a 70-year-old’s pains

image from pixabay.com

Every morning by four or five o’clock I wake up with pain in my back, neck, and shoulders; I take some pain medicine and go back to sleep. By six I m fully awake. I get up slowly and stiffly. I have pain in my neck and shoulders especially until the medicine has really worked and it eases somewhat. I usually just sit on the porch and drink coffee with milk until it improves.

I have had pains in my midback since I was 18 and was involved in an accident. I was riding my bicycle when I was hit from the side by a small car (a Toyota Corolla), hit my back on the windshield/roof line, and catapulted into the street. I had some scrapes on my legs and a terrible pain in my back at the junction of the thoracic and lumbar spine (around waist level.) Xrays were negative– this was 1972, when CT scans were a distant dream.

I began having chronic back pain years later, but ibuprofen would usually help. I didn’t let it stop me from hiking, camping, bicycle riding, and generally being active, until around 2000. At that time, I was in another accident. I was driving a car that was T-boned from the right side by another driver who ran a stop sign. I was knocked out and bruised all over. The most serious problem was a concussion, and I have no memory of the two hours after the crash. Nothing about the ambulance ride or the first hour in the ER.

After that, I let the pain and the concussion limit my activity, which was a mistake.

Now, I’m disabled; I had major surgery in August 2016 to place titanium rods in my spine and cut away bone that was pressing on the nerves. The surgery gave me dramatic improvement, and I can now walk a mile or two. Every day walking is key to my continued improvement.

In other ways, though, the pain is worse. I have progressive arthritis in several areas– my left wrist, left ankle and foot, right knee, fingers, and so on. Thus, I have a lot of stiffness, especially in the morning. Stretching exercises (gently) do help.

So, at the age of seventy since about 5:30 PM on April 26, 2024, I am pretty fragile. What I’m doing now (typing) is a pretty low-stress activity. Pressure on the lower side of my wrists does induce intermittent numbness in my hands, but that’s something I can overcome by frequently lifting my hands off the keyboard.

That’s my story. I still enjoy life, but it’s a bit more circumscribed than it used to be.