Back, Again

From last Tuesday I began to experience some quite intense discomfort rising to pain in my back, probably as a result of several continuous hours of consultations with students regarding their approaching exams. The pain peaked on Friday when I simply could not make it to Friday Prayers having been very much looking forward to going again to the new mosque near our house at the taman. But the odd thing was my awareness that these were not sciatic pains - in other words I didn't think they were directly connected to the trapped nerve in my back. In fact, when Noi and I went on Friday evening to KLCC I wandered around Kinokuniya there for a good forty minutes with no pain in my leg at all. If I'd have been asked to bend forward even slightly, though, I would not have been able to.

By Saturday evening I had a sense my back was on the mend - in this case judging from how comfortable I was when doing the prayers, which involve a lot of bending forward. When I went to my back doc on Monday afternoon mobility was almost completely restored. He put me back on the medication which I'd been off for about a week and a half but simply as a variety of better safe than sorry, I think.

On Tuesday I spent epic amounts of time on my feet invigilating without feeling the slightest twinge. (I was deliberately avoiding any kind of sitting simply to see how long I could last.) And today has remained pain free. I don't think this has anything to do with the pills as they've never had such a dramatic effect before. Actually the only obvious thing they do is to make my hands shake a little.

So now I'm seriously wondering if the nerve has somehow become untrapped. I'm not foolish enough to assume it has and my problems are over. These kinds of problems don't go away with age. But even a brief respite is a wonderful thing and I'm thoroughly enjoying mine.