LOWER BACK PAIN

MAY 19, 2021 – Over years I’ve experienced episodic lower back pain—sometimes severe. I’m not alone. In searching for relief, I discovered that 80% of people older than 18 experience back trouble. A deeper dive reveals that among other maladies and dysfunctionalities, lower back pain is killing us.  I wonder if other vertebrates experience “lower back pain” and what palliative measures they share among their kind. For example, does back pain strike blue whales and have those remarkable creatures learned transmittable coping mechanisms?

Or how about toads?

Meanwhile, I’ve incurred big debt for having “over done it” in multiple projects up at the Red Cabin, starting with lifting a grill off a deck.  The principal is pain. Interest is immobility. The only way to pay off the debt is by an installment plan. Ignoring the bill will result in additional penalties.

The last time around, two years ago, I could barely walk, so I drove myself to a chiropractor my wife recommended. After multiple sessions and more significantly—time—I achieved relief and was back (so to speak) to rigorous activity . . . until heavy snow shoveling six months later.  My big takeaway from that was switching sides when shoveling, but more important—buying a snowblower for the next snow season.

On the side of hope are past recoveries.  On the side of wariness: age. I’m older than I was in the course of past comebacks—and in a decade I’ll be, well, that much . . . older.

As is the case with all young, healthy people, when I was among them, I (sometimes) expressed sympathy for my elders when they were in announced pain, but I was not truly empathetic. After all, my elders were . . . “old people.” Now that I reflect on the matter, I realize how stoically my “old people” bore their pains and discomforts. By comparison, I’m a wimp and a whiner. Or maybe it’s my whole generation. Long before the pandemic imposed a moratorium on in-person socializing, it seemed that conversations with same-age friends invariably touched upon joint pain of one sort or another. I don’t remember my parents or grandparents sitting around with peers talking about their bad backs and knees. I don’t even remember having seen “Doan’s Pills” or anything stronger than aspirin in the medicine cabinet above the bathroom sink.

My grandparents, certainly, didn’t have the internet either—commercializing lower back pain and algorithmic selling of snake oil.  This morning I scratched the surface of the worldwide bizarre bazaar and was soon yanked this way and that about what to do and buy.  If I had unlimited time and money, in short order charlatans, marketeers, YouTube videos, and “The [one to infinity] best stretching exercise” pages would reveal the illusion of “unlimited.”

It all left me in a quandary.  The best advice: “You’ll be okay, if you stretch,” except . . . what if the back says, in parody of Descartes, “I can’t, therefore I won’t”?

Maybe it’s time to go on a closer “whale watch” . . . or learn “toad talk.”

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© 2021 by Eric Nilsson