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Maybe two years ago, I was shopping with my friend Julie and she dragged me into the sports section of a K-Mart to check out the gym balls. I’d never seen the like before: sure, I’d ridden on those big rubber inflatable balls with faces and horns on them, when I was a kid. But I hadn’t been keeping up with home exercise fads. I thought ‘Pilates’ was pronounced the same as ‘pirates’.

Julie had decided she was in the market for a gym ball, but I kind of ridiculed her out of the purchase. The sales droid tried to up-sell her to the Reebok model, which was three times the price of the generic model but it had a Reebok sticker on it and featured ‘anti-burst technology’. When he told us that I burst out laughing. Then I saw a workout video starring Gay Gasper and became hysterical. The droid got annoyed at me and we left, empty-handed.

Fast forward to, I don’t know, a month or two ago, when my physiotherapist recommended I get a gym ball for myself. Once upon a time, not so long ago, I would have forbidden any exercise device from entering my home. But this was not the most humiliating advice that I have been given since I injured my back. The most humiliating advice was to purchase a tennis ball to sit on and wriggle when the muscles in my right buttock became particularly tense. And yes, I bought a tennis ball.

The tennis ball only cost me sixty cents. A gym ball was going to cost a lot more, even if I got the cheap pro-burst model. Luckily, a friend had a hand-me-down gym ball (an impulse purchase? A passed-by fad?) which she handed down to me. Guess what? It’s got the Reebok sticker on it.

So I lie on my back and lay my legs on top of the ball and do various exercises with the thing. I think it has worked: I can feel the hard muscles in my abdomen, beneath the layer of flab, like the flesh of an over-ripe peach covering the hard stone in the centre. Or a bean bag with a block of concrete in the middle.

The problem with hand-me-downs is they don’t always come with all the pieces. In my case, I’ve got the ball but I don’t have the pump (or, for that matter, the video). And the ball’s gotten hellasaggy. If I try to sit on it I wind up sitting in it.

Here’s the problem: the ball doesn’t have a valve, just a hole with a little plastic plug. Nothing to put your lips to. Nothing to fit a bicycle pump to, or to attach to a compressor. I’m going to have to go find a ball pump. Which is a bloody scam.

And damn me if there isn’t an aftermarket for gym ball pumps. I favour the ‘Blaster Hi-Speed Power Pump’ from Yoga-Mad®, which looks exactly the same as all the other pumps I’ve seen online except, I imagine, it’s got a different sticker on it. And maybe racing stripes. Broom broom!

Or I’m going to have to go to a sporting gear shop, saggy ball under one arm, and ask them very nicely if they’ll blow it up for me.

Oh man.

Technorati Tags: exercise, health, injury, Pilates, spine

Sorry I’ve been so quiet. It’s not that I’m completely slack. I’m just not in A-1 condition.

I hurt myself more than a year ago (no single incident sticks out in my memory), and being an Anglo-Saxon male I put up with the pain for months before Kate finally forced me to see a doctor. The doctor sent me to hospital to have a CAT scan (a story in itself). And this is what they wrote:

CT lumbosacral spine

Clinical notes: Evaluate for left L3 sciatica

Technique: High resolution multislice axial images were obtained from the thoracolumbar junction to mid S1 with additional reconstructed angled images through all lumbar discs.

Findings:

L5/S1:

A moderate sized focal paracentral disc herniation is noted, marginally eccentric to the right with considerable compression on the thecal sac. There appears to be lateral recess stenosis present on each side with minor posterolateral marginal osteophytes. The spinal canal is significantly compromised by the disc protusion with superimposed mild congenital central spinal canal narrowing.

L4/5:

Minor broadbased disc bulging slightly indents the anterior thecal sac without evidence of focal disc herniation or central spinal canal stenosis.

L3/4:

A small left lateral disc protrusion extends into the neural foramen with mild displacement on the adjacent left L3 nerve root. Calcification in the adjacent soft tissue is consistent with left posterolateral marginal osteophyte.

L1/2 and L2/3:

No abnormality.

Conclusion:
1. Small left lateral disc protrusion at L3/4 extending into the neural foramen with mild compression on the adjacent left L3 nerve root. Adjacent calcification is consistent with a small left posterolateral marginal osteophyte rather than indicating a small bony avulsion injury.
2. L5/S1: Small to moderate-sized focal right paracentral disc herniation/disc extrusion considerably compromising the spinal canal.

In other words, my shit’s fucked up.

If I stand in one place for a couple of minutes I start feeling severe pain down my right leg. I can walk short distances, and I can lie on my stomach comfortably, but there’s some level of constant background pain whatever I do. I can sit on a hard chair, but not on a couch. I can bend down just fine, but I can’t carry anything.

I take 300mg of tramadol hydrochloride a day (an opioid) and 15mg of meloxicam (a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory), which help me manage the pain. Not that I feel medicated: I only notice the effect they have when I don’t take them. Then I remember…

What you’d call my lifestyle has changed. I am limited in what I can accomplish in a day. My sleep is pretty disturbed, and mornings can be rough. I can’t get very far (driving or sitting in a car for any length of time is painful as well). The pills don’t mix well with booze, so I’ve become a teetotaller. I’ve tried to cut down my hobbies to things I can do while lying on my belly.

I started seeing a physiotherapist at the Collingwood Health Centre, which has helped a lot. I was a ball of knotted muscles before, from trying to support myself without putting strain on my back. And I’ve learned to interpret the pain messages that I receive–a lot of what I feel is referred pain, particularly in my right leg and calf. I’ve even been going to the gym, to strengthen the muscles in my stomach wall to help support myself better.

But things seem to have reached an impasse. I’ve stopped improving, and I’m still barely functional. So I’m booking in to see an orthopod. The next step, I’ve been told, will probably be to have cortisone injections in my spine. And if that doesn’t fix it, there’ll likely be an operation in which the offending bits are whipped out and then they fuse the remaining bits together. I’ll end up just that little bit shorter.

I view the world a little differently now. My horizons have contracted, and objects that I once could pick up or move aside have become permanent obstacles. I need to be moving almost constantly, like a shark: standing still for long enough to shower is about as much as I can stand. Cueing, whether at a bank or at a supermarket, is a hellish torture.

I’ve been told that it will take at least another year for my back to heal, if it’s going to heal unassisted. The waiting lists for surgery are at least that long (unless, of course, things get worse…).

So it’s going to be a long haul, for everyone concerned.

Technorati Tags: health, injury, medical, spine