My brand new-and-improved back problem took a major turn for the worse last night, resulting in a sensation not unlike someone tearing a chunk out of the space between my shoulder blades whenever the muscles that run down the right hand side of my spine contracted. And you know, these suckers contract doing almost anything – sitting down, standing up, even laying down. I got up in the middle of the night and paced around downstairs to try to alleviate it, but to no avail.
I managed to eventually return to bed and find a position that I could sleep at least a bit in, but come morning it was totally unmanageable. Even slight movement led to screaming pain (and that’s not a metaphor – there was real screaming involved, which says something for me since the most I normally utter is a grunt through clenched teeth) – through sheer force of will I managed to at least get into a sitting position, but by then every nerve seemed to be on fire and it was clear I wasn’t going anywhere. I’d already taken painkillers the night before and they hadn’t helped, so in the end my wife had to call the ambulance, because she couldn’t even get me standing, never mind downstairs into the car.
So, down come the paramedics, sirens going, and they decided pretty quickly to give me a shot of morphine so they could at least move me. That was my first morphine experience, and it wasn’t that pleasant, but at least it took the edge off so they could winch me into the ambulance. I spent the morning being pumped full of a shedload of other drugs from diazepam for the spasms to anti-inflammatories and more painkillers. They worked luckily, but I feel like crap now through a combination of sleep deprivation and a cocktail of drugs.
Given the location of the pain they were concerned it might be something internal rather than just back pain, so I had a bunch of tests, xrays and such, but the results were inconclusive. Their best guess is still that I’ve torn a muscle and / or trapped a nerve, and that I should just keep taking painkillers and take it easy. Which is precisely what I’ve been trying to do for the last few weeks – admittedly yesterday I did give a minor amount of help to my brother-in-law to move a dining room table, but it wasn’t a big deal, or so I thought, and certainly didn’t hurt at the time. I’m faced with now pretty much doing no exertion at all for a few weeks to try to let it heal – this is especially important since I have another work trip at the end of the month.
I’m going to have to make even more of an effort not to sit at the compuer screen for long periods too, something that’s very hard when you have a business and open source project to run. 
I wanted to get Ogre 1.6 released this week, but I think I’m going to have trouble just keeping up with my work commitments this week without doing myself an injury, so I may have to delay it again.
October 13th, 2008 at 1:45 pm
I’ve had in my head for a while now a design for an in bed rig so people can use a laptop while lying on their back. Sounds like you could use it
October 13th, 2008 at 1:53 pm
after a quick search I found this, which is much better and easier to make than my idea. PVC is awesome
http://lappyvator.cyberknights.com.au
I’m definately going to make one
October 13th, 2008 at 2:24 pm
Ouch, bad luck man, that sounds like utter shite – Ive had back pains myself but not on such a scale. Hope that pesky nerve stops getting itself trapped soon!
October 13th, 2008 at 2:52 pm
That sounds really awful, hope the worst has happened last night and good luck recovering!
October 13th, 2008 at 4:59 pm
That sounds really bad and I can almost feel the pain! Wish you fast recovery…
October 13th, 2008 at 6:13 pm
I’m sorry to hear your back is causing you problems again. Take it easy and remember your health is more important than any project!
October 13th, 2008 at 9:26 pm
That really sucks man, I hope you heal quickly. In the meanwhile, enjoy the meds (but not too much).
October 13th, 2008 at 10:48 pm
Let me join the “I’m sorry, mate” wagon
Wish I could help some way
October 14th, 2008 at 5:40 am
Hope you get better soon. God bless.
October 14th, 2008 at 8:24 am
Bad luck… I hope you get better soon!
October 14th, 2008 at 9:29 am
Thanks.
I got better over the course of yesterday (but was very fuzzy due to all the drugs) but this morning it was fine to begin with, then went out again. I”m currently propped up in a dining room chair with a laptop dealing with my most urgent email but moving any even an inch hurts like bloody hell.
I have a ‘pain management’ doctors appointment and a physio later, I hope between the two of them something can be sorted out, this sucks on a major scale. I thought I had back pain before, but clearly I didn’t know what real back pain was
October 14th, 2008 at 11:30 am
Eek sounds bad…
I hope that the doctors and physio sort you our soonish. It’s probably a good thing that you didn’t join in with the dancing on Saturday night after all!
Take it easy now… I know it is hard, but try not to spend to much time crouched over a laptop / keyboard.
October 14th, 2008 at 5:23 pm
To lighten the mood here a bit – I look forward to the day where all us programming guys will just be brains-in-a-jar!
As long as the jar is ok, no more problems like back pains!:)
October 14th, 2008 at 5:57 pm
“To lighten the mood here a bit – I look forward to the day where all us programming guys will just be brains-in-a-jar!”
@valentingalea: That might solve a few issues, but an obvious flaw in your plan is that masturbation would be next to impossible.
October 14th, 2008 at 9:59 pm
@Paul Downey: Damn, you are indeed right sir!
October 16th, 2008 at 7:24 am
don’t die on us! what would happen to the great ogre3d when you kick the bucket? it’s going to fall into disarray and become like irrlicht.
November 23rd, 2008 at 6:05 pm
[...] my back has been getting slowly better over the last month since my hospitalisation experience; I occasionally have a small relapse, like just after I picked up my new guitar – you [...]