Oh, my aching back!

Am I too young to say that?  I totally feel like I'm too young to be saying that, but saying that I am.  I shoveled snow yesterday.  With a broom!  My driveway is huge, plus it's Idaho snow, it's a lot.  Yeah, it was a lot of ouch.  So, why not use something besides a broom?  We've been college kids for four and half years with four small kids.  Needless to say, yeah, we're always short on money.  When you're rummaging through the couch to find change for wipes, a snow shovel is quite the luxury.  It is better than what I was using before, the baby's high chair attachment?  The flat thing they eat on, the detachable part?  Yeah, I used that the first time.  So a broom was a MUCH better option!  Much better.  There were at least four inches of snow, so it created quite the resistance.  I can't even tell you how it affected me.  Yeah, my back hurts, but it's so much more.  I had Adam massage my back last night and I was totally surprised with what else was going on.  Did ya read my chiropractic entry?  The nerves are all attached to different points in your body.  When the muscles are so tightly clenched, it's going to cause other problems, too.

See the green muscle?  That's what I messed up, all down the right side.  It's the "snow shoveling" muscle.

All down the right side of my spine, my muscles are hard as a rock.  Adam pushed on a point in my upper back, and I almost puked.  It made a serious wave of nausea over take me.  Then he moved to the lower back and I immediately started having stomach cramps.  Bad, bad stomach cramps.  Once he stopped massaging, the cramps went away.  Today though, the cramps came back and I've been poopin' all day!  I KNOW you wanted to know that!  :)  Well, this is an informative blog, so inform you I shall.  It never ceases to amaze me how intertwined the body really is.  My back hurts, but it's bringing with it a whole lot of other problems.  This is crazy pain.  There's a reason why people with Fibromyalgia don't go out of their way to do ridiculously crazy things, (like, oh, I dunno, shoveling, or sweeping snow.) it takes us three times as long to recover from them.  We know our limitations, we know how many "spoons" we have.  So why shovel snow then?  It's in our rent contract.  Landlord says we have to, or he'll pay someone else to do it and charge us for it.  Hubby works from 7:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m.  I was the obvious choice for the snow sweeping.

I get free professional massages from my friend who's a massage therapist, and I can't even think of doing that.  It hurts so bad, I don't want it to be touched.  It also takes us three days to recover from a massage, unlike you normal freaks that only take one day to recover.  The thought of more pain for three days sounds kind of painful, no?  I know it would help in the long run, but all I want right now are elephant tranquilizers and my rice packs.    

Snow shoveling injuries are quite common.  I worked as an office manager at a chiropractors office for three years.  The people we saw most during the winter were those who slipped on ice, and snow shoveling injuries.  Click on the picture to see it closer.