Ok Ms. Lower Back, are you happy now?

Dear Lower back,

I have given up the sedentary lifestyle for you. I pledge to never go back to the cubicle lifestyle unless absolutely necessary to survive. I pledge to get you more exercise on a regular basis. To stretch you. To strengthen you. Oh, and while I’m at it, I’ll get you a few shots of cortisone to make you feel better.



Talk about a turbulent week! Losing my job. Chronic un-diagnosable back pain. Sheesh. Time to get more aggressive. I had 3 cortisone shots into my lumbar spine to try to get rid of that annoying pain. I was informed that they should kick in from 2-14 days after the procedure. I spent the first day waiting. Second day waiting. Third day = relief! Fourth day = pain. Fifth day = relief. Oh, for goodness sake, get me off of this roller coaster! Sixth day = relief. Hooray! The cortisone seems to have worked. THANK YOU modern medicine!

Lower back, are you happy now? I’ve given you everything you have asked for!

Sherri's Graduation

Good news! Sherri has graduated from Daily-Nasty-Back-Pain-School and has now entered into Daily-Annoying-Pinchey-Feeling-University. I'll take it! It kind of feels like someone is pinching the inside of my left butt cheek all day. I'm trying to think of it as a good thing. I imagine that A.T. is following me around all day squeezing my tushy because it's so cute. (I know, it's a stretch, but suspend disbelief for a moment.. I am). I'm back to work in the office (Hooray!), and am able to sit all day without writhing in pain. (Double Hooray!) Now, if we could just get this nuisance pain to turn around and go home like Delta and Dawn, the two wayward whales that (until today) were stuck in the SF bay...

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!

Bay to Breakers 2007

Today was the annual Bay to Breakers race, a 7.46 mile trek from the bay to the ocean. Every year, tens (if not hundreds) of thousands of people come out in costume to participate in this event. Some typical costumes: a rolling tiki bar (with bartenders and kegs inside), the Mona Lisa, jailbirds, super heroes, doctors (proctologist with funny names), cartoon characters, naked people, a group of Elvis impersonators, a school of Salmon that swim "upstream" from the end of the race to the beginning, the bacon delivery guy, and thousands of other brilliant, witty, and creative costumes. Of course it's San Francisco, so many of the costumes are plays on words, like the Deli Lama (a monk with lunch meat all over him). It's an affair that should not be missed. Even if you don't want to make the trek, grab a lawn chair or someones front steps and park yourself there for a few hours to watch the madness. People watching doesn't get any better than this.. (pics from past years..)




This year, instead of participating in this festive event, I was here:


Okay, not in that machine specifically, but in an MRI machine just like it! (Seriously, that room has such a magnetic force, it would have swallowed my camera whole!) If you haven't had the pleasure of having one, they lay you down on a tray and slide you into a narrow tunnel (the diameter is roughly the size of my shoulders), you lay still for 20 minutes, you hear loud buzzing sounds, they pull you out, inject you with some magnetic solution, stick you back in and zap you for another 10 minutes. It's not so bad if you have ear plugs and are not claustrophobic. Hopefully this machine will give me the answers to the lingering back pain question. Come ON big bad machine. Do your stuff.

Sherri's New Best Friends

Decision point: Do I keep the blog happy and positive, or do I keep it real? Since the purpose of my blog is to let friends/family know what I’ve been up to, and to help me keep track of the passing of time.. I guess I’ll go with the keepin’ it real method.

Please meet my two new best friends, Tivo and my Soduku book.


Previously only casual acquaintances, over the past two weeks I have come to rely heavily on them while I have been laid up at home with an achy breaky back. That’s right. That pesky bugger of a back up to it’s old shenanigans again, and screaming for attention. Right before we left for Jazzfest, I had a 4-day episode where I couldn’t sit for more than 10-minutes at a time without standing up all crooked and in pain. After a few.. ahem.. intense.. chiropractic treatments, I was fixed up enough to get on the plane. Jazzfest week was stiff & achy, but bearable, as I wasn’t sitting down very much at all! Post-Jazzfest, I made it one day at work before I couldn’t take it, and have been at home, NOT sitting, ever since. I tried chiropractic, stretching, drugs, exercise, etc. Nothing works this time. Basically, I'm camped out on the floor in the living room, doing as much as I can without sitting or straining the back, and that isn't very much. I fall asleep and dream of my to-do list getting longer and longer as I remain idle. Booooo. I’m going kind of stir crazy. I try to get out as much as I can to get in some movement, but the back quickly tires of my escape tactics and sends me home. Tomorrow I see a new Neurologist, and hopefully I’ll get that new MRI quickly (grrr. HMO red tape). Send me all kinds of positive energy, please. One back surgery was enough for me. And if you have any spare, healthy discs, send those too!