From the Jaws of Short Term Disability...

Holy crap. A HR representative from my company let me know that if an employee misses more than 5 consecutive days of work due to an illness, they go on Short Term Disability. Say what? Oh no. No no no no no. I can't do Short Term Disability. That just makes me sound pathetic and weak. No can do. Sure, it pays 100%, so no financial loss. But emotionally that would really schtink. So I'm going to do whatever the heck I have to do to NOT go on STD. I've been working partial days at home while desparately searching for a way to make the sitting-pain stop.

I certainly hope that with seven trained professionals working to solve the case of the achy breaky back, someone is sure to crack the case! Here’s who I’m currently seeing for this issue:

• Primary Care Physician
• Chiropractor
• Orthopaedist
• Neurosurgeon
• Acupuncturist
• Personal Trainer
• Massage Therapist

If you can think of any other type of healer that I should be seeing, by all means let me know!

Here’s what I’ve been doing:

• Anti-inflammatory drugs (not working)
• Chiropractic manipulations (apparently not working!)
• Wishful thinking
• Stretching sessions (should be good, but often feel bad afterwards)
• Getting out of the house on weekends to avoid cabin fever
• Walking/elliptical (backwards) to keep joints moving (feels good, but not fixing anything)
• Looking at old marathon/triathlon pictures with a healthy dose of melancholy
• MRI (results show it’s not another ruptured disk.. hooray!.. however, it might be worse that there is no visible problem to treat).
• Core strengthening (always a good thing)
• Swimming
• Asking my cats to walk on my back
• Deep tissue massage (coming up tomorrow. Jeff Cope at The Mindful Body has a way of making back pain go away. Let’s hope he hasn’t lost his touch!) Acupuncture (first session yesterday, next session Saturday. Feeling a little better today!)
• Having pity parties
• Sitting on a swiss ball, an air disk on my seat, a kneeling chair, and kneeling on the floor (none of which really worked for more than 15 minutes).
• Eating macaroni and cheese every day
• Asked BGI to Pimp My Desk with a hydraulic lift so that I could stand or sit and work

Status: still hurts when I sit for prolonged periods of time. The good news: I did get 2 hours of work in, sitting at my desk this morning. The bad news: my back was all jacked up after that. I’m hoping to make it into the office every day next week, if only for a few hours. Oddly enough, I really miss the hustle & bustle of the office!

Here’s my new Zero-Gravity chair. Fancy, huh? Okay, so it looks like a reclining lawn chair. It’s kind of comfy, but I don’t think I’m going to keep it. I really want a LA-Z-BOY, darn it. I think I’m going to go get one and use my lower back pain to rationalize it. When else will I have such a great justification? It sure beats all of this laying-on-the-living-room-floor that I’ve been doing!