Crankiness

I'm cranky today. I know why. It's constantly dealing with the pain a disk in my back putting pressure on my S1 nerve root causes. This has been going on for three plus months. A constant burning that radiates down my right leg and cramps up the bottom of my right foot.

The worst thing you can do for this particular disk/root combo is sit on your behind, which I do most of the day in my cube at work. I get up frequently to stretch, walk around, and often to grab an ice pack out of the freezer. So here I sit freezing my arse off (well, technically my lower back off, but it's very close) hoping to numb the pain.

I go to the chiropractor. I do my back stretches and exercises using a big blue ball and a little yellow ball. I try not to do the things I've been told not to do. Vacuuming, for instance. You have no idea how hard that is when you've been raised in an anal retentive household that never had a spider web or dustball. I finally broke down and hired someone to shovel my walk and drive.

I've tried a little machine that shoots electrical impulses to the same general nerve area. I think the idea behind this is similar to accupuncture. You create so many nerve impulses at a high enough frequency that your brain is unable to process them all so you actually don't feel the pain. Nice thought. It didn't work but it sure felt weird.

I know I've been popping way too many Ibuprofens. I always think about how trying to address one health issue can actually create another. Heck...every night on TV we're bombarded with drug adds where the disclaimer is as long or longer than the supposed attributes of the drug being hawked. If I keep Ibuprofening at this rate my stomach or liver or something will rott.

I've been online reading about this issue. Apparently surgery, at least the most common one used, just transfers the stress from one area to another area of the spine. Not ideal.

At times I feel like a big baby. The pain isn't debilitating, it's just a chronic sense of significant discomfort. At times I stand up at my desk, put my keyboard on a brown box and try working that way. Driving or sitting on an airplane really aggravate the situation.

Spine problems run in the family. I've got degenerative and disk disease. So do my parents. In the words of my dad "you're screwed." Fun. Speaking of "screw"ing, I'll bet some aspects of that probably aggravate the disk/nerve as well. So, I'll try to focus on the positive and be thankful that there seems to be a lull in that area of my life right now.

Maybe meditation will help.

Half full, half full, half full, half full....