That’s good advice. I did start slow - a few days of just normal walking around, a few more days of using the elliptical machine at the gym, then tried the treadmill. But who knows, maybe it wasn’t slow enough! Checking out those exercises online is a good idea, I’ll try it out.
Amen, brother. Weren’t we promised rejuvenation treatments by now?
Yep, he’s been really incredible. Makes my decision to leave my beloved mountains worth it, because my last fac was turning into Mos Eisley.
OTOH, due to the backlog with HR, no one knows when I’ll officially be gained at the new fac.
Blech! Better not be another shutdown.
Man. Back went out at 4pm last night. Immobilized on floor for two hours. Made excruciating climb off floor and into bed at 6. Up this morning at 6am, survived visit to chiropractor and returned home. Pain from intolerable to awful over last 16 hours.
Do not recommend. Woof.
Back pain sucks like few other things. Hope you’re feeling better.
Ouch! Only had minor back issues myself but even those are terrible. Here’s hoping it’s a treatable and/or temporary condition!
Thanks! Chiro helped, I really like my guy. Next couple days are going to still suck pretty bad though probably.
I had back pain caused in no small part do to work stress and weight. My doctor suggested simple leg stretches, and it really helped. It also helped that I changed jobs.
Yeah I’ve been awful about taking care of myself for the last few months, just in terms of moving my body, stretching, and hydrating. It’s not a mystery why this happened, heh.
Simple answer Adam, get outside more. Why don’t you go for a walk, right now?
Actually, on second thought…
Hope that you find something that works for the next few days.
My furnace got the house from 62 to 64 over the last 3 hours. Progress!
Been going to PT for about 4 months now for (what I thought) was minor back pain. What I’ve come to realize is that I was worse off than I originally thought, but it still could have been a whole lot worse. Getting old sucks.
Oh yeah, and I’ve become convinced to become more regular at the gym as I approach my 40s.
I used to have that happen every few years until a doctor finally convinced me to join a gym. Sure, I lost 10 pounds but the real benefit was to my back. Almost 20 years now and I haven’t had any extended pains. Just stretching it and strengthening your legs and back make a major difference.
Joining the gym isn’t the hard part. ;)
As a fellow back pain sufferer, I wish you a speedy recovery. My worst incident happened emptying the dishwasher. Luckily, the kitchen table was close and I was able to crawl over and hoist myself up on to a chair.
My father used to tell me, all the damn time, lift with your legs! I was a kid. I ignored him. He was right.
Edit: This has been Four Line Depression Theater. See you next time!
I threw my back out once sneezing. I threw it out once golfing. Once swimming.
You ain’t kidding.
I was in my 20’s and unemployed when a professional independent mover came to town with a moving truck. He had been hired do deliver some family’s possessions to their new home. He was alone though, so when he stopped at a gas station a buddy of mine managed, my buddy helpfully gave him my phone number, since he knew I needed the work.
So I go to this house to meet the mover.
We spend several hours emptying the truck.
When we got to the very back of the truck’s box, I pointed at this big thing underneath some moving blankets and said, “What’s that?”
“Piano.”
Now, I had just spent four hours moving stuff, and hadn’t been paid yet. I’m sure he planned it this way.
So he and I, two people of average build, moved that piano up 6 steps and into the house. Getting it up the steps was the most brutal part. It required a straight lift, but there was no good place to grasp it.
I knew that my back was at risk. All my dad’s words came to me: “If you can’t lift it, don’t. If you must, use your legs.” But the way I was holding my end of the piano, bending at the knees was pretty much impossible. I should have flat refused, but I was young and eager to please.
I also wanted my $20 (it was the 80’s - twenty bucks was worth more then), so I did it.
I don’t think I hurt myself that day. At least, I had no immediate problems.
But every winter since then, shoveling snow will send me into varying degrees of severe back pain every single time, when it never had before.
Once it was so bad that I just crumpled onto the driveway, and only the cold forced me to drag myself into the house, where I spent two days flat on my back (@inactive_user up above mentioned something similar, which reminded me of this story).
Girlfriend got into a nasty wreck tonight in the rain. Sneezed, lost footing on the brake pedal with her wet shoe, and regained sight to see the car that had been slowing down in front of her was suddenly much closer. Crunch.
They’re both fine, healthwise.
She’d lost her purse at the grocery store two nights ago (I was literally driving there when the wreck happened to get it back), so she had no license on her. Luckily the guy didn’t want cops involved, since his car was basically just scratched. They exchanged numbers and he left.
Her car though, a ten year old Toyota Yaris, is in nasty shape. The bumper panel is broken in multiple places and barely hanging on. The hood is warped and doesn’t shut right. Radiator is cracked and slightly leaking. It was too dark and gross outside to see if there was more damage, e.g. to the frame. We had it towed to the nearest AAA and retreated to dinner and grocery shopping, and are just now getting home.
Her car has $1,600 left on it after she finally took my advice and starting paying over the minimum each month. Way back when we got it initially, even with me co-signing and her giving $2,000 down on the least featureful, cheapest car on the lot, we could only secure a five-year lease–they straight up wouldn’t extend us financing. Which, well, I know is shit. But, as I’ve relayed on here before, the last time we went car shopping in late 2009, her auction-purchased 2001 Ford Focus was on its last legs, to the point that the transmission completely died as we pulled into the Toyota dealership to look around at 7pm. We literally couldn’t even reverse out of our parking spot. Talk about a bad negotiating position! So, lease it was.
Believe it or not, but her credit is actually much worse now than it was back then (when she was struggling to finish undergrad and underwater on a couple of starter credit cards she’d amassed in college). Although I had helped her get her financial shit straight leading up to four years ago when we were able to finance the remaining value of the leased Yaris over five MORE years, in the interim, she let all of her student loans go into default while she was unemployed for two years due to a nasty illness.
Though she’s working and earning plenty now, I recently learned most of those college loans are now in collections, as her depression and anxiety kept her from ever trying to fix things once she actually had money. As far as I know, she owes upwards of $70,000 and is getting like a third of her paycheck garnished every other week. She is so scared of her own finances she hasn’t even filed her (very simple) taxes in two years. Hell, it’s about to be 3, unless I can dig up enough of her financial life from the piles of mail stuffed into the corner of the living room she works in every night to sort everything out myself; she’s basically helpless on this front.
Oh, and just for fun, she was scared of using auto pay on her car payments from the bad old No-Money days, but she’s also got crippling ADHD, so she was late on two payments to Toyota last year. . . and since I’M on her loan as co-signer, it plunged my credit score substantially into the high 600s (I’d been creeping up on 800 last year at 31, something I was very proud of). I’ve managed to sneak back into the low 700s since then, but ugh.
All of which is a long way of saying that her credit is in shambles, and mine ain’t great. Despite that, she’s thankfully got a TON of money in the bank. The upside of her poverty paranoia is that apart from the wage garnishment and her monthly payment to me for shared expenses (rent, phones, groceries, etc), she saves just about every last dollar she earns.
So, I mean, we could, without significant pain (apart from the emotional), blow $4-5000 fixing her fucked-up, decade-old, nearly paid-off Yaris, and she could keep driving it till we can unfuck her credit in five (or ten) years. . . or we can spend that same money paying off the remaining $1,600 and dump the rest–and whatever pocket change we can get for the car–into a down payment on a new vehicle.
Except I’d probably need to put it in my name only, otherwise her atrocious credit might keep us from getting financed again.
Which, I mean, okay. I’ll take control of her financial life after this either way, so I’ll be sure there aren’t any more missed payments or anything. And we’re a team, man. Been through 15+ years of life together. If that’s what it takes to get her driving and operational again, I guess so be it.
But my own Dodge Journey is ALSO a decade old and pushing 120,000 miles. And making a REAL encouraging wheezing sputtering noise after I turn the key while it stalls out for five seconds before the engine fully turns over. So who knows, I might be needing to leverage my moderate credit in the nearish future for my own car loan. . .
Ugh.
I fucking hate money. And am pretty pissed at myself for letting her get this bad off. I hate that this post makes her sound so. . . well, helpless, but the reality is that her particular mixture of abusive childhood, crippling mental illness, and a soul crushing, 80-hour-a-week job leaves her a weak shell of an unperson most days. It’s an endless-feeling cycle of pain and stress and panic and anxiety and depression she just can’t break out of. Things like taxes and insurance (of course she’s still on the cheapest possible liability from when she was unemployed and we were drowning in mutual debt) and car payments are just so far beyond what she can manage each day (I’ve got to beg her to eat most nights; she’s so tired she can barely get the spoon to her mouth). . . if I don’t do it, no one will, basically.
Ugh. I shouldn’t have let myself loose focus when she started working. For better or worse, I’m the only one of us equipped to handle any of this “adulting” stuff, as the Millennials say. And since I didn’t handle it all, we’re in a real crappy position now.
But at least she’s safe. And I allowed myself a Blizzard from Dairy Queen to make myself feel better at the end of grocery shopping. So that’s nice.
P.S. - Really sorry to hear about the back, @inactive_user. Take care of yourself, brother <3
Very sorry to hear about this, Armando. The only thing I can suggest is she use Uber for a week so you both have time to think about everything. You don’t want to rush into any financial commitments.
Yeah, no kidding; I do NOT want a repeat of the Toyota disaster from 09. Well, a car rental is more likely; her job is a good 20 mile drive each way.
Wait, they check credit for those, don’t they? Lol goddammit
