Lower back pain is super common, unfortunately. If God did design humans, he’s a shitty engineer.
I know it is super humiliating, but try to not blame yourself. The acute back pain is the simplest way to feel litteraly like a shit because you can’t fucking move, like some silly dead weight. I know that feeling all too well.
I’d suggest to try to get to know what sort of back pain it is. The fact that medication doesn’t alleviate your symptoms make one think it may not be sciatica related. I can’t speak for your pain, but in my case, walking around, very gently, trying to not force myself too much through the pain, had big results - although it was at a snail pace (I remember when I was 25, I had episodes where I was walking so slowly those elderly men using walkstick were passing me by - no joking). Walking that way for some time actually healed up my back on quite a few occasion, surprisingly. I know the pain can be terrifying. A few simple stretching moves taught by a practician after the source of the pain was located also helped me often, during such “crisis”.
Generally speaking, I didn’t want to sit: while it was temporaly aleviating the pain, it usually made things much worse when I tried to move again.
Ice it. All the time. Never remove the ice. And advil, lots of advil, with the occasional drink. And then give it time.
You can probably google them but there are some simple back exercises that will help you over time. Start simple.
You and me both, brother. I actually really do feel your pain. The last time I went to Universal I was the anchor for our little group. Having to sit down to let the pain recede. Over and over. Haven’t done it since, I’m just ruining it for the rest.
On a different note, I went in for my second fitting for my dentures. (Old, fat and toothless is no way to live your life) So the next visit is the first of two for the final set of teeth. Probably finalized by the end of December. Looking forward to it. I really want to have a big sloppy burger at a high end restaurant. I think you can appreciate that @ArmandoPenblade
My back’s been a tragic fuck-up since I was a healthy weighted kid in the 8th grade. No scoliosis or whatever, though I did have a bout of sciatica about 2 years ago that sucked fucks. At a certain point, you get used to living in constant, grinding pain and figure you know your limits.
Except I’ve packed an extra 120lbs and 18 years on since back then and my limits keep getting more limited and I am not doing a great job of acknowledging that.
After an agonizing day, I managed to get small prescriptions for Tramadol and an oldschool muscle relaxer (newschool favorite Flexeril turns me into a heart palpitating lucid dreamer and I hate it), plus the rec of stocking up on 2400mg of Advil liquigels a day and a heavy supply of Senekot S to keep business moving through the medicine-load.
Combo’ed with the low-dose melatonin I’m trial-running for my horrible sleep issues and I assume I am about to become dead to the universe for about 12 hours which is the best-sounding thing I’ve heard of since, I dunno, November 2016.
@RichVR you eat the ever-loving shit out of that burger man. And I feel you on the “hate being the drag-ass of the group” thing. I’ve got this cluster of really close friends here now. They’re amazing, caring, thoughtful fuckin people, and they do so much to look out for me and it makes me feel like a fragile ass weakling as they take care of me constantly. Esp. since one dude survived some crazy horror show cancer no one is supposed to live through by enduring a crazy horror show experimental treatment no one is supposed to live through and is ferociously clinging to existence half a decade later with his heart running at 25% or less every single day and other major organ systems slowly dying and somehow he’s the one insisting I sit my happy ass down so he can get me a refill on Diet Coke while we’re all around the coffee table at Mari’s place playing Gloomhaven because what the fuck did I do to deserve humans like that in my life?
Sillhouette Likes ^^^ this post.
This is less of an “interesting thing” and more of a “bullshit thing”.
So, I get billed by my electric company and have automatic payments set up. It’s cool, saves me from having to write checks, whatever.
But I still check my bills. I know what I generally spend. And last month, things were a little… weird. And then this month, that weirdness continued.
To explain… I have natural gas heat, and an electric AC unit. This means that my electricity usage is a bell curve, peaking in the summer. In the winter, my electricity usage is fairly low, with bills down around $60 maybe.
But this month it was like… $150. That is not normal.
So check this out… this is my bill. You can see that it includes a chart of last year’s usage too.
Soo, for the past two months, they’ve apparently stopped reading my meter, and just “estimate” my usage. But note, from the graph… their “estimations” make zero fucking sense. They completely diverge from my actual usage pattern. And sure enough, today I went out and actually checked my meter myself. Now, bear in mind, this is a reading with a full month of additional usage beyond what that bill says:
So with a full extra month of usage, it’s reading 25272… And their “estimate” of my usage at the end of my november billing cycle was 26157. So they’re over 1000 kwh off. At this point, they’ve probably billed me for all the electricity I’ll use all winter. Which is a pretty sweet deal for them, since it’s effectively an interest free loan to them.
What’s absurd is that they put a freaking chart on their bill. They actually know what my normal usage pattern is… and yet their estimation methodology seems to be “We’re gonna charge you for the highest monthly usage you use all year!” But they include the chart, as if to say,“Here’s a handy graph, illustrating how we are obviously screwing you over!”
So tomorrow I get to call them and see what the hell they are thinking, why they’ve stopped actually reading the meter, and when they are going to true it up.
For me, it’s not like this bill increase is gonna break the bank… but I can imagine it being a problem for poor folks, and it’s kind of bullshit, to get a bill that is between twice and three times what it should be.
I don’t know how interesting this is, but I found it a bit annoying. I ordered some stuff from a third-party seller on Amazon and when I tracked shipping I saw that the first stop was here, in St. Louis, and then it got shipped to a suburb of Chicago, where I guess it gets loaded onto something else to come back again to St. Louis. Just want to make me nervous about getting it in time, I suppose.
UPS? We have one of the major distribution centers here in Hodgkins, so due to the way they set up their network, it is common for me to see a delivery get close, only to go to a further away delivery center.
Up here, the power company offers an averaged plan that’s supposed to ensure you pay evenly all year round instead of spiking in the summer and winter (because heat for a lot of people is also a big expense). We were on it for a year or two. They’d reconcile against actual usage and refund/charge the difference once a year or so. After we got a big refund a couple years in a row I took us off the plan and our bills were lower year round. Power companies suck at estimating, I guess is my takeaway here.
Yeah, For me, I don’t mind paying the actual meter reading though… I don’t know what made them stop using the reading, since they can presumably read it remotely… and did every month I’ve lived here until october.
Yeah, I figured it was something like that. It was just odd seeing it when I looked at tracking details. I think there’s a good chance it gets here on time. If not, well, it’s for an adult who will understand.
The conspirationist in me, who has witnessed personally the trend of such billing in similar companies and the similar practices of companies he has contact with in a very different industry, thinks there might be just some accounting magic going on by overcharging all year long and refunding once/year, although I have zero notion in that field. Or maybe I am just an optimist and don’t want to think companies are simply dumb: better think they have a hidden purpose!
edit: for info, I am overbilled by the hundreds by my electric company in France who doesn’t seem to get, after 7 years, that I live there only a single month of summer/year.
I don’t think it’s conspiratorial at all. Companies will absolutely charge you up front, given the chance. It’s an interest free loan. Which means it’s free money.
No company turns down free money, if they can get it.
But they ain’t getting it from me.
That’s not fair to say. The companies are obviously only taking those interest free loans so they can pay their employees more. >> Cash = >> Mid-Low-level salaries! Trickle, trickle!
So I really thought I screwed up with Christmas this year. I tried to get some fairly good toys this year to donate to Toys for Tots, and two of them required me to wait longer than anticipated. Since I don’t get local anything really outside of the radio, I didn’t realize the deadline was not this week but last week which left me pretty bummed.
Then I found out today via Facebook that our Salvation Army is down donates by about 50-60% for the 6-17 kids category, boys and girls. I’m pretty excited because a bank down the street will still be taking donations tomorrow. As soon as they are open. I am there.
So my 7 year old son found my ancient copy of the TSR boardgame Dungeon! from like 1980ish, and begged me to play it this afternoon… hell I completely forgot the rules, so I brushed up, explained the rules, and we played… oh man it was a lot of fun, we must have played for a good 4 hours… it was really neat to have another activity that we enjoyed together. I think I’m going to make it a weekend activity, although it’s going to be tough to get my wife engaged in nerdy stuff.
I hosted my 12th “Raleigh Friendship Lunch” today, a monthly event where I invite all the people I love spending my time with here in Raleigh out to cool, quick-service restaurants for lunch and hangouts. Our group’s approaching 80 members and we had more than 20 folks RSVPed for today, albeit with a few dropouts.
We gathered together at BurgerFi, which is utterly delicious and delightful. Even better, @Clay joined us (as he has a couple of times by now) and so did @BigWeather, who proved to be every bit as awesome in-person as he is on these forums (Clay’s already proven that a few times by now–he’s a super swell dude!).
It was a great close-out to my weekend, and I hope to hang out with both and more Qt3ers going forward.
Not pictured: Clay or BigWeather.
Pictured: the “large” fries, urban style, and my friend Nori, who is awesome.
Nesrie my GF did the exact same thing but for some local toy donation. However, we went halvsies on furniture for Christmas, so we ended up donating all the old stuff to Goodwill. Still a win, if you can call it that.
Depending on when you do these, I’d like to know! It’s a bit of a drive, but I think my GF and I would enjoy a weekend road trip like that.