How To Throw Your Back Out (For Dummies)

You know those “For Dummies” books? The ones with titles like Microsoft Word For Dummies and Dishwashing 101 For Dummies? Golf For Dummies. __________ [insert dumb thing here] For Dummies.

Well, guess what?

As of this week, I’m fairly certain I could pen one of those books myself. The topic? How To Throw Your Back Out (For Dummies) (Over 40).

I was joking with a friend recently that it takes a certain skill level to really know what you’re doing when it comes to throwing your back out. You can’t do it via over-exertion. Popping a disc because of over-athletic sexual stunts or tweaking your lower back on a spelunking expedition is not how this is done. Oh, no. That stuff is for the young folks.

The first requirement to *properly* throw your back out like a dummy is to be over 40. Really, that’s just… Necessary.

(And really, I don’t mind if you call me ageist.) (As long as you call me a chiropractor while you’re at it.)

I mean…

I was mostly kidding when this idea formed. Kind of.

At least a little bit.

But seriously! Do you know how ridiculous some of this stuff gets? No? Let me demonstrate:

HOW TO THROW YOUR BACK OUT FOR DUMMIES

Option 1: Step over the lip of the tub to get out of the shower. Preferably at an ungodly early hour of the morning. The raised-knee hip-turn locomotive action will keep you in Ibuprofen for weeks. During those weeks, you can kiss your golf swing goodbye. Along with your dreams of playing Major League baseball. Try it — it’s guaranteed to work!

Option 2: Bend over from a perfectly normal sitting position to pick an object up off the floor. Like that pretzel you just dropped while snacking during TV-hour. The ripple-pop spinal swerve will have you yelp-groaning in ways that only your lover would recognize. If you’re lucky, same-said lover will assist you into bed. Where you will stay, writhing in agony (until you realize that all that writhing is causing you further agony) until your spinal cord decides to re-zip itself properly.

Options 3 thru 7:

• Stand at the kitchen sink and bend _just_ slightly forward to slip a dirty dish into sudsy water.
• Walk up a flight of stairs carrying a laundry basket.
• Reach for your remote control from a legs-elevated-in-the-La-Z-Boy position.
• Squat down to pull weeds out of your garden.
• Insert otherwise-innocuous activity, here: _______________.

Or, y’know…

Just sleep.

Which leads us to…

HOW TO THROW YOUR BACK OUT IF YOU’RE ME

Yep. Sleep.

You might say I’ve experienced polar opposites in terms of pleasure over the past week.

There was the lovely, unexpected, warmly received morning sleepgasm.

And then – just a few days later – there was the night I went to sleep perfectly comfortable, only to wake up – with my limbs positioned bizarrely – in an extreme amount of pain.

Shooting pains, mostly muscular, intensifying as they wound their way from hip bones to rib cage. A dull but insistent ache in the middle of my upper back. A tweak at that crick-crack spot between my shoulders and neck that refused to be rolled un-creaked.

Feeling cold all over. Then hot. Shiver-sweating adding to the discomfort.

Tension tightening every sinew between hamstring and head.

The inability to find a comfortable enough position to breathe in, let alone go back to sleep in. Despite trying every combination of pillows and limb-tucks imaginable.

I eventually took some Tylenol. (Which upset my stomach. Which, in turn, required a different kind of medicine.) (Oh, the joys of aging…)

I also fished out an old heating pad from my linen closet, tucked it between my skin and my clothing along the broad surface of my middle back, and turned it on its highest setting.

Crunched up in a ball, with my forehead pressed into the mattress and an extra-large firm pillow under my hips, I rocked myself back and forth against the pillow-top queen and tried not to keep track of the time while the heat and acetaminophen worked their magic.

I’m pretty sure it was about 4:30 in the morning by the time I was able to close my eyes again.

And then – as is prone to happen when one is Adulting – my Wake up and get ready for work, you sleepy sloth! alarm went off an hour later. (My alarm doesn’t actually yell at me and accuse me of being a sleepy sloth. I just feel like one when it starts screech-beeping at me.)

Anywhoo…

Yeah.

I made it to my first appointment of the day in less-than-excruciating pain, and as the time wore on, all the aches faded.

So my sleep-induced throw-your-back-out incident was short-lived.

Thank GOD.

(Or actually… Thank my husband, because he’s the one who prayed to said God when he saw the state I was in before I left the house in the morning. “I have prayed a prayer for relief and well-being,” he said when he checked in on me later in the day. So sweet, that man.)

SO.

Now that I’ve shared MY for-dummies wisdom (and am completely knackered from lack of reasonable sleep)…

What bits of wisdom have YOU learned this week, hmmm?