Why thou must stretch

There’s some kind of greater moral to this story about stretching and doing your warm-up exercises if you are going to do more rigorous exercise, I am sure.

I had a surprisingly good night’s sleep last night and thought I would be fine today, actually. I turned my alarm off, thought I’d let myself sleep in and have the day off and I could laze about and watch DVDs and read books and it would all be quite grand.

That was before I got out of bed. Oh boy! I was seriously locked up, and nothing I could do was making moving any easier. At one point I tried something and thought I was going to throw up with the pain and pressure, so I literally crawled into the bathroom with tears in my eyes and hung around the toilet bowl for a while in a strange sweat. Not one of my life’s finest moments. And you know, never take putting on your underpants for granted, because there might come a day when you actually wonder if it is going to be impossible.

But I managed to get into the physio, giving myself about half an hour for the short walk, and as I expected one side of my pelvis had rotated and locked up (I had a “big upslip” on one side) and so apparently that makes all the muscles grip and then all the nerves aflame. So it had to be unlocked. But praise the Lord for physios. She pulled me about, taped my back and sent me home to “rest” for the rest of today at least and probably all weekend to let the “flare up” subside (I am not allowed to “sit” or lift anything, so this is going to be interesting – how do you do life without sitting?). Anyway, the walk home from the physio, via the chemist, was quite seriously excruciating and I wondered if anything was achieved. But sure enough, I have come home, taken Neurofen, got out the heat pack, lay in the “rest position” for a while, and I feel like a million dollars. I just got up and made some toast and was amazed.

Now I just have to find something I can do while I lie here (I’m sort of sitting for this and must put the computer away).