March 21 - Lisa's Musings (on getting older) and Every Day Life

A very odd thing happened this morning that reminded me I was getting old, er, older.

I headed out to the end of the driveway, got the Sunday papers, and came back inside.

I turned to close the front door and WHAM, some muscle under my left shoulder blade (one I didn't even know I had) began to hurt.

As in ouch, ouch, O-U-C-H hurt.

Before I passed out, which is my body's first line of defense (and its favorite way of dealing with intense pain), I melted into the nearby LaZBoy.

Bad move.

Because when the pain finally subsided enough that I'd stopped saying bad words, I couldn't get out of the chair.

I had to sort of tuck-and-roll.

But if you know anything about backs; you know they are interesting parts of the body. All of their parts and pieces are so closely interconnected that when one doesn't work the way it's supposed to, all of them start arguing with each other.

And a battle breaks out.

Which results in some parts making concessions to other parts.

When all of them ganged up on each other it hurt so much that I couldn't lift the pot with the freshly brewed coffee in it.

But when you've dealt with assorted and sundry back pain since taking one too many nosedives off horses as a kid, you have a whole bag of tricks at your disposal.

You head straight to the non-aspirin bottle without passing go or collecting $200; you drink lots of caffeine to speed up the results of gobbling down those pain relievers; then you stand under the hottest shower you can stand for as long as the hot water lasts.

Then you fight through the soreness and use the muscle.

Now I'm not a doctor; I don't play one on TV, but I know my body because I've lived with it for 52-plus years.

A doctor will tell you there's supposed to be a "cold" step in there somewhere to dull the pain; well, not for my body.

Cold is a very, very, very bad thing when it comes to my back.

Now five hours later, I'm just mildly reminded of a periodic dull ache in that muscle under my shoulder.

So my next step is to figure out the cause.

The only thing I've done differently of late is carry a small FlipCam with me and assume a very still stance while attempting to shoot video.

Humm ...

Could it be?

Although I've love to blame the extra few ounces of stuff I'm carrying around with me these days, I'm a realist and I'm getting older.

This kind of stuff just happens.