A Pain in The Butt

As some of you may know, my family doesn't have a big budget, so when the eight weeks of half price storage at Big Yellow in Norwich ran out we had to move everything out into the room that we have managed to half way do.  Que one long day.  However, for me it did not end there.

Saturday morning I woke up with really sore knees.  Nothing I had not expected.  They had been sore the evening before so I'd gone to bed with some heat pads strapped to them to help.  By the afternoon the knees had loosened up some I had a good visit with my friend who is in hospital and then had no trouble doing a BBQ for a couple of my friends who come over that evening for my birthday party.

What I wasn't expecting was, when I was waving my friends off, for a nerve in my back to be seriously trapped.  By the time I went to bed an hour later it felt as if someone had put the business end of  a rock pick into my spine.  The result of this was that every time I rolled over in the night and I am a fidgety sleeper, everything from the small of my back down went into spasm.  Not a very restful night and certainly not what I wanted for my birthday.

Managed to get out of bed the next day bent double.

After breakfast my mother, who is an ex-nurse (she was an army nurse and had to come out after she become pregnant with me) managed to get me laid down on my front so she could rub some arnica gel into my back and do some hot and cold treatment.  Hot and cold treatment is when you lay a bag of frozen peas over the effected area for three minutes followed by a hot water bottle for three minutes.  Repeat for half an hour, always ending with the bag of peas.

That loosen my up but it also revealed the cause of the trapped nerve.  I had ripped a muscle in my butt during the course of shifting all those boxes out of storage and then up the stairs when we arrived home.  It had swollen up during the course of the night and the day and then, when I turned to keep an eye on the dog while I was saying goodbye to my friends the swelling had nipped the nerve, which in its own turn had swollen up, becoming trapped.

I will admit that once I knew the cause it was a lot easier to bare but it still didn't make it any less disappointing when it flared up again this afternoon so I missed out on the opening evening of the Norwich Writers' Circle season.  I'll have to take the next two weeks easy so I can be there on the 2nd of October, for the talk by Amanda Addison.  It promises to be extremely interesting.  It is titled 'Writing the Visual' and sets our first competition of the year. here's hoping that I can repeat my winning streak of last year.  Every little helps on your CV.