My back has been messed up for the last week and has made it hard to do my job, or even live normally. I slept wrong and then tweaked it badly while raking out the campsites on Sunday. I told my boss and she let me have an extra day off for my weekend. Luckily, the camp season is almost over. Just gotta make it through a couple more days and then I’ll have all winter to recuperate. Though it better not take that long! This is far from the first time that I’ve had back trouble, but the pain is usually over in a few days. The vertebrates usually pops back into place with rest and stretching exercises.
I went down to Porterville for my 3 days off and spent a lot of time in Planet Fitness. First, I did some research on YouTube about how to ease the pain and get my back to pop. The back experts had some good advice about stretching and I tried them all for 3 days. It didn’t work completely, but I did feel somewhat better. In the beginning, it took a lot of time and care just getting out of bed. Any wrong move and I felt like an electric charge was hitting my spine. Walking and sitting had their own kind of pain. It was impossible to stand straight up or take long strides. Each session in the gym started with a long, hot shower that was focused on the lower back. Then I put on my workout clothes and did 30+ minutes of stretches. I hung from a bar, too, trying to relieve the compressed disks. Then I would finish with a hydro-massage or chair massage. But I never had that sudden pop that signaled my vertebrae had released. Hopefully that happens soon! Meanwhile I’m going to keeping stretching and will watch more YouTube videos for tips.
My back trouble started in my 20’s with several injuries. The first time was when my landscaping boss accidentally knocked me off a tall stack of hay bales. I fell 12 feet and landed on my back. After a couple days of pain, I went to a chiropractor twice. That didn’t really seem to help, but eventually I felt okay. A couple years later, I was working in Alaska on construction of apartments. A scaffolding collapsed and I fell 2 stories, landing on my feet. That messed up my knee and back. My back got better quickly, but I ended up having knee surgery years later. Then I was loading up some heavy trees (150-200 pound) into a van at the nursery where I worked. My back went out and it took a couple weeks before I felt 100% again. My landscaping and nursery jobs, plus the construction work often taxed my physical limits to the max. Some heavy things I should never have tried to lift or carry. I fell through a roof once, landing flat on the wood floor 15 feet below. Another time I fell from the top of a wall, pulling a heavy glue-lam beam down on top of me, almost crushing me. A 300 pound safe fell on me once and it took 3 people to get it off. In short, my back has had a lot of abuse over the years, from both injuries and wear. I’m lucky my body isn’t in worse shape!
In my 30’s and 40’s, my back would go out, about once per year. Usually I’d have to spend 3-7 days in bed until the pain subsided. The littlest thing could set it off. The worst time was when I was working on a carpentry job at the Oregon coast. I bent over to pick up a piece of tarpaper from the floor and collapsed in agony. I couldn’t move an inch, without setting the pain off again. Again, chiropractic therapy did no good. Just had to wait it out.
After I became homeless and started living in my van ten years ago, the back episodes mostly stopped. I worked less hours and mostly did easier work. But this year I’ve had two bad times. The first was in Mexico. Don’t know what caused it, but I could barely walk for a week. I was staying on the second floor of a hotel and it was tough going up and down the stairs. I had to be very careful not to collapse in pain and fall down the stairs. The least jar would just about kill me with pain. The hot showers seemed to help the most. And the second one happened this week. I really hope this isn’t the beginning of a trend!
The injuries and overwork definitely took their toll on my back. But this is partially my fault, too. I need to focus attention on strengthening my core. I was doing fairly good this summer at my daily fitness routine; 25 push-ups, 50 squats, and 50 seconds of planks was my typical set. But I mostly skipped exercise for the last month, other than hiking and normal work. It would really help if I dropped some weight, too. I’m down 10+ pounds from springtime, but should be another 30 pounds lighter. This winter, I need to focus more on diet and exercise, especially since I’ll likely be mostly near a gym. Stretching, too. No excuses. Being past 60 means it’s going to take much more focus and effort to get even close to the fitness that I used to have. It’ll be worth it, to not deal with the pain of this last week.
iggyvandweller 