Ferg's BACK!

For those of you playing along at home, you may remember that around a year and a half ago, I developed a protruding disc (at L5, no less) in my back. It didn't make my back hurt, it pinched a nerve and made my leg hurt. When it became excruciating just getting in and out of the car, I went to the doctor, who told me the aforementioned things after some prodding and MRIing. I went to physical therapy until the insurance switched, I bought a back pillow, I did exercises, I took lots of drugs. Nothing really helped. I eventually got to the point where I didn't need the drugs anymore, but I figured I would have to live with this for the rest of my life.

Apparently (hopefully), I was wrong. One of the first things I have to do at work is count what's left, which involves bending over and getting down on my knees and bending over some more. This had always aggravated the pain, so I always started the work day off right (there wasn't really any alternative). Last week, I noticed that my back wasn't hurting after I did this. I also noticed that I had to do my lone remaining exercise (hands in the small of my back and leaning back for 5 seconds) a lot less than I used to. This made me very, very happy. But I don't know why it's happening.

I have some theories. At the beginning of this year, I swore to myself that I would take better care of myself, so I don't drop dead of a heart attack next week. I knew that giving up everything bad for me would not work, so I thought that I would try one thing at a time. The first thing I did was to stop eating junk at work. You may know (since I mention it in every frickin' blog post) that I am a baker, and there is plenty of junk to choose from. I have actually managed to stick to this, save for licking my fingers every now and then, but I don't do that as much as I used to. This move, all by itself, caused me to lose 7 pounds, and pretty much keep it off for the last 3 weeks or so. I have been trying to keep my back a lot straighter lately, and I shoveled snow for a week, but that hurt my back really bad. It was right after the week of snow shoveling that I started to feel better. So maybe I was strengthening my back with the shoveling, and the weight loss is also helping. I don't know.

I do know that I have to take another step to lose more weight, as I am still a fat slob. I have to try doing my meals differently. I tend to take a large meal to work for lunch, then I don't feel like doing anything after that. So the next step would be portion control, which is going to be hard because I like to eat. I usually give myself a bigger portion than I give to Sarah at dinnertime, so I could start there, by giving both of us the same portion.

What about exercise? I hear you cry. Don't rush me. I'm on my feet 8 hours a day, exercise is the last thing on my mind when I get home. But I will get there in time. Still hog-tied to the internets though, that's a problem. I have no idea how to take a smaller portion of that.

I give up.

I said in an earlier Blomo post (Monica's shorthand, and awesome) that I would be clever this month and have all of my titles relate to the Blomo theme this month, which is giving (up). I had planned on using song titles etc., but you know what? I'm not just physically lazy. Plus most of the songs I can think of that have "give" in there somewhere would relate to my post about Sarah, so you see my problem. If I can stick to the theme at all, fine, if not, bleah.

I also see that I use the word eventually too much, and that I do like my adverbs, despite Stephen King's advice. Hopefully I can fix that.

My mother and father-in-law are on a two month vacation, so I am taking care of their cat Mao (the only cat that can say his name!), but just in a scooping capacity. Mao used to belong to us, he was a rescue cat and my in-laws adopted him. Mao is pretty gigantic as far as cats go, but he's not fat, he's big boned (I'm serious). If you looked in his litter box, you'd think that a medium sized dog was pooping in there. This is a lot of setup for the epiphany I'm trying to tell you about.

Since July I have had a protruding disc in my back (it's at L5 if you're keeping score). It doesn't make my back hurt, but it really hurts my right leg, because it's playing with my right leg nerve or something like that. I'm taking meds and was doing exercises for it. I can walk around fine, it's the sitting that really hurts. Plus I have a heel problem in my other legs, so sometimes I'm a waddling fool. It's been much better lately, Dr. Sister PT says that most back injuries heal themselves in 6 or so months (which is also what my neurologist said). Yes, this is more setup, sorry.

We had a lot of snow on Monday, probably the most we've had since we've lived in DE, which is 11 years. I have been going to scoop for Mao every 3 days or so, and I was due yesterday. It occurred to me that I was going to be in trouble when I went over there, because no one would have shoveled the driveway, which is pretty large, and I wasn't able to get out of mine on Monday morning. I was shoveling a bit on Monday while it was still snowing, and it was torturous. I had to come in after 15 minutes and lay on my stomach for 45 minutes just to feel better. I have gained a lot of weight in the past year, so I'm not sure how much of it is that, and how much is my protruding disc (I'm blaming most of it on protruding disc for laziness purposes). So thank God for my brother in law. He's pretty security conscious, so he went over there and shoveled the driveway and the front walk just to make it look like there was someone at home. Yay! Oh right, I mentioned an epiphany. Here it comes.

We don't have any kids, and we are not planning on having any (more on that later). I was finishing the driveway today so Sarah could get her car out, and it was getting a bit easier to do, probably because I have been doing it everyday this week. I realized that I really need to take care of myself, because I don't know if I will ever be able to retire, and I don't know if I will be able to afford to hire people to do what I can't do anymore when I'm older. We won't have any kids to take care of us when we are old. I'm not complaining about that, but I'm not going to make up some kids just for that reason. I basically need to get off my butt and cook better and eat better and also go back to the Y, which I've been to once or twice in the past year, despite paying for it every month. I just hope that it's not too late. I'm 39 now, and they say life begins at 40, and I'm going to try hard to make that happen.