Going to Pieces

So I went to the doctor today. She had my spine X-rayed and confirmed what I had suspected. I had suffered a compression fracture in one of my vertabrae. She thought it was likely that it happened when I was horseback riding in Tuscon a year and a half ago.

I was bummed to hear it, but was expecting it. What I wasn't expecting was that she told me my spine was pretty crappy as a whole. Shockingly, she didn't say crappy, she said something like osteoporated. I could see on the X-ray that the lower section of my spine was much fainter than the upper section. She said that was from the demineralization of the bone. She said that my back pain was caused by the loss of support in my spine.

I'm really identifying with my mother and her back pain. Her doctor thought that her back pain was in her head--Mom wouldn't exhibit any pain moving around the doctor's office. But my back pain isn't always there either. I did a full workout at Fitness Together this morning and had no back pain until Savanah asked me to lay down on a mat to do crunches. Then my back hurt and it was a real struggle to get back up. But I did some other exercises and was fine. My back hurts when I'm standing still, when I sit in hard chairs, and when I lay down on a hard surface. The standing hurts because of the lack of support. The hard chairs and surfaces hurt because that vertebrae is sticking out and it hurts to have pressure on it. I think it hurts when I walk, because it does in airports, where I do the most walking, but that could be because travel exacerbates it. I haven't done a lot of walking because that hurts my broken leg. In general, I'm a !?$&!#%! mess.

The good news today is that I can do everything I have been doing. Skiing and rollerblading are out, but I pretty much knew that anyway.

I felt pretty depressed after the appointment and came home instead of going back to work. But I know the depression comes from thinking about the future. Given the state of my spine, how many more breaks will I have, what will my future be like, am I going to be a bent over old woman. But who knows what the future holds. I broke one vertebrae, and it wasn't the end of the world. Hell, I could get hit by a bus tomorrow. I need to keep living in the present, and in the present, the Celtics are playing the Heat. They need my support.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad