Our feelings about this time will pour out eventually

Laura Waddell puts her back into coping with the problems of everyday life after suffering a slipped disc

One moment I was lifting a supermarket delivery from the doorway, my mind half on other things – the email I’d been about to respond to, the cold air that rushed across my toes as I’d opened the door –and the next all I could think about was the sudden clang of pain in my lower back.

I clutched a few tins and a sixpint car ton of milk while I waved the driver away, embarrassed about not being able to stand up straight. But they’ve probably seen it all before.

S o this is what a slipped disc is like. And this is my mid-thir ties, when I need to star t taking care of my bones and muscles with greater intent, to do what I can to ward off the inevitable aches and pains of the coming decades.

If 2020 has taught me anything, other than a wear y perseverance, it’s how quickly things can change: health, circumstances, the rug whipped out from under our feet. The least I can do is star t lifting from the knees, rather than the back.

Per versely enough, the first few days were my best-tempered. Having a really good excuse for selfpit y and having a stock of strong painkillers is a potent and enjoyable mix.

I have always loved a sense of occasion, whether it’s the Superbowl (I don’t ordinarily follow American football), a freak weather event or a broken limb.

I half remember a theor y that temporar y injur y can be soothing in a way, because it’s an excuse to properly look after ourselves and slow down.

If for tunate, it’s regression to being pampered by others, like days off school sick could mean car toons and being fussed over.

S oup and T V and special attention. A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down, after all.

But although rolling from one side to the other felt like outsized effor t and I had to take getting out of chairs inch by aching inch when my back locked up a few times a day, it wasn’t so bad when I got into a comfor table enough position.

I worked away, propped up on pillows, getting up occasionally to potter about a bit as the advice suggests. I did my full-time day job, delivered a lecture that would have been an even greater pain to reschedule, chaired a festival event I’d been looking for ward to, and appeared on T V to talk about the day’s news stories, all while doped up on a cocktail of codeine and diazepam. It was all more or less OK, if not my sharpest performance, and a little glassy- eyed.

Couldn’t the disc have waited a week until my diar y was a bit clearer before it slipped? Ever ything always seems to come at once.

I was also inspired to streamline my daily routine. My preference is for t wo cups of coffee, one after the other, as soon as I wake up. S o at three am one night, struggling to sleep, I ordered a double -sized mug to reduce trips to the kitchen.

An Oscar the Grouch emblazoned vessel bearing the words “I’m a big grouch” has come into my life. It is heavy. Lifting it to my mouth repeatedly is doing wonders for my upper right arm, if nothing for the rest of my body. S oon I will look like Popeye, with his one spinach-squeezing bulging bicep.

But now it’s been over a week, the novelt y has waned, and with it, the good humour. I am indeed becoming a grouch.