It was a cold Friday morning, with temperature at 37F, and I was rushing to go to work as I woke up late that morning. I was carrying a huge backpack with about 12 pounds of stuff including laptops, gadgets and so on. And then I saw that I need to bend down to do something with my shoes.
I should first remind you a few things:
- I take ballet class every week. So my body is not like ultra week.
- I am very much afraid of cold, and the response time of the reflex on my body dramatically increase until cold weather.
I survived reaching office, and I was totally in pain and couldn't even stand up straight. I had to use my office chair, which has wheels on it, to get me from place to place in the office. There were a few times which I just to stand up straight to do something simple like going to the restroom or reheating my lunch. There was a point which I felt so painful that I had to fell on the fall and crawling to move forward.
I planned on leaving earlier, as a lot of colleagues told me to, but I couldn't get my code complete. Finally at 4:30 pm, I decided to rollback all my code change so that I didn't have to leave anything undone on our version control and leave the office. (I did have a copy saved on my machine before I rolled back.)
Now the challenge became how I could get to my car while carrying a 12 pounds backpack. I meant, I couldn't even stand up straight, let alone carry this crazy back of gadget. That's where my manager Jon came in to the rescue. He left the office with me so that so I need to carry was a thick coat. And even then there were a few times when I found it so painful that I had to stop and rest a bit. Finally I reached to my car, and I drove him to his car as an act of appreciation and also showed him that I would be fine driving home myself.
However, I didn't really head home. Instead I drove to church as I had a 6:00 pm band practice for the Sunday service this coming Sunday. It was fine as I was still able to play drum set. But of course most people around realized that I was not in good shape as I walked in a very strange way.
So after all that, I drove to buy some dinner through drive-through, brought Advil and Icy Hot from CVS and then headed home. I finished the dinner, took 2 Advil pills, put on some Icy Hot and went to sleep.
To my surprise, I felt much better this morning. It will probably still take a few days before I can completely recover from the back pain, but at least I can now walk with my body straight, which is 10 times better than what I was yesterday. I really don't know which one being the critical factor of the ease of my pain: Advil, Icy Hot or a good night sleep. But I will definitely take all three of them next them I experience the same pain. And based on the people around me kept telling me yesterday, the pain will come again in future years. Sigh.
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