Feeling Vulnerable

I’ve been a busy bee!  My fitbit steps have been climbing steadily, a mark of my overall activity levels. But last Saturday scared me to death. I am so afraid of physical incapacitation limiting my plan to go vigorously into old age. I am very aware of how fragile our bodies are, and how of close and how out of our control the possibility of injury or illness is.

Friday, my office moved. Just to a different floor in the same building, and just temporarily, while they refurbish our space. But the office moved to its present location in 1990, and stuff just accumulated. I’ve been in my actual office since 2005, and I did not start with a clean slate but inherited files from the guy I replaced.  We’ve been working for weeks to get rid of stuff, but oddly when you work for the government some paper cannot be thrown away based simply on your assessment of how trivial it is. Records must be maintained, and in some cases even sent to the National Archives for permanent storage. So for weeks we’ve been sorting through enormous 6 foot high cabinets, pitching or boxing as necessary. Finally, on Friday, I had to complete my own office space.  I got it done, but for the first time ever, I got to my 10,000 step goal during the work day – in fact, by 2 pm. And many of those steps were on the stairwell between floors 6 and 9, and many were toting boxes or things too complicated to pack.

 

But Friday when I got home, I had to mow the grass. I had blown it off for so long, I was seriously afraid of getting a citation from the county, with parts of it sticking up knee-high and waving seed-heads in the breeze.  I had to do it, because Saturday was sailing!  And Sunday it might rain. So two hot and tough hours, and I earned twice my average steps that day.

Saturday was perfect, and my boat partner, her husband, and I met early at the marina and were motoring out of the creek while raising the sails in just 35 minutes – really fast for a shake-down cruise.  Sadly, just as we got to the mouth of the creek the engine alarm went off. While it was still working, I elected to shut her down, and with no wind available we went through emergency anchoring procedures, just outside the narrow part of the channel and with a couple of hundred yards to spare on shallow water, and we doused and furled the sails.  I have the boating equivalent of AAA, TowBoat US, the “idiot’s package”, unlimited towing. This was the second time in 10 years we used it – we would have sailed back to the dock had we been able. But instead, after a not-unpleasant hour bobbing around in the beautiful weather feeling like duffers, the red boat came, I upped anchor, and we were ignominiously escorted back into the slip, with a huge audience on a glorious Memorial Day weekend.  The boat will be fine – we have a good idea what is wrong with her, but are too lazy to spend time possibly fruitlessly troubleshooting. But somehow in the up-anchoring process, I did a bend-and-twist that got my back out of order.  It didn’t happen at once, but an hour after we were back ashore I couldn’t straighten up.  We had Tylenol from 2008 in our med kit, and that helped some, as did some yoga-stretchy maneuvers on the grass.  Walking made it feel better, sitting was awful, driving was bad.

So instead of my consolation prize of kayaking instead, I went home and took a nap, flat on my back with pillows under my knees.  I spent some time with my girl, then early to bed with more OTC drugs and those pillows under the knees. 

I am very conscious of how I move through the world. I strive for a confident brisk stride with a Mary Richards “so glad to be here” smile on my face. My brief single yoga class has had a permanent good impact on my posture, as I hold my shoulders back but down, humble yet proud, with my feet rooted firmly to the center of the earth, and my knees and pelvis just so. With all I’ve read of the mind-body connection, this is my version of theSuperwoman pose.  With this pain, I kept trying to move and stand that way, and not making it.  It hurt, and I simply could not stand up – I still am not sure if I couldn’t make myself do it, or if the muscles had tightened to the point it was impossible.

Did not feel good first thing in the morning, so I grabbed the OTC meds before coffee, even. But I went of compost.  At some point during the day, I realized my back did not hurt.  In fact, after I dropped my girl and her friend at a concert in Baltimore, I turned to the marina and went kayaking for an hour.  Monday, more gardening, a strength and agility workout at the gym, and very fancy dinner cooked by me for all.

Since then I am hardly pain free.  In truth, I never am. My back started hurting in 2004 and hasn’t stopped since.  But since a year after it started, it has mostly been a dull pain, managed with yoga and stretching and OTC meds. My sciatica is kind of my little friend, always there but not dominating my life the way it did the first few months I had it.  This pain this weekend was piercing and all consuming, and the inability to move freely was frightening, and I was really afraid my life was going to change.  You can count on me to catastrophize everything and jump to the worst case scenario.  But in a stroke of fortunate irony, the longer I sit still the worse I feel. I need to stand up and walk around regularly.

Perhaps I’ve been a little smug about how strong I’ve been feeling.  I try to be very careful not to blame the victims of bad health and instead try to exude empathy and keep my “but for blind dumb luck, there could be me” to myself. This weekend should remind me how very important it is.