Saturday, April 21, 2007

Oh, my aching back!

As I may have mentioned, on Monday of this week we had somewhere between 8 and 10 inches of very heavy, wet snow here at the Aerie. I spent some 2+ hours shoveling that snow off the driveway on Tuesday because the snow blower would not have been able to throw it far enough. It would have just turned it over like a farmer plowing his field and after one or two passes I would have had a row of packed snow it could not lift. So I shoveled.

I wish I hadn’t. The stuff at the road end of the driveway was really a mix of plowed snow and mud and weighed a ton to the shovelful. The twisting-turning action employed when shoveling did my lower back (the part that has had two surgeries and two other “procedures”) no good at all. Tuesday night I felt it as a small ache. Wednesday it got a little worse but we went to dinner and the Audubon meeting anyway. Thursday morning it felt okay, so we went birding. And that was probably a big mistake. Walking over the grassy trails and fields along Cowanesque Lake kept jarring my lower spine with micro-shocks at every step. Friday I was a wreck. Sleeping was near impossible because I couldn’t lie flat and I couldn’t turn as I normally do without shooting pain. This morning I was still hurting but I’ve remained immobile and the back is feeling a little bit better. I can only hope that my inactivity will allow the swelling the nerves in the lumbar region have undoubtedly undergone to subside and take the pain with it.

Of course, this had to occur just as the weather gods have blessed us with the promise of a beautiful weekend and a fabulous start to the final full week of April. (It’s just a few weeks late there Punxsutawney Phil!)

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