The battle of wills. Mine wasn't strong enough and the pain won. I was really, really hoping that, if I ignored it long enough, it would just go away on its own. No such luck.
Oh, I didn't ignore it completely. I couldn't. Any wrong move sent daggers of pain shooting up my back. What wrong moves? I don't know. I have never known what would upset my back until I did it. And by then, it was too late.
On a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being the worst pain I have ever experienced, the “daggers” are at least a 20. That's not the answer I wanted. I want my pain to be 0. I haven't been able to achieve a 0 in over a month.
You would think, as a professional nurse, I would know exactly what to do to keep my pain at bay. And truly, I do know. I need to quit doing what it is that makes my back hurt in the first place, then let it rest, and do what I can to prevent it from happening again.
Easier said than done. You see, it is my job that keeps exacerbating my daggers of pain. Every time I end up bent over a normal bed, trying to do patient care, I re-injure my back. If I am doing extensive wound care, for 45 minutes or more, it gets even worse.
This morning, I knew I had to stop ignoring the obvious and get some help. That seems so logical and prudent, why was it so hard to do? Pollyanna here kept thinking that the pain would subside, with rest, and life would return to normal.
And now I have to accept reality: normal has changed. I am not as young as I used to be and nursing is a strenuous career, both mentally and physically. Can I keep doing what I have been doing until I retire? We'll see. It will depend on how I do with rest, then physical therapy, and then working again.
In the meantime, I just took a pain pill and I need to go lie down.
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