Bad Boomer Back

"An hour of pain is as long as a day of pleasure." George Bernard Shaw

As a Baby Boomer, I have my share of aches, pains and what were formerly Old People issues, but generally I'm a fighter, not a whiner. So there aren't many things that can keep me off my game for long.

Head cold, stomach bug, even arthroscopic knee surgery might knock me down, but not out. If absolutely necessary I'll take to my bed, but as briefly as possible. I'd much rather hit the PT treadmill than the living room couch.

However. There's something about the pain of a herniated lumbar disk that's been known to send even seasoned tough guys into fits of uncontrollable weeping. With good reason.

Bad backs with their attendant muscle spasms and nerve inflammations can test the mightiest stoics. My most recent bout finally sent me to the hospital feeling like a sissy but in the worst pain I can remember since childbirth.

As it turns out, I'm not a wimp. MRI confirms a disk has not only ruptured, a piece of it has broken off and is sitting directly on a nerve. Yeah. Really.

I'm home now, on bed rest, steroids and heavenly pain killers until next week, when The Back Guys I Trust Most will poke me with needles and other creepy things in order to remove the disk, the fragment and the Truly Agonizing Pain that's given me new respect for the palliative wonders of Demerol.

My husband got me one of those cool hospital tables that roll over the bed, which now holds my laptop so I can come online and stop driving myself and everybody else crazy.

I'll check in from time to time and try to write something of substance. But don't count on it.

Bad backs might happen more often to Boomers now, but face it, Gang, there's one positive fruit of that increasingly gnarled tree: legal pharmaceutical highs.