Bad back

Another day, another physio visit.

I’ve been feeling pain when I walk for the longest time, so long that I cannot remember a time when I could walk and run normally. A few years back, a sports doctor had diagnosed me with leg length discrepancy, with my right leg longer than the left by an inch. The physiotherapist that I had seen subsequently confirmed that and taught me a set of exercises that, she said, would help to strengthen the weaker muscles and even out the workload between the legs.

Well, fast forward to now and the pain hasn’t gone away. In fact, it’s worse. I suppose it doesn’t help that I am constantly running and chasing and carrying a sack of rice, err, I mean my one-year-old toddler. My right knee hurts and my lower back hurts and it just feels like this old body is falling apart bit by bit.

Anyhow, I’ve been thinking of seeing a physiotherapist for a while now but as usual, it keeps slipping my mind. (I blame it on the sleep deprivation!) Until earlier this week, when I sprained my thumb in the middle of the night.

SAY WHUUUUT?

Yeah. I sprained my thumb. The little man woke up at some ungodly hour and was bitching about it quite loudly. Somehow, he had ended up at the foot of the bed and I had to carry him back to where we were. As my hands swept across the bed, my right thumb got caught between the duvet and was left behind. In short, I twisted it backward.

AND THEN I SAT ON IT.

Don’t ask me how I did it. I just did. I don’t remember the details.

The next day, I realised just how badly I had hurt it when I couldn’t even hold my mobile phone in my right hand. I simply could not grasp anything without being in pain. And I decided that it was due time to see a physiotherapist.

I know, right. I have been walking in pain and that wasn’t enough to make me get off my butt to make the appointment BUT A SPRAINED THUMB DID. Priorities, priorities.

Well, the good news is, the thumb is just fine, it will heal on its own, provided I leave it alone. Well, try doing stuff without your thumb. It’s been an interesting experience so far.

The not so good news is that the physiotherapist is pretty certain that I don’t have uneven legs but I do have a curved spine. Also, she suspects that the soft, central portion of my spinal disc is bulging out, affecting the nerves around it and hence causing the intermittent pain. I’m now under strict orders to go for swims and do the upward dog pose everyday, to try to “squeeze” the soft tissue back into place.

Thankfully, the curvature is mild and so is the protrusion. I just need to be diligent with the exercise and be aware of my posture all the time.

You know what? This just tells me that I am no longer young. I feel it in my body, in all the aches that I keep feeling, in the wrinkles that stay put on my face, in the exhaustion that I feel.

Ah, to be young again.