And I can’t tie my own shoes.
It’s not that I don’t know how – I’ve been doing it for years – and most days I find it to be a relatively simple task.
But today is not one of those days.
I’m not sure where it went wrong. When I first woke up this morning, it was way too early to get up. (5:11 according to my alarm clock.) I went back to bed and woke up again at 6:30, which was an acceptable time to me. However, somewhere between these two wakeups, an evil piece of grit embedded itself beneath my right eyeball.
Ow.
It seemed happy where it was and defied every attempt I made to dislodge. Fortunately it left of its own accord about an hour later.My day progressed as normal from there. I exercised, had breakfast and took a shower. I left for work on time (after successfully tying my shoes), grabbed a coffee from a machine along the way and reached the school without any misadventures. In the school, shoes off, ‘Zilla slippers on – everything seems normal.I put my stuff in my locker then went to the main room to see how the kids who’d arrived early were getting on with their jigsaw puzzles. One of them was having more fun playing with the animal pieces than he probably would have had he simply put them in the right places, but that wasn’t the objective of the puzzle. So I bent down to scoot him back over to his task.
That’s when something happened in my back.
I’m not sure what, but it hurt like hell. Like somebody had reached inside my back and ground a couple of my vertebrae together.
Ow!
I thought it a bit of an odd sensation, and hoped it was just a quick one-off kind of evil twinge.
No such luck.
For the rest of the day anything that involved doing something besides standing still, walking or remaining upright resulted in the same twinge. Here’s the list of things I’ve found that are no longer pain-free activities:sitting down,standing up,kneeling,laying down,getting up,putting on my shoes,bending over,getting out of the tub.I’m sure there have been a few others, but I suspect the pain has blotted them from my memory. Of course, that means I’ll end up trying them again, as I’ve forgotten that they’ll hurt.
Fun.
I’d kind of accepted the pain about halfway through my day at work, and started dealing with it. It wasn’t until it was time to go to the part that the full extent of my lack of flexibility hit me. I sat down to put my shoes on (which I managed to do), then felt the twinge as I reached down to tie them.
Crap.
I didn’t freak out or anything, and even shared a laugh with my boss about it. She questioned how old I was (we have a lot of students who are too young to tie their own shoes) and all the staff got a laugh out of that. Of course that still didn’t help me get my shoes tied.There was no way I was going to ask somebody to tie them for me, so I walked to the park with my laces flapping. Once we got there, I slipped them off and tied them loose enough so that I could slide them off and on. Not the best way to ensure proper support, but it’ll have to do for now.
I just hope it won’t have to do for any length of time.
I figure I’ll see how this weekend goes, and if I still can’t tie my shoes on Monday I’ll head off to the doctor’s office. Kinda sucks though, since there’s cool stuff (Thai food festival and Design Festa) going on this weekend. Hopefully I’ll be mobile enough to try and hit DF. If not, there’s gonna be a lot of time spent in front of the TV.