Sat. January 27, 2007

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Somewhere in the middle of my Christmas rush/busy season, my back started giving me pain. I've had back problems for twenty years, and the aches come and go. I figured long hours hunched over a keyboard were this session's prime cause. But the usual stretching and pain killers were not really clearing things up. So I mentioned the random back pains to my doc, and he scheduled a series of x-rays, which I submitted to last Tuesday. When you're over sixty, paranoia is more commonplace in everyday life than when you're thirtysomething, so I was sure I had a compressed disc that would require surgery. Except my current aches were more like knotted muscles than pinched nerves, although I frequently would experience a very irritated sciatic nerve.

But I have no compressed discs or tumors or fractures. I have a "little" arthritis (y'know, as in a "little" pregnant). Arthritis is like diabetes - it doesn't go away and it doesn't get better. My plans for being forever young have temporarily hit a snag.

There are a hundred types of arthritis, and the treatment is different for each. But there's no cure for any of them. I'm not in so much pain that I can't manage okay (ibuprofen does the job), but I always figured that there would be some way to eliminate the pain and get back to normal. I hadn't planned on it getting progressively worse.

But arthritis is pretty common, and people manage to live normally with it. It's just an adjustment I have to make.

I go back to the doc next week to figure out how I'll be doing that..