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Flying
Yesterday did not end pain free. I made it 12 hours with no pain to remind me I was still very much healing. I paid for this dearly. After 6:00 I started stiffening up considerably. At 8:00 my back started spasming terribly. I tried to get in the shower and couldn’t, so I just log rolled into bed (spasm spasm spasm) and tried not to move. The spasms weren’t highly painful but plenty bad enough. The left side of my back was tight like a guitar string waiting to be plucked. Throinggg! SPASM. I had my wife get out a big therapeutic ice pack I luckily had in the freezer and did 30 minutes of icing. Then I fell asleep relievedly. At my 2:30 a.m. med alarm I was just as stiff and about-to-spasm as earlier. So I retrieved the small therapeutic ice pack and just slept on it until the 5:30 alarm to get ready to go to the airport.
I still didn’t dare get in the shower. My back wasn’t spasming but it felt like it wanted to. The few spasms I had in the morning weren’t quite as bad as the night before.
We took our normal limo we use occasionally to the airport (AJ at A One Airport Express, highly recommended) and he was patient enough to deal with our luggage and slowness. At the airport I used a wheelchair for the first time in my life. A very interesting woman from Azerbaijan took us to the Alaska Airlines Lounge in N terminal. She is Muslim and they were forced out in 1998 and ended up in Russia. Along the way she learned to speak Russian, Turkish and English in addition to her native Armenian. So she was teaching us Armenian phrases on the way to N terminal. :-)
In the elevator, there were two other people in similar wheelchair escorts. I just looked up and said, “You people are my tribe!” They all laughed. I think I t was the first time I had ever interacted with wheelchair users at eye level. One lady had the fanciest, most tricked out walker I had ever seen. It put my stripped down econo model to shame. Pretty bad when you have walker envy. :-)
My brace apparently has some metal in it because I set off the metal detector. TSA was quite nice and efficient with the extra screening that necessitated. But I managed to lose the bottle of Tylenol between home and the TSA checkpoint. Good thing you can buy that at the airport concessionaire.
Spending time in the Alaska Lounge and getting to the plane was little trouble and I was glad I had used miles to book a First class seat. I fly first a lot as an elite Alaska flyer but an upgrade is never guaranteed and I didn’t want to take chances.
Before the flight took off, I was using my incentive spirometer and the flight attendant looked at me and said with a smile , “Good technique on the incentive spirometer!” Only someone who had had a similar injury to mine or was a health care worker would know the exact term for this device. Turns out she is an RN. How lucky Alaska Airlines is to have an RN as a flight attendant.
The flght itself went as planned, comfortable and pain-free. But our bags didn’t make the flight. (This is only the second time this has happened to me in 20 years). Apparently there was a bad baggage snafu earlier this morning. By this time my wife was tired and had a bad headache, everything having finally caught up with her and I realized I could drive home, so I did. Once home, I sidestepped up the stairs with no problem and got horizontal as soon as I could to hopefully forestall another night of back spasms.
Safe and sound. But totally exhausted. When do I get my stamina back?