Stoned off my ass for the duration (translation: I strained my back)

Guilty pleasures: after a fortnight of unendurable agony, I can sit down on the toilet seat, unaided, without having lumbar spasms, quietly, no involuntary screams, no desperate contortionist simian moves to get my thighs parallel to the seat. Bonus pleasure: I can finally wipe me own arse, TYVM. The shower curtain will never be the same. 

My days are otherwise spent perched on a heating pad like a cat, in an iconic Jabba the Hut pose. The pad alleviates the constant dull roaring ache—like a background noise. I can’t pick anything up off the floor. Luckily I have prehensile toes. Getting dressed is interesting. Spearing my knickers with my talented toes and then curtsey-hulahooping them up my thighs, with a few bellydancing maneuvers tossed in for good measure, takes some serious planning and a degree in engineering. Plus some aspirin. And gawd help me if my bladder suddenly wants to get in on the action. I marvel at how wonderful our bodies really are, when something goes wrong, it drives it home. Coughing and sneezing (not to mention farting) require strategic countermoves.

Figuring out how to roll over in bed requires lots of precise isolation moves—like an osmosis roll. I think in the direction I want to move, and then, sluglike, I move the outer bits of my body the direction I want to go, rotate to the tipping point, and the rest follows suit. Really glad I took all those years of dance. The fact that I can roll over in bed, without having to do all kinds of strange crabwise maneuvers, that I can get my legs to the side of the bed, and ease into the upright position, and then walk across the floor, without crumpling in a heap, is huge progress.

Mind you, my butt is pretty stoned these days, ripped out of its mind with Robin Rule’s most excellent arnica-CBD salve slathered on it, morning, noon and night. It’s what gets me through the night. But every time I replenish the salve, I get the munchies. It’s not often you can rub salve on your glutes and get both cottonmouth and a sweet-tooth at the same time. Adds a whole new meaning to the term, candyass. Robin insists that I can’t get high from the salve, but watching Netflix is interesting. Colors become mesmerizing. Oh, wow, dude. Some of you know exactly what I mean. Even better than the placebo. However, I am a really cheap date.

I am clearly on the mend. Now I have to figure out ways to get in there to stretch those deep balance muscles that keep us upright. I could not sneeze or cough for two weeks. Who knew that those flexor and extensor muscles, including the quadratus luborum and the psoas, are necessary for proper sneezing and farting? Ya gotta find some humor in the situation, even if you have to mine your own bowels for it. What can I say, I’m channeling the Borscht Belt?

Driving a car is absolutely tooth-gnashing even with the help of a lower back brace. Shall I mention potholes? I’ve never been a fan of sitting in chairs, but I tore my muscles while lounging in my favorite bed slouch! To be fair, I was a bit stiff, too lazy to stretch out and straighten out that kink in my lower back. Payback time! This is my peculiar punishment for having leaped unexpectedly off the bed after working for hours posting jpgs in my art blog. As old classmate Andy Giddings who is still recovering from sciatica, so aptly said, Act your age, eliminate the word “jump” from your vocabulary. Are we there yet?

More on that CBD unction here: Serendipity 2.0

Serendipity 2.0

A care package from Robin Rule.

Serendipity 2.0. Just yesterday I was wishing I had some CBD oil salve for my lower back, as I pulled some deep lumbar muscles. Nothing seems to be working. But as we hunker down to avoid the latest Delta variant, driving to a dispensary was beyond my ability to cope. In the mail today a package arrived from the north, a homemade salve from Shenandoah’s Daughter, still molten from the heat of the mail box. I spread the unctuous golden oils on my back and began to feel relief almost immediately. CBD oil, calendula, arnica, poppy, comfrey, and yarrow—a mountain meadow of wildflowers for my spine. I was moved to tears, even beyond tears, as there was more, much more—a packet of Yorkshire Gold tea, a tea towel from Connemara, and a homemade card with a robin collaged on it. Not things themselves. But something larger than even love. Ah, Robin, I am grateful, doubly blessed by a namesake bird, that harbinger of regrowth and renewal, a bright flame of love that flies across the distance of time. She who feeds the homeless, arrives on the wings of hope—she is the vox populi, the voice of the disenfranchised, banishing despair. She who pays beauty forward wherever she goes. I am both honored, and blessed to have known her across the years. Go raibh maith agat, mo anam chara, mo spideóg bhroinndearg, Roibín. I have nothing to reciprocate, except these small husks words. A transcendental feather wafts in the breeze.

• Synchronicity at work

Tweaked my back again...

After a fantastic marathon photo-editing session for my spanking new art blog, I leaped off the bed to do something, and promptly pulled my lower back. Yeep. I was sitting weird all day and thought nothing of it, and then I jumped up out of bed like a startled cat! Spasms. Oww. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. Will I never learn? 

It seems like every back injury I've ever had was a result of sitting too long in one place and then leaping up to do something physical with no transition time in between. Like that time circa 1978, I was painting a watercolor for an art class and leapt off the couch to help my granny bring in some wood. I tore my entire lower back, including my psoas muscle (it keeps you upright) and I was flattened for three months. It was so bad I couldn't even sneeze. It took ages to recover. 

Redux. This injury is nowhere near as bad. TG. I took a Flexeril last night, and some aspirin. So now I’m fuzzy brained. Weirdly, I was editing a photo of an old painting I did for an art class in the way back days (was it the same painting?), and I stayed in one position all day, so I was stiff. The things I do for art. The painting, a copy of a Mucha, came out great. I learned how to dry layer watercolor like using pencil strokes.

It’s not clear exactly whereby back injury is, other than it's on my right side. Not an area I usually have issues with. My back is keeping mum. When I lie with my knees up, and then move suddenly, I have to quickly straighten my right leg out like a piston to stop the spasm. 

When I get out of bed, I grab my left knee and pull it up to my chest and then use that as a fulcrum to tilt  self upright. My right leg is not a happy camper about being pulled to my chest like that. So I move like a mime, isolating muscle groups to keep the spasms at bay.

FWIW, It does not feel anything like sciatica. Not that I've ever had sciatica. I don’t feel any vertebrae out of line, but it is more tender on my right side right below my waist, not quite to the sacrum. I think it's a muscle strain, nothing more. But I am sure it will take its own time healing.

Oddly, standing upright does not hurt. I can’t tell exactly where the pain is, which is maddening, but it is right below my waist on my right side. I think I must’ve tweaked something. It doesn’t feel like my back is out of alignment. The only thing I can say is that it's a good thing I am limber, and good at isolating muscle groups. So I can control the spasms. But it is excruciating when I’m lying down and I have to roll over, or if I have to get up out of bed. 

It sounds like it is the Quadratus lumborum, but more toward the bottom, where it joins the pelvis. Now that I can visualize it, it will make it much easier to heal. A stabilizer muscle. Like the psoas. Groan.

Positions to stretch that muscle are all comfortable, I like being on my hands and knees. Fetal position. All those muscle stretch poses is how I’m navigating movement through time and space right now. I make ridiculously dramatic tableau poses to do the simplest of things, but I am grateful for my strong thighs right now.

“The QL comes into play in the function and stability of your spine. It assists in forward-backward and side-to-side flexion and extension as well as assisting the diaphragm during inhalation. Sitting for prolonged periods of time affects the stabilizer muscles of the vertebrae, effectively shutting them off.”

Small mercies, at least it does not hurt to breathe. Could be worse.

See, I’ve been helping my cousin move a lot of heavy stuff lately. Real grunt work. I don’t recall pulling anything, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t. It also may mean that my body thought my back was in danger and went into spasm mode to protect my spine. Also I was probably dehydrated. It's a constant struggle to drink enough water.

I think I know what I did to set this avalanche off, I was getting out of my cousin's big monster truck and I slid down to ground without using the steps, and twisted my left ankle, stepping down wrong, thus jarring my spine. Meanwhile I was moving lots of boxes, then I was driving lots, so I must’ve put a strain on something. Then, I was sitting supine on the bed for a very long time without moving.

My left hip and femur did hurt somewhat yesterday, inexplicably, as if it couldn’t seat itself, but then, it stopped. I have an over-limber left hip and my femur can rotate out. I'm a bit double jointed. All those years on horseback.

At least it isn’t my psoas muscle. Then I would be right and truly phucked. Walking around upright feels OK, if I stand tall, should I attempt a walk? or rest?

Well, there’s some progress. I was able to haul my sorry carcass out of bed unassisted, so I must be healing. I’ve been using bungee cord style exercise bands to haul myself upright in order to crawl off of the bed. Once upright, I resort to sumo wrestler poses in order to get across the room.

I have added odd arabesque and lunges as well to my sumo wrestler pose to get around. Anything to avoid the pain when I have to bend over. It’s very dramatic in the kitchen when I have to get something out of the lower cabinets. Like making coffee. I look like I'm practicing kinky ballet in the kitchen.

I could use some tennis balls to massage the area. Dang, no tennis balls. OK, now I got balls. Tennis balls, that is. Green ones. I stole them from the neighbor's dog. I used them today to poke into the pressure spot. Relief. Snooze, ya loose.

I found some Voltaran gel from my old knee injury, and my TENS unit, but only one channel works. Anything is better than nothing. I'll use it until the battery dies. The heating pad feels lovely.

Voltran is a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory topical NSAID (mainly for arthritis), it's no longer used, much but beggars can’t be…. This Voltaren is similar to BenGay. Didn’t think it was working, but I do feel a lot better now. 

August 16. Well, the end is in sight. Perhaps my rear end. Not. This is the first day that I’ve been able to get out of bed without doing odd sideways serpent crunchies. I’m not 100% healed but what a radical difference from yesterday, and the day before, and so on stretching back to when I first posted this note August 9. So basically, 10 days in, there is light at the end of the tunnel. 

 I’m still using my elastic exercise bands as bungee cord handles to spring outta bed since that seems to be my most vulnerable position. I am trying to gird my loins, ironically that’s part of the muscle group name, loins. there must be some sort of cosmic joke embedded in that definition. Roar!

Meanwhile life goes on. In order to go to Lucky's I really had to gird my loins. It wasn’t too bad driving sitting upright and if I keep my most excellent posture, that is, walking tall, it doesn’t spasm. 

As soon as I got back from the store, I took another generic Flexeril. Didn’t dare do it beforehand and try to drive. I can’t bear to take it three times a day. Once every 24 hours is about all I can handle. I am so much better now than I was earlier today. I think a lack of magnesium and potassium is playing a role here because I was dehydrated, and suddenly bananas smell good.

No, I did not stay flat for the entire duration, I had three necessary outings (2 were jobs) which I’m sure set me back to the protozoan age. I was in agony again—especially while driving long distance to Forest Knolls to see Sam. However, I did get some quality writing time in. See The Gallo Girl redux: My Aunt Jane. But Searching for Trevor Yeats got me thrown in Facebook jail again for spam.

Laundry yesterday was a gymnastic feat, avoiding using my psoas, etc. I could not lift the laundry basket off the floor. Going up the stairs, I humped the basket up each step, but when I got to the top of the landing, I still couldn’t pick up the fucking basket, so I took off my shirt, slipped it through the handle and dragged it along like a good dog. 

I must admit, when things hurt deep inside, you get incredibly inventive on how to work around those physical limitations, I call them roadblocks. Now, to begin core stretches and strengthening. Suggestions?

Thank you all my friends for all your advice and input, Robin for sending me and that super CBD salve—which gives me the munchies. See Stoned off my ass for the duration and Serendipity 2.0, and Sneezing, such exquisite pain... (It took me a good month to heal from this fiasco.)

Synchronicity at work

After an uncomfortable night in my car, as my Berkeley housesitting gig ended a day early, and there were no available post-pandemic couches to surf on in West Marin where I needed to be in the morning (gas @ $4.30 gal), and home bed was more than an hour’s drive north, I made a pot of morning tea with the last of Robin Rule’s looseleaf Yorkshire Gold. My grandmother was always an advocate for a pot of strong tea to make you right as rain, nothing like a strong cuppa to help you to carry on, she’d always say. As I sipped that cup of fierce courage, and massaged my old bones and aches into facing the prospect of the day, and dwelled on the unsettling aspects of the future, I thought of Robin, nestled up north, on a ridge in a handmade caboose house overlooking Willits. I marveled at all the good work she has been doing during the pandemic, with the food bank, and feeding people. Who says that good thoughts and best intentions don’t affect change? I don’t believe in prayer, I believe in doing—my mantra is action and verb. I believe in poetry, perhaps that’s a more tangible form of prayer. I haven’t seen her in decades, yet, we are still in step with each other—our friendship persists—despite a half lifetime of time and distance. Constant poet, the thought of her generous spirit, and very existence on that steep ridge, nourishes me. When I arrived home, there was a care package waiting for me—Robin had sent me three boxes of Yorkshire Gold tea for HER birthday. Such generous bounty. ❤ Thank you Alabama James❤ Synchronicity at work. Happy birthday Robin. Carry on.

• Serendipity 2.0