Back At Ya! (Help Me Understand Back Pain)

Yo, Dawgs! (Oops, my rapper personality temporarily took over)

You know, sometimes I am so smart I just outdo myself. Like heating my home. Last year I went out and bought a new outdoor wood furnace. I'm thinking that my heat bill will plummet and that I will get some much needed exercise. Well, that has been true. But I am finding that I didn't quite think everything out.

First, my house was built in 1853. That's like a long time ago. They didn't have things like insulation, plumbing, wiring, etc. Fortunately, they did a really crappy job in blowing in insulation in the house in the 1960s. Now, when the walls are taken off, you can see that the insulation has settled into the bottom half of the walls. Great. My house is half-insulated. My only consolation is that when I turn on the heat, all of my city goes up at least one degree!! Who says I'm not doing my part?

Anyway, my gas bill dropped from $420 per month year round (payment plan) to $36. I am so smart! Well, kinda. What I didn't think about was just exactly how much wood I would have to cut, split, and stack. At last count, I have burned the equivalent of at least two rainforests worth of wood. Burning isn't even so bad. Imagine, stacking a rainforest's worth of wood. Then imagine taking the wood off of the stack just to throw it in the woodstove. All the while, please remember that each piece of wood weighs about, oh lets see, 200 pounds! Day and night I feed the outdoor woodstove beast. Day and night it needs feeding. Hundreds and thousands of pounds of wood! All lifted at least twice (sometimes more if I took it out of the woods) by yours truly.

See, one of the assumptions is that I would be able to do the wood everyday. That assumption held true until last night. Last night, I filled the wheelbarrel up with enough wood to last through the night and into the next day. When I went to pick up the wheelbarrel, something went "boing" in my back. Great. Immediately I am hunched over like Marty Feldman in Young Frankenstein!

I gently tossed the wood I had into the stove and hobbled back into the house. Being a tough guy (redundant?), I laughed in the face of pain and went to bed. Three sleepless hours later I realized I should have taken the heaviest pain killer we had, but I was so sore I could not bring myself to go downstairs for some much-needed relief. I did, however, learn that exhaustion eventually cancels out the pain.....so I slept a little.

Next morning? Well, let me put it this way............well, I better not. Suffice it to say that it was not a pretty sight seeing me drag my carcass out of bed and stumble down the steps. There are many things that you don't think about day to day until your lower back gives out. Really practical things become very difficult. Let's just say that going to the bathroom becomes a chore (and I will let your imagination run with that one......quite the mental image, eh?).

Well, I write as one taken down by the ravages of back pain. Done in by a wheelbarrel. Stumped by stumps. Beseiged by the common tree. I write as one chastized by mother nature, who seems to be quite unhappy with the way I'm destroying her trees and belching out sooty smoke into her atmosphere.

I guess it's easy to wax eloquent when back pain limits you to one sitting position for the whole day. Fortunately, (or maybe not so fortunately for you) it was a position suitable for typing. So I bid you goodbye, and may you stay warm without the need for trees!

Painfully Yours,

Blawgerman