My back and I are on the rocks at the moment. We’ve officially hit a rough patch. It has had enough.
It didn’t object to my pushing out two babies in quick succession. It stoically accepted my hit-and-miss approach to my pelvic floor exercises thereafter. It even tolerated my blatant failure to adhere to all sensible advice to bend my knees, instead of my back, when lifting my burley toddler. Not to mention putting up with the strain of hoisting double buggies into car boots for the guts of two years.
But, within weeks of my returning to work, and commencing an entirely passive car-computer-car-couch regime, with a bit of sporadic hoisting of recalcitrant children thrown in for good measure, and with no attention paid to my long-suffering companion, it finally said, “Ah, here . . . . Enough’s enough” and promptly gave up the ghost.
We’re now in therapy. Physio. Physical. Osteo. You name it, we’re either in it or actively considering it. We’re spending plenty of quality time together, generally on the sittingroom floor with lots of hot-water bottles and foam rollers for company. We’ve revised our sleeping arrangements. The soft, saggy mattress was traded for an orthopaedic one.
We’re starting to communicate better. Or, I should say, I am finally starting to listen to what it has to say. What started off as a whisper, an occasional niggle – “Ah, sure it’ll be grand. It always has been” – gradually progressed to an omnipresent voice – “Eh, hello? I’m still here, hurting. Whatcha gonna do about it?” – and culminated in a deafening roar. At that point I finally started to take notice of whatever it was it was trying to tell me, as opposed to ignoring it and popping another ibuprofen which, up to that point, had been the extent of my remediation regime.
It turned out to be an issue with one of my discs. Herniated. Prolapsed. Slipped. I’m still not sure what exactly is wrong with it other than that it is bloody sore. All I know is that it’s payback time. And my back is determined to get long-overdue attention. With bells on.
Now that I am finally showing it the love, it is gradually starting to thaw a little. I now have prolonged periods where it no longer nags me looking for constant attention. I’ll go a few glorious hours not even noticing it, and then, if I don’t treat it right, it’ll start getting at me again.
The instances of my waking during the night to curse its very presence are starting to reduce. And with time, and space, I’m slowly starting to understand how it got so bad after having been so conspicuously neglected for so long.
Inherently unsettling
There is something inherently unsettling about being told that there is some “movement in your discs”, and that your spine is not quite right. It makes you feel, well, fragile. As if you’re not built properly. It’s like being told that the scaffolding that holds you together, the foundation on which the rest of you is built, is wobbly. Dodgy. Being told how weak your “core” is after getting two babies out feels like the height of injustice given the sheer strength of will it took to carry them, push them out and raise them (to the extent I’ve managed so far, anyway). I’d long since gotten over the fact that my stomach muscles would never look the same again, but to discover that they no longer serve the structural purpose they were intended for was a slap in the face, to say the least.
We’ve steered clear of any real pain relief. If we’re to work out exactly what’s wrong with our relationship, I figure we need to do so on sober terms. Pain is there to tell you that something is wrong, and the absence of it provides false comfort. Horsing the ibuprofen into yourself in order to resolve a back problem is presumably the equivalent of engaging in couples therapy after a couple of bottles of wine. We don’t honestly know how long it will take to rebuild our relationship, so the addition of chemical stimulants might just overcomplicate matters. So my back and I are going it alone for now. Until one or other of us calls time on the martyrdom, that is.
I’ve adjusted my lifestyle to better accommodate its needs. No more high heels. No more heavy handbags laden down with Sudocrem and hairbrushes and the Lord knows what else. No more lolling on the couch of an evening watching boxsets. Now, after the kids are finally in bed, my back and I are more likely to be spotted pounding the pavements of Dublin 12 rather than cosying up on the recliner with the biscuit tin.
We’ve reacquainted ourselves with our local pool. Renewed our membership last used circa 2009 (even though we’re still wearing a maternity costume and can’t manage more than 15 lengths yet).
We’re no longer caving in to unreasonable requests from clingy children to be carried distances they can well walk themselves. They now understand that “Mummy’s back” plays a key role in our lives and needs to be respected, regardless of what tantrums they wish to throw by way of objection.
Rebuilding our relationship
In short, we are rebuilding our relationship, step by step, one day at a time. And once it is rebuilt, once I have a fully functioning body again, I have vowed to never, ever take it for granted. Because I now understand that my back quite literally holds everything together, and that it, just like everyone, needs some TLC every now and again. And, above all, it needs to be respected.
You also need to mind your head when you have a back problem; it makes you feel decrepit, vulnerable and useless. It’s debilitating and downright embarrassing at times. And it’s hard to remember it’s just like any other medical problem when you’re lying in bed at 4am with hot-water bottles at every angle. But the good news is that all the things you need to do to keep your back strong are all the things that are good for your body generally. Regular exercise. Rest. Not overdoing it. Not standing in pubs for hours on end in inappropriate footwear.
I’ve stopped comparing our relationship to other people’s. Stopped gazing enviously as they totter around in high heels, sit for hours on end at a computer, or in a restaurant, or in front of a telly without a bother on them, as me and my back limp around the place. I have realised that such self-serving navel-gazing does nothing to help our situation and is entirely counterproductive. We’re in it together, my gammy back and me, for the long haul. And we’ll just have to make the best of it.
How’s your relationship with the bones that hold all your others together? Is it trying to tell you something?
