Friday 17 August 2007

An Arse Full of Needles

Two days ago I hoisted a 12 kilo bag of squirming-toddler-boy onto my shoulders, picked up his trike and headed to Kennington Park. We crossed the streets and he pointed out all the cars, buses, bicycles and taxis on the way. He's the only one of his playmates that gets this worked up over traffic and it causes the majority of our delays because he insists on showing me this 'car' and that 'bus'. I will have to tell him at some stage that there are other objects in this world that he'd do well to learn the names of, too.

Lifting him down off my shoulders in the park, I felt a burning in my side and cursed in as many other languages as I could remember - I would like to publicly apologise to all the Spanish-speaking people in Kennington Park who thought I might have been indecently proposing their mother. Obviously, I don't want to be the one who teaches him the word 'f*ck', that just might jeopardise my Christmas bonus. Anyway, the pain didn't go away and, in fact, it threw me to the garden decking last night in front of his grandparents when I bent down to pick up some of his toys. At the SO's insistence I phoned up a friend of ours who also happens to be a massage therapist and acupuncturist and she agreed to see me, this morning, before her first appointment.

By the end of our one hour session, my back was putty, I had needles sticking out of various bits of my body (it's amazing how one's inhibitions fall when lying face down on a massage table) and I haven't had a twinge of jarring pain for the past three hours. I've signed up for another session - it's the best £35 I've spent this month.

4 comments:

J.M. Tewkesbury said...

For the last week, I've had a sensation just above my right shoulder blade akin to having a fork jammed into your back and twisted around. It was so bad on Wednesday, I ended up leaving work early and staying home all day Thursday. Bottom line: I think I need to get me one'a 'em thar maa-saw-gaz things.

Of course, an arse full of needles is a lovely image, too. Maybe I need one of those, as well...

Glad to hear you're feeling better.

hm-uk said...

Back pain is quite electric, isn't it? I'd never felt it before and it is quite a sensation. I say, get thee to a massage therapist who also does acupuncture.

I also have some lovely hickey-like marks from the cupping she did. The jury's out as to whether this actually had anything more than a placebo effect but I'm willing to be convinced. I'm still able to move around today relatively comfortably, which is enough for me to carry on stretching. That, I know from reading mainstream medical journals, is the currently prescribed way of dealing with back pain. The complimentary medicine was enough to get me there.

Sister Mary Lisa said...

Cupping gives me the heebie-jeebies.

hm-uk said...

SML - Yeah, I know! I don't even want to imagine what I'd put my body through if it had been much worse than back pain - leeches? I think the massage, acupuncture and accupressure were the things that did the trick.