i’m not sure i’ve complained enough lately…

…. so let me complain some more.

I have thrown out my back again. Goddammit.

I don’t know why they say “thrown out.” In fact, I hesitate to use that phrase when I’m telling people why I’m walking funny with tears in my eyes and a pained look on my face. “Thrown out” sounds so active, so agressive. It was appropriate the time that I was pitching fastballs in the World Series (that’s baseball, right?), and OOPS! I threw out my back. Or the time that I had to dash out onto a highway to save 5 year old twins AND their twin kittens from being squashed flat by traffic, and I threw out my back in the process but didn’t notice until later because I was too busy saving lives and what with the dashing between cars and all.

So anyhow. This time, “thrown out” doesn’t fit. And it’s not a cramp, or a sprain. “Muscle spasm” is actually quite accurate but it sounds so… I don’t know. Almost dirty somehow.

The truth is, I felt a strange *twinge* in my mid-back, right side, as I was ROLLING THE TRASH CART OUT to the street this morning (quite a sexy and adventurous way to be injured, eh?). And it’s not like it was full of heavy things like bowling balls or tree branches or severed alien heads; in fact, it didn’t have anything in it besides a bag of cat poop (3 cats, 2 day’s worth, to be exact) (maybe they’re alien cats). I stretched a little bit before getting into the car, to ward off the possibility of it turning into something worse, but I guess it was going to happen no matter what. By noon I was in pretty severe pain and left work at the insistence of my boss, who knows something about back injuries and cringed every time I made The Pain Face.

The muscle relaxers I have don’t do much for the pain and turn me into The Walking Stupid, and I also have this arthritis drug called something like Nambutone (which sounds like the name of a band from the 50s, ladies and gentlemen, please welcome to the stage the Nambutones!), not because I suffer from arthritis but because it’s supposed to be a high powered anti-inflammatory drug, but apparently my back’s not inflamed because it isn’t doing a damned thing for either the back pain OR my raging headache, which was most likely brought on by hours of gritting my teeth against the big needle spikes in my ribcage.

Yeah, bitch bitch bitch. I know. I’m just feeling sorry for myself, and it’s not like I’m lying in a ditch in the middle of nowhere with two broken legs and a crushed car, or working my way through chemotherapy, or suffering from cluster headaches, or any number of ways I could be worse off. I’m gonna stop now and go try to act like a normal person… albeit one who’s lying in bed on the heating pad, asking her husband to bring her water or food because she can’t even do that for herself today.

But it is “today.” And also maybe “Tomorrow.” But not “every day.”