There are many things in life one takes for granted. Good health and mobility are two that immediately come to mind. When either is compromised, carrying out simple tasks can become an ordeal.
All it had taken to throw my back out was leaning forwards while getting up from the loo. Every muscle along my spine, from shoulder blade down to lumbar region, had gone into lock-down. I had no other option than to sit back down again with my head between my legs.
Wow, I thought staring at the dust-encrusted rim on the toilet bowl, it would be just my luck if MBH (my better half) walked in to find me passed out on the bog.
Hell-bent for that not to happen, I somehow managed to hoist myself up from the seat to standing position and, folded in half, hobbled down the hallway. MBH was still awake as I collapsed in bed next to him. Seeing I was in trouble, he ran for the Deep Heat and got to work on the traumatised muscles.
Luckily he was there to relieve some of the pain. That hadn’t been the case several weeks earlier.
I’d woken up in the middle of the night with a start. The inner- thigh on my right leg had gone into a spasm. I stretched and massaged the muscles, but the excruciating pain wouldn’t subside. The more I moved, the worse the cramp got.
Pounding a fist repeatedly against my adductors, I tried to beat the spasm into submission, hyperventilating to cope with the pain. A couple of minutes into rocking the bed back and forth, I was working up quite a sweat.
Punch, punch, pant, pant, rock, rock… “Oh God,” I groaned as quietly as I could, hoping I wouldn’t wake up MBH.
Had the situation not been so agonising, I probably would have been in hysterics. I could just picture my partner waking to heavy breathing and moans, and turning over in bed to find me giving my crotch a workout. Now that would have been a sight for sore eyes.
I needn’t have worried. MBH slept through the entire episode.
He did however give me a quizzical look on our next trip to the supermarket when I stocked up on family-size containers of Magnesium and Potassium supplements.
