no more [malachite] back jokes from me now.
one of my friends and colleagues, a good deal younger than me, dealing for the first time with what i semi-regularly get. i didn't ask any details, just commiserated, gave my usual tips (generic robaxacet; heat/cold; move slowly & carefully; it will be bad for a few days, but it will slowly get better, i promise).
i first messed mine up when i was younger than him: mid-twenties, at work, & a manager asked me to help move a couch across the office. this isn't as bad as it sounds: the couches were basically made of air, not very heavy at all. but another worker and i went for it. i did everything right. bent down, lift with the knee, etc. and i felt a jolt up my back, and that was it, my initiation into the brotherhood of fucked-up backs. i got sent home to rest, stood in agony on the bus, and then, lying on my own couch on my stomach, watched one of those terrible late 2000s blue jays teams lose.
kinda messed up that for so many people, it happens when they're comparatively young — 26ish for me, 29 for my friend — and once it happens, it becomes something you're always sort of aware of. shovelling snow: is this gonna do it? but it's rarely so simple for me, happening at the strangest of times. picking up a sprinkler. washing my leg in the shower! the indignity almost as painful as, you know, the actual pain.
& i know i'm lucky because i've got friends with serious health complaints, and friends who've passed away, so such complaints really feel like small beer. but it's something you think about. & when it happens regularly (and for me it does, about once a year), you develop strategies. and then share them with others when they join your shitty club.