Today my back feels good. Not 100%, but good. I feel confident that in one more week I will be fully recovered from my recent back trauma.

My recent experiment with extreme pain and immobilization has left me feeling very grateful for my, until now, pretty unblemished physical record. Upon examination, I have come to the conclusion that this is my first really serious injury. Being a very careful, clean, and rather wussy child, my early years were pretty uneventful in the realm of physical malady. No broken bones, or bloody noses for me. I do remember a few scraped knees, and once being run over by a bicycle on my way home from school; but by no means was I ever debilitated. As an adult, I have never had a physical injury that has kept me out of work for a full week. I have come to the very non-scientific conclusion that one incident in 28 years is pretty darn good….statistically speaking.

(an excerpt from an email to my friend Colleen)
I have to say that my meds are working pretty well. The cortisone shot definitely reduced the pain; although, I can tell when I move that it has not actually fixed the problem, just masked it, my range of motion is still the same. But masking is feeling pretty gosh darn good right now.

Things I have learned while being incapacitated:

I. Movie Reviews:

A. 21 dresses: Despite what you may have thought (sarcasm), this is not the intellectually stimulating emotionally complex movie that you were seeking. It is pretty slow moving; however, it isn’t the speed that is the biggest problem. The biggest problem is that the speed never changes. This movie is not offensively bad, but I wouldn’t go out of my way to see it. It is definitely an “11:30 pm, happen to catch the last half of it on cable” sort of movie. The one bright point of the movie is Katherine Heigel’s performance. She is charming and responsible for almost all of the laugh-out-loud moments.

B. Cloverfield: All I have to say is “huh?” I suppose this is supposed to be an attempt at artsy mainstream cinema, but I missed the boat. It is like the Blair Witch Project of alien invasion movies with no real plot. Okay. So if that is what you dig, totally go see Cloverfield. Also, it is only 1 hour and 15 minutes long, which would have made me really annoyed if I had paid to go see it in the theater. “Give me 1/3 of my money back!”

C. Untraceable: A thriller that I had never heard about before (not that I am really into the current media scene). It is a classic FBI vs. serial killer thriller, cut of the same cloth and same plot as most movies of this genre. But “serial killer thrillers” is actually one of my favorite genres (what does or doesn’t that say about me?) followed closely by “Catholic theology thrillers.” Go figure, I would like to think that it is normal and healthy fascination with the dark side, rather than something to cause conern. Untraceable is definitely not going to win any Academy Awards, but it was entertaining and definitely my favorite of the three.

II. Waiter on the Way: A service in the Fort Wayne area that will let you get “delivery” from any of the restaurants on its rather extensive menu list. The service charges a nominal (about $6) fee plus whatever tip you feel is appropriate to bring said food straight to your door step in about an hour. Excellent idea. Added ingenuity: the whole service is on-line (including all the menus) and you can even place your order and pay on-line. Cool.

III. Strange “middle of the day” TV: It is a strange mix of programming that is available to watch in the middle of the day. Interesting movies from the 80’s and 90’s. And by interesting I mean “I wonder how/why they selected that movie,” rather than interesting “fascinating!”

I have somehow managed to SERIOUSLY mess up my back.

I have to say that this may be my first adult experience with serious pain and/or injury, and the stupidest part is that I have no real “incident” to blame for it. Somehow I would feel better if I had actually “done” something to myself: fallen down the stairs, slipped on the ice, bounced off of the hood of a car while saving a toddler and a small dog from certain death….some sort of interesting and mildly heroic story to justify the extremity of the pain that I now feel.

But alas, my story is about as banal as you can get…..a little bit of soreness following a not abnormally busy Saturday of teaching some of my “clingier” students (men will often subconsciously squeeze in with their right hand as they hold the lady in dance position), followed by a very fun introduction to Wii boxing (but only one round) Saturday night, and culminating with my first actual round of golf on Sunday. By the back nine on Sunday I had the feeling that something was “wronger” than usual. The little bit of pain on my left side was blossoming into something much more malicious….. and by Monday night I was kaput, actually having to cancel my last lesson of the evening. By Tuesday morning I was having trouble breathing, as the pain radiated around my left side to the front of my body. The 2000 mg of Tylenol that I had been taking was not even touching it.

And so began my holistic (and might I say idealistic) approach. Tuesday morning I got a massage. It made it worse, quite a bit worse. The massage therapist recommended that I see her chiropractor, who very kindly made room for me in his schedule that afternoon, even though he was supposed to have the afternoon off.

I had never been to a chiropractor before, and to be honest the idea of chiropractic medicine makes me equal parts intrigued and nervous. On the one hand I have a very open mind to alternate and holistic medicine, and I fully and passionately believe that we live in a very over-medicated society. On the other, the idea of someone messing around with your spine is a little freaky.

I went to the chiropractor, a very very nice man who has been practicing for 28 years. Comforting. He spent over an hour with me, discussing my symptoms, telling me about spines, etc. etc. Basically his diagnosis was that two of my left thoracic ribs (#8 and #9) had somehow gotten a little twisted or pushed up near my spinal column. This misalignment is what is pushing on the nerves causing the intense radiating pain, and my inability to take a full breath. Additionally, or perhaps causationally (is that a word?), my whole thoracic area was a little tweaked out (technical term), probably due to lots and lots of things….both environmental and physical…..blah blah blah….slight curvature of the lower spine….blah blah blah…..dancing, Wii boxing, golfing……blah blah blah. So this all makes sense. It sounds good.

I shall spare you the details of the next part…..the adjustment. Ouch. More colorful words come to mind, but let’s keep it clean. This much I will tell you, I kept it pulled together at the doctor’s office, but cried in my car on the way home. It hurt. A lot. But I suppose sometimes things have to hurt to get better. I made a follow up appointment for the following morning (this morning).

I went to work in the PM (I had to cancel the AM, but we had Ingvar in for coaching so I had to go in the PM). I had three lessons (two couple lessons and one single)….I barely made it. And I mean barely.

Ice. Lots and lots of ice. Doesn’t feel to bad if I lie perfectly still with an icepack under my left side and keep my breath shallow.

This morning, woke up…..definitely not better……by the time we got to the chiropractor (Troy took me this time) at 9am, definitely worse. Tried adjusting a bit more, but didn’t get very far….cried inside the office this time, couldn’t wait until we got back to the car. Felt bad for the chiropractor. It must be awful to have girls in pain crying in your office.

Got to respect the chiropractor (Dr. Murdock), as he directed to to call our family doctor to at least get some pain medication. He did not tell me to eat grass and cleanse my seventh chakra or anything like that.

Laid perfectly with an icepack under my left side for several hours and kept my breath shallow.

Got in to see our family doc early this afternoon. He gave me a shot of cortisone in my back, which I have to say is working. Dr. Klein said that it should numb the area for about 6 hours. Ahhhh….. Gave me prescriptions for the triple whammy: vicodin, muscle relaxers, and a mild steroid to reduce the swelling.

So here I am: home from work, feeling pretty useless, sitting perfectly still on the couch with an icepack under my left side breathing shallowly, typing on the computer, waiting for all of my drugs to start working (starting to feel just a tiny bit loopy), and contemplating the pros and cons of holistic health care vs. paying homage to the pharma gods.

On the one hand I would honestly like to be a very appropriately and moderately medicated person, on the other, I will be SO SO SO SO grateful if my triad of pharmaceuticals works. Ah, the hypocrisy of it all! And just when I am starting to feel a little bad about my “homeopathic failure,” I accidentally inhale too quickly or fully and I the dominant thought in my mind is “YIKES! I sure hope this vicodin works and works fast!”

As some of you know, I have recently started taking golf lessons. I have to say that I am really enjoying it, despite the fact that it is EXTREMELY difficult. I have yet to actually play a real live hole, but the driving range is keeping me entertained thus far. There is something very satisfying about pounding golf balls at the range. Learning golf has many many parallels to learning dancing, and one of my “side goals” is to use my golf lessons to make me a more empathetic dance teacher, renewing the feeling of learning a new and difficult physical skill.

One of the things that I really like about golf is the immediacy of the return. You immediately know if you hit a good shot or a bad shot. In this way it is not like dancing. In dancing there is not the same immediate validation of a job well done, no little ball flying with beautiful loft and determination into the air. Seeing your progress in dancing is a much more vague and subjective experience. You have to trust the opinion of your teachers and believe them when they tell you are on the right track to “better,” and eventually they are right, and things do tangibly improve. But it is never quite as definitive as a golf ball flying through the air.

Cheese, Why Art Thou Mine Enemy?

by Anna

There once was a girl from Fort Wayne

Who developed a great stomach pain.

Her problem with lactose

Made her more sensitive than most,

To pizza, grilled cheese, & ice crain (?)

If anyone can think of a diary product that ends with “ain” or “ayne” let me know….this poem is officially a work in progress.

Today, at the great dismay of my husband, I am going a little bit crazy over our dirty house. Having contemplated it for a while, I have decided that I have gotten the short end of the genetic stick…as it has to do with cleanliness.

My brother is outstandingly, ridiculously, bordering on obsessive-compulsively neat. He can tell in two seconds if someone has been breathing on his things….or if something is even the tiniest bit out of place. His room at my parents house is like a museum dedicated to the pursuit of academic greatness. On the opposite end of the spectrum is my sister, who is a huge slob in a very charming, artistic, and unapologetic way. She just really doesn’t mind living in a big mess. When she visits my parents her room spills out into the hallway and you literally cannot see the carpet.

I on the other hand, am neither exceptionally neat, nor unabashedly care-free enough to live in a big mess. So I am stuck in the middle….not neat enough to have a scrupulously clean house, and driven crazy by the mess. Such is the torture of my genetic “neatness meter.” Sigh.