Whining

I’m making progress. Agonizingly slow progress, but progress nonetheless.

My cane is my constant companion, but with it’s help I am able to:

Come downstairs in the morning by myself .

Go to the bathroom.

Take a shower.

Walk around the house and lift anything that weighs less than a half gallon of milk as long as it is not below my waist.

Household chores remain outside of my abilities. I tried to empty the top rack of the dishwasher yesterday and only got through the first three glasses, realizing that the twisting and stretching to put the glasses in the cabinet was beyond me.

I have moments of rationality and positivity where I think, it could always be worse. Thank God this is (hopefully) mendable.

And then I have other moments of discouragement, when I cannot believe that something went *pft* so suddenly, leaving me incapable of caring for my children. No rhyme or reason to it. Just *pft*. And when Zan says to me, “You just poured yourself a glass of milk?! Doesn’t that make you happy?!” It puts me in mind of one of my favorite movies of all time….”I can’t help my three year old get dressed in the morning, and pouring a little glass of milk is supposed to make me happy? Hmmm?”

However, I believe God whispers, then speaks a little louder, and when we choose to ignore the signs, he knocks us over the head with a club to get our attention. I am also reminded of our many blessings when things go awry…our family, our friends, and our neighbors have all come pouring out of the woodwork to help and we are humbled by the richness of love that surrounds us. They are what I hope to be.

So with baby steps I’m coming along, and as my back heals, so does the order of my priorities. Thanks to everyone for your prayers and good wishes.

“God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks to us in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: It is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.” -C.S. Lewis

So I don’t know exactly what I did, but I did it good.

My lower back started to twinge a bit two weeks ago. Then it started to stiffen up a bit more. Then over that weekend it was getting pretty aggravated and aggravating. I very carefully went about my chores last Monday—laundry, vacuuming, changing beds. And then on Tuesday I was in trouble.

I nursed it with heat, I stopped lifting everything heavier than the milk jug, stopped bending down (because I couldn’t,) and let my house get dusty. By Friday I was moving less and less, so finally went to the doctor. He diagnosed me with a lumbar sprain and sciatic nerve flare up and gave me prescriptions for Motrin and muscle relaxants. Unfortunately, I got worse instead of better and last night, when Mister started crying at 3:00am, I stumbled out of bed, took one step, two steps, and collapsed on the ground.

You guessed it…”I’ve fallen and I can’t get up!!!”

Zan helped my decrepit body to it’s hands and knees and then took care of Mister. I managed to crawl back to my bedroom and claw my way back to bed, but was scared to death of facing the morning.

Long story short, I could not support my own weight this morning and got a med change and an emergency visit to the physical therapist. I’m still in a scary predicament, every step being a crap shoot as to whether I will remain on my feet, but at least I am able to support some of my own weight this afternoon. A slipped disc is suspected, but my PT will see what the next two days of treatment brings in terms of improvement. Crossing my fingers that this is just a really bad reversible strain.

Lordy Lordy I hate Forty.

Wish me luck!