THAT TIME I NEARLY BROKE MY BACK.

i recently read some cryptic motivational "quote" on pinterest. i use the word "quote" loosely (and in quotations-heyyo!), because. well, it's pinterest. not everything that is written out and placed over an image of an insanely toned, headless body is necessarily a quote so much as it is merely a fully formed sentence.

the quote was something along the lines of "if you don't take the time to rest now, you will die be forced to take the time later." or something like that. i'm clearly paraphrasing. or para"quoting". whatever.

apparently my sleeping in until 9:30 every morning, being highly productive every day and going to bed at 11:30-ish every night wasn't enough for this sleep addicted, nap loving  body.  or maybe it has more to do with the fact that i pretty much have been really, really busy and really, really stressed since like...early August. 

it's difficult to say, really.

but whatever the cause, last Wednesday afternoon, despite the lower back pain i had been feeling for the past 3 days (sidenote: i have an annular tear that i have dealt with for some time now. it's no fun, and sometimes it likes to tell me how to live my life), i forced a workout into my schedule and my body was like,  uh-uh. no. i warned you.



and 15 minutes into my Insanity workout, as i was squatting low and twisting to perform my second (of what was supposed to be several) stance jacks, i twisted and squatted to touch my hand to the floor ...lika dis:

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 but instead, my back said "no, girl." and then it and consequently my legs gave out and my face hit the floor instead. i tried to roll over but found myself completely paralyzed with pain. i managed to reach out and find the playstation controller to pause the video. i was sort of in crisis mode and i could not handle the intense music, the constant panting of hot bodies mocking me in my weakness and Shaun T yelling at me to dig deeper. like, could you give me two secs, Shaun T? i just broke my freaking spine. 

after lying completely still on the floor for some seconds i managed to army crawl over to my phone and considered calling garrett. but he was at work. and i didn't want to make him worry. besides, this was temporary. just a spasm. i just needed to rest for a few minutes, walk it off (you know, once i could stand up.) finish the workout, shower and continue on with my Wednesday tasks. 


10 minutes later i still couldn't stand up without falling back down. and let me be clear. this was not a weakened muscle fatigue issue. this was pain. very real, very severe and very debilitating pain. it was very low in my back and shooting down into my bum and legs. it felt like someone literally had a knife in my lower back-right in the middle of my lower spine- and every time i moved, that knife was twisted and the pain was like an electrical current through the whole back side of my body.

so i continued to lay there, face down. yoga, i thought! yes! of course! yoga was definitely the way out of this. child's pose. i'll stretch it out with child's pose. 

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the breath was sucked out of me. 
ohmygoshohmygoshohmygosh.
that's an exact quote. 
in my panicked pain i managed to roll over onto my back -the least painful way to get out of this pose-and despite the dizziness and nausea and agony, i was glad to not be face down anymore. this was OBVIOUSLY an improvement. i would be finishing the workout in no time.

 and then it hit me. happy baby pose!  yes, the most awkward of all yoga poses was definitely the cure to this issue. so my legs went up, my back went flat and i think i actually maybe died for a second.

and then, because i only think in movie quotes, i shouted out (to myself, of course) and in the voice of Rafiki from the Lion King "nope! wrong again!"


so it was back to lying on the floor (in a semi twisted, sort of chalk outline kind of way). i had to laugh. i mean, yes it hurt. a lot. but i'm sure it had to have been a funny process to watch. and seriously, i know senior citizens that were more agile than i was at that point. it was comical. and i'm a firm believer that if you can't laugh about it, you're just going to cry. and laughing is more fun. 

so i texted my brother. he, too, suffers from an annular tear. and he's a doctor. so that was a  double win, amiright?

i told him my predicament. i told him how worthy of a Life Alert commercial i was in that moment. he sympathized and told me to take some advil and rest for some days. i told him rest would probably come easy since i was about as mobile as a vegetable. luckily, i had already taken 4 advil BEFORE i began my workout. (sidenote: if you're already in enough pain to need to take medicine before your workout even begins...just..don't.)

then i texted garrett. i kept it light-hearted and told him not to worry. but he, of course, worried and before i could tell him not to, he had left work and was on his way home. 

i'll spare you all of the details of this story and hit the highlights. my dad is also a doctor. and not just any doctor, a pain management doctor who deals with back issues on the daily. so after consulting with him, he determined that in addition to my annular tear i now had a herniated disc to call my own. he called in some prescriptions for me (a steroid and a narcotic) and told me to rest for the next 5-7 days. 

after some hours, i got the hydrocodone and prednisone in me and i was sort of super sad to find that they did nothing for me. i didn't expect the prednisone to work right off the bat, but the times before when i have been prescribed a narcotic it has worked and i have been almost entirely relieved of pain. so i was genuinely very sad (and in a genuine buttload of pain) when i was completely unable to sleep because of the incredible pain.


to say i was fortunate enough to have garrett with me for 4 days straight is a total understatement. the first 4 days were excruciating. after talking to my dad, i was able to double my dose of hydrocodone but even then the pain was still very apparent. i spent those 4 days completely unable to move on my own. the most i could do was crawl. it took me 53 minutes to crawl 20 feet to the bathroom and back one night. (pretty sure Usain Bolt could have run across all of Jamaica in that amount of time.) garrett would have woken up to help me, but he was sleeping so soundly, i just couldn't bring myself to wake him. other than very slow and very painful crawling, if it required any movement from my chest down, garrett had to do it for me. 

he rolled me on my side, he carried me downstairs, he bathed me, he adjusted my pillows, he sat me up, he walked me to the bathroom, he sat me on the toilet, he slid me back onto the bed. he did everything for me. if i was thirsty, he got me water. if i was hungry, he made me food. if i needed it, he made it happen. and when the pain was absolutely unbearable and there was nothing he could do, he cried with me. 

it sounds totally cheesy, but i don't have a clue what i would have done without him. i've always considered myself to have a pretty high pain tolerance. i can only think of few times in my young adult-adult life when i have been brought to actual rolling, streaming tears from pain. -ruptured ovarian cysts. 
-broken tail bone.
-IUD insertion and complications (apparently you're not supposed to get an IUD unless you 1) are on your period 2) have had sex 3) have had a baby. and i got an IUD without meeting ANY of those qualifications. it was a real gem of a time. and since it was a completely foreign object in my body that was in no way prepared for it, my insides started to reject it and push it out by inducing..well, labor. so..yeah. i cried in pain with that one.)


but this pain trumped all of that. put together. and for a while it seemed like the more time passed, the more it hurt. 

monday morning i began to wean myself off of my pain meds (which was actually just me taking myself off cold turkey. whoops.) i got really, really sick. and i threw up. and it totally killed my back. and it was sort of a step backwards. 

so tuesday was spent mostly in bed-in and out of naps-again.
wednesday i mustered up the strength to stand long enough to bake garrett some thanks-for-taking-care-of-me-and-loving-me-through-my-pain-and-ugly-banana bread. 


the bread was delicious. but my back was killing me again that night. thursday morning i threw up again and spent the day in bed. again. 

today is now friday. and despite the fact that my back isn't totally killing me (in fact, the pain is actually the lowest it has been since the incident.) i am totally ill. i've already thrown up twice and no matter what i do i have a constant pukey feeling brewing. 


and since i know you're all wondering, no, i'm not pregnant.

i am, however, totally ready to not feel like crap. like, so ready. 
i just want to feel alright. i'm not even asking to be 100%. i'll take a solid B-. 
i just want to get out of bed without collapsing in pain or having to hobble run to the bathroom to throw up. 
that would be freaking sweet. 


until then, i'm going to continue to lay in bed, watch an embarrassing amount of netflix and not brush my hair. thank the heavens above for netflix and a husband who doesn't care how gross my hair is.


say some prayers to the gods of health and wellness that i survive this. 




lyrics: i just want to be okay today.