For the past three months or so I’ve had chronic back pain, the kind that leaves you nauseated and shaking. Nothing alleviated it: sitting, standing, lying down, walking, anti-inflammatories, etc. Numbness and tingling in my feet and calves became the norm and the pain just increased. Finally I went to see the doc. He said it sounded like I had Sciatica (inflammation of the sciatic nerve) which is a relatively common problem.We scheduled an MRI and some physical therapy.
Physical therapy didn’t go as we hoped…as a matter of fact it shot my pain over the top and sent me into uncontrollable muscle spasms down my legs. MRI got pushed up and I finally found out what was wrong…
Imagine that your spinal column is made of a stacked sandwich where the vertebrae (the bone) is the bread and the discs are the meat between each slice. Two of my discs have slid out. One straight out the other to the left. It’s the two lowest lumbar areas, L4-L5 and L5-S1. Which means it’s the last two discs before reaching the tailbone area. Lower back troubles.
So what now? Good question. It means I write when I can and walk when it gets to be too bad. I think it’s time to look into voice recording software for a Mac, though.
While NaNo was a bust so far, I have completed 30K plus on works in progress, so November wasn’t a total loss.
Keep writing. Keep reading. Never stop learning.
