Back Problems in Raleigh

My weekend started out like this…

and ended up like this…

Needless to say, it’s been a long couple of days.  Backing up…

After what was probably the shortest flight I’ve ever taken (a whopping 52 minutes from takeoff to touchdown), I arrived in Raleigh and my brother and sister picked me up at the airport.  My brother had come from Maryland earlier that morning and my dad and stepmother had driven down with a van the night before so they could transport Emma’s stuff back to Maryland.

We all met up at our hotel and went to a hibatchi/sushi restaurant for lunch.  My stepmother and I had sushi while everyone else had habatchi.  After that, we walked around the NCSU campus for a while, taking pictures until the graduation ceremony began at 4.  Since NCSU is a big school, they had separate graduations for each major and my sister, a psychology major, had hers at some middle school in Raleigh.

After the ceremony, which was about an hour, we decided to go to the Village Grill to have a drink before dinner.  It’s one of those places with tons of beers on draft; I think our server said there were 99.  I had the Carolina White.

We had dinner at Brio and then afterward, my brother, sister and I went out in Downtown Raleigh with some of her friends.  Let me tell you, hanging out with a bunch of 22 year olds makes me feel very old.  I think my brother, at the ripe old age of 24, felt a little out of place too.  I still go to bars from time to time, but the ones that I frequent are the type where you can sit at a table and chat while drinking a beer with friends, not where drunk 22 year olds are on the dance floor.  Anyway, I kept telling myself to just try to enjoy the time with my brother and sister (they’re my half-brother and sister, which is why there’s such a large age difference) and stop thinking about how young everyone was.

We took a cab back to the hotel and promptly fell asleep until my dad woke us up at 7:30 to have breakfast before they got on the road.  That’s where the pain medicine comes in.

Remember my back ache?  Well, it felt much, much better on Saturday.  I don’t know if it had to do with sleeping in the hotel bed with Emma or what, but when I woke up on Sunday, it hurt again and by about 11am, it was downright painful to sit.

I felt better when I was up and walking around and we had some time before our flights home, so Emma took Eric and me for a tour around campus.

They had this cool sound tunnel thing where if you stood at one side and someone else stood at the other, you could hear each other very clearly even though you were far away.  I was standing in something just like they were and could hear them completely.

I tried to make the best of it.  I don’t see my brother and sister that often, so I really tried to ignore the pain that I was feeling.  I took some extra strength Tylenol but it didn’t really do much.  Emma had some stronger painkillers from when she was sick with mono but I was afraid to take them because I had to drive home once I got back to Atlanta and I wasn’t sure how they’d affect me.  So I just tried to suck it up.

Riding in the plane did me no favors and by the time I got to my car, in the pouring rain, I was near tears.  Although I’m only like a half hour from the airport, it seemed to take forever and when I finally got home around 10:30, I burst into tears.

I managed to fall asleep for an hour or two and spent the rest of the night googling back problems.  Basically, my lower right back hurts.  I can’t really pinpoint exactly where the pain is stemming from which leads me to believe that it’s nerve related.  I drew myself a bath at 3 am and, after I figured out how to maneuver myself into the tub, that seemed to help, at least for a little bit.

At 7, I texted my boss and told her that I wasn’t going to be coming in.  With two hours of sleep under my belt and no sign of the pain getting any better, I decided to go to Urgent Care this morning.  They basically told me that it could be from anything (I think it’s from deadlifts personally, although the doctor didn’t seem too sure) and while it could be a herniated or bulging disc, it could just be general back pain.  They gave me some painkillers and told me to contact them in a week or two if there’s no progress.

I feel better now.  I took a 3-hour nap and am sitting in a chair with little pain.  However, I’m on the painkillers so that’s to be expected.  Plus, it still hurts to bend over. I’ve never had back pain before.  Sure, I’ve had sore muscles and things like that, but nothing like this where it takes a good bit of determination to get in and out of the car.  Not fun.