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The argh continues
Dec. 7th, 2010 06:51 pmMy back is following the familiar old pattern: not feeling too bad in the morning, which fools me into thinking it will be fine so I toddle off to work, getting worse through the day until I'm close to crippled in the evening. Argh. It's hard to decide to call in sick when you're feeling fairly OK first thing and the bad point doesn't start to hit until mid-morning.
The only good thing is that I'm familiar with this and know how to manage it. NSAIDs, heat pads (to relax the muscles that tense up from the pain of the inflammation), TENS machine, plenty of movement and definitely not just doing nothing. I am going to be lazy in the kitchen for the next few days, planning meals that require minimal tending so that I don't end up half-crippled by the time I'm ready to eat. Long periods of standing tend to aggravate my back just as badly as long periods of sitting.
I'll give this treatment plan a week and then, if it's not getting better by early next week, I shall take myself to the doctor to get checked out. Hopefully they'll be amenable to an X-ray (to confirm that the inflammation around my spine is back), more NSAIDs (I run out of celebrex in two weeks) and a referral back to a rheumy seeing as this is usually put down to the EDS. I'll do physio if they insist, but past experience has shown that physios generally don't know what to do with me and end up giving me the same core stability exercises that the previous three physios have given me. They're more used to dealing with people whose problems are routed in poor posture and inflexibility. Me being hypermobile rather defeats them because my range of movement, even when I'm in this state and stiffer than normal, is better than a normal person's ROM.
Getting checked by the docs is mainly to confirm that this isn't something new and different and also have a supply of NSAIDs. I've been on this merry-go-round for long enough to realize that it's unlikely anyone will figure out why I keep getting inflammation around my spine.
Well, we'll see how it goes. At least I know more about what's happening this time. And I can educate my doctors. Um. Yeah. No, still struggling with the silver lining to this.
Tomorrow is going to be interesting. I've got a four hour meeting to attend. It's in a convention suite at a hotel down the street from my office, which means that it's going to be four hours on exceedingly uncomfortable chairs in an overly air-conditioned room with terrible sandwiches for lunch. On a good day, that kind of thing makes my back unhappy. We have this meeting every six months and I was nearly crippled after the last one.
Right now?
I'm pretty sure that I won't get through it. So I've already warned the boss that I'll be either working from home or calling in sick tomorrow to escape it, depending on how bad I feel by this evening. A day at home is probably what I need anyway and it would be more productive than attending the meeting and being off for the rest of the week. So I'll see how I feel and make a judgement call tomorrow morning on whether I work from home or just give in and spend the day knitting, watching TV and taking lots of gentle walks around the garden.
The only good thing is that I'm familiar with this and know how to manage it. NSAIDs, heat pads (to relax the muscles that tense up from the pain of the inflammation), TENS machine, plenty of movement and definitely not just doing nothing. I am going to be lazy in the kitchen for the next few days, planning meals that require minimal tending so that I don't end up half-crippled by the time I'm ready to eat. Long periods of standing tend to aggravate my back just as badly as long periods of sitting.
I'll give this treatment plan a week and then, if it's not getting better by early next week, I shall take myself to the doctor to get checked out. Hopefully they'll be amenable to an X-ray (to confirm that the inflammation around my spine is back), more NSAIDs (I run out of celebrex in two weeks) and a referral back to a rheumy seeing as this is usually put down to the EDS. I'll do physio if they insist, but past experience has shown that physios generally don't know what to do with me and end up giving me the same core stability exercises that the previous three physios have given me. They're more used to dealing with people whose problems are routed in poor posture and inflexibility. Me being hypermobile rather defeats them because my range of movement, even when I'm in this state and stiffer than normal, is better than a normal person's ROM.
Getting checked by the docs is mainly to confirm that this isn't something new and different and also have a supply of NSAIDs. I've been on this merry-go-round for long enough to realize that it's unlikely anyone will figure out why I keep getting inflammation around my spine.
Well, we'll see how it goes. At least I know more about what's happening this time. And I can educate my doctors. Um. Yeah. No, still struggling with the silver lining to this.
Tomorrow is going to be interesting. I've got a four hour meeting to attend. It's in a convention suite at a hotel down the street from my office, which means that it's going to be four hours on exceedingly uncomfortable chairs in an overly air-conditioned room with terrible sandwiches for lunch. On a good day, that kind of thing makes my back unhappy. We have this meeting every six months and I was nearly crippled after the last one.
Right now?
I'm pretty sure that I won't get through it. So I've already warned the boss that I'll be either working from home or calling in sick tomorrow to escape it, depending on how bad I feel by this evening. A day at home is probably what I need anyway and it would be more productive than attending the meeting and being off for the rest of the week. So I'll see how I feel and make a judgement call tomorrow morning on whether I work from home or just give in and spend the day knitting, watching TV and taking lots of gentle walks around the garden.
