too painful to lie on my side anymore, and on the fourth or fifth attempt, I rolled my legs off the bed and limped downstairs. My neck was stuck forwards as I walked, and I couldn't turn my head at all. It was barely light out as I turned on hot water for coffee--all with my right arm, since I couldn't lift my left--and measured out four scoops of grounds.

Woe is me.

This happened once before, in the summer of 2008. J and I were in Hanover, getting ready to drive to Philadelphia for a week at Csehy. These were the olden times, before small bears, and we would stay up late every night and sleep in late every morning. Our bodies were younger then, and they didn't break down. It wasn't like now, now that we're 28 years old and our youthful prime is behind us. Interestingly enough, it was that same week at Csehy that I played with the Syracuse Symphony Orchestra for the first time. They needed a trumpet player in a pinch, and they called the RPO personnel manager asking for a recommendation.

We were in the backyard of the Davis homestead, throwing a frisbee about with J's two brothers. I reached high for a toss that was sailing over my head, and I knew instantly that some muscle had moved into a place it shouldn't. We drove to Csehy that same afternoon, and my neck stiffened more with each passing mile of the Pennsylvania Turnpike. By the time we arrived my head was bent over my chest, and I couldn't move my neck at all. Our assignment for that evening was to drive back and forth from the campus in Langhorne through the city of Philadelphia to the airport, and to bring back arriving campers with their luggage. J was, for reasons long forgotten, somehow unable to drive. She checked the lanes around me to tell me when it was safe to turn, since I couldn't turn my head, and I tried to keep track of the dizzying interchanges as we made each half-hour trip in and half-hour trip back. I think we made eight runs before we quit.

Fortunately, our friend Opifera was there that night.

The record should show that I don't like to be massaged. I am painfully ticklish, I'm not particularly good at sitting still for long periods of time, and just when you think that adults can't be reduced to spasmatic giggles at a feather's touch, I am painfully ticklish. "But wait," you say "haven't you and your wife ever passed a cold winter evening with glasses of red wine, some jazz turned down low in the background, and a family-blog-appropriate 'back rub?'" I'm sad to say that back rubs are unromantic when convulsive elbow flailing leaves one or both parties with black eyes.

I was not expecting much help, in the summer of 2008, when Opifera offered to work on whatever knot was immobilizing my entire upper body. She put her hand on my back, felt around where the center of the pain was, and then started to work on what felt like an entirely unrelated spot on my back. My whole neck seized up for about ten minutes, and then just like that, everything had relaxed. I was still a little sore for the next day or so, but I could stand up straight again, and even managed to carry in our luggage from the car.

This morning, as I waited for my coffee to brew, I was thankful that Opifera lived only a few minutes away, and that she'd had six months of formal massage school to hone her gifted instincts.

I enjoyed the hour and a half before James got up--I read Homer and Pliny, and blundered through a few verses of Genesis in Hebrew, and was even fairly comfortable in a hard wooden chair. When I heard James begin his morning chatter upstairs, I climbed my way out of my seat--goodness, my left shoulder throbbed--and made my way up to him. He doesn't wake up from afternoon naps very well (he's always angry at the world) but he's a little angel in the morning. He was cooing to Steven Bear as I walked in the room, and he bounced to his feet in excitement when he saw me.

"James," I said softly "would you like to go downstairs and play with toys?" He gave me a big smile behind his binky and nodded several times. I grinned back and reached in to pick him up. The first two tries were unsuccessful, but he eventually climbed into my outstretched right arm. I couldn't lift him any higher than my waist, so a new diaper on his changing table was out of the question. He snuggled with me in the big downstairs chair for a few minutes (which made the trouble of standing up out of said chair worth it) and then mostly cooperated when I changed his diaper on the floor.

J texted Opifera as soon as she was up, and we got through the morning just fine. James would forget about every fifteen minutes or so that I wasn't available to rough-house or tow him along in a laundry basket or play ring-around-the-rosie today, but then he'd find some way to entertain himself--I even let him watch a little television this morning--and he'd help J look after me. They filled an old brown sock with old white rice (and, unfortunately, some nice brown rice when we ran out of the cheap stuff) and used it as a heating pad. I was given permission to spend the whole morning on the couch reading Annales articles on the Middle Ages, and I was even excused from washing the dishes.

I went over to Opifera's before lunch, and I'm much improved now. I can move both arms freely, and there's just a little bit of stiffness in my neck. It's tough getting to be an old geezer like me, but I'll manage a full recovery on this one.

Only, I may not be quite well enough to help with the dishes yet.