A BAD DAY AT LEMON ROCK

"Well, you are all doing so much better!" Thus spake the physio during Back Class on Tuesday.  Now, I know they have to chivvy us along with words of encouragement, but as I look down at my feet which are slowly creeping out to about 10 cms each side, I also know, that they know there is no way that what I am doing is a "star jump. No way at all.  "Hey, let's have a smile!  Don't you feel the improvement?" they bounce Tiggerlike, full of enthusiasm towards me.  "No Lady,  I feel like Tigger's great-grandmother in a death suit", I think to myself - but I just wanly smile and shake my head.  My back feels like it's in a steel tube, I cannot bend or do the knee rolls; so I just lie there like a broken doll while all enthuse around me. Nothing responds the way it should; I cannot shift my balance from one foot to the other; ab crunches? don't make me laugh; step ups? Three or 4 at the most and the tears are welling and burning as I try to hold them in.  And you know what? I do hold them in, right until I get back to the car and then those floodgates just burst open...

The next day I am wrecked and wasted.  I have taken the painkillers, had the bath, put the heat pad on and still it's crap.  But the thing that really hits me hard is how I don't feel like this is me any more - it's as if I'm a different person to who I was before last May.  I don't interact with my family like I used to, oh sure I make all the right noises and go through all the right motions, but I still feel like I am watching from inside the wrong body; this one's faulty and I don't know where to take it back and get a refund.  There doesn't seem to be a way forward or out of this and I worry what effect it will all have on my husband and my children in the long run.  I want to enjoy being part of my 9 year old's day - but at the moment it's not happening.  I am pretending and acting so that she doesn't know or see the truth..... because I want to protect her.

This morning I hobbled into the bathroom (I refuse to crawl so I creep round the walls, holding on to various bits of furniture).  I reached up to the cabinet for my painkillers and...........and then.....and then I dropped them.........I couldn't believe it......I just dropped them right there onto the floor.  For a moment I simply stood (well, more stooping actually) and looked at them lying on the blue carpet, then I tried to kick them to the side so I could sit on the edge of the bath to pick them up.  But I couldn't pick them up - the pain wouldn't allow me.  It was a face off - with me staring at the box of pills on the floor and them just lying there, mocking me because there was no way could I get them.  My sobbing brought my husband who silently bent down, picked them up and gave them to me.  A simple movement, and one I would previously have never given a second thought to was now a big deal. Improvement?   Depends on your definitions I suppose.

LEMON RATING: A fat old 7.5 out of 10 (on account of post exercise and a dropped box of pills)