WHAT MADE YOU GRIMACE & GRIT YOUR TEETH TODAY?

Damn stingers and nippers!!!

I still got a lump and discoloured skin from the last goddamn spider!

And my goddam back is NOT happy about going back to work.

Quite bad again (NOWHERE near as bad as it was!) from sitting...and especially from cleaning up after little bloody kids.

You're not having a good run with the biters & the back, are you, bunny?

Sorry to hear of the latest developments. Sigh. As if you needed even more developments!

Still it's good to hear that the back pain is nowhere as bad as a while back! No pain would be better, though.

You are taking things a bit easy, aren't you?

Well, I have to exercise!!!! It's a kind of balancing act. Started walking into work again...but found two days in a row was too much.

I am forced to begin to wonder if I can continue where I am......the kind of actions you do when cleaning up after kids in play therapy are the worst possible.....lots of twisting and bending....of course, I am doing it on my hands and knees, now, but there is no getting away from it.....and I have a couple of very chaotic and damaged little kids at the moment, who need to produce a certain amount of chaos.


And I will always have some of them!


Not making any rash decisions right now.....you have to give this sort of injury at least six months before expecting to be anywhere near the level you were at before....but this sort of activity has been hard for me for years...it was simply that the pain was at tolerable levels, and I had no idea I could do something to myself so awful with simple daily actions!!!!


I also do lots of driving....going to schools, other offices, meetings, teaching....and flying...back up to the remote outback for a few days in September.

Ouchie!!!!

This is REALLY time to try the Dragon voice to type software, if I can at least satnd up and walk around when I am doing notes and reports...trouble is affording it right now!!!

I am also going to ask for a proper remote headset phone...I spend hours on the phone, and if I can walk around while doing that, or even do my exercises, that would help.

Serious considerations, Deb. My sympathy. It can't be at all easy right now.

I was wondering though ... given your back pain, if there's the possibility if an "assistant" being employed to do the post-play group cleaning up stuff that is so hard on your back.

A woman at the school where I work damaged her shoulder in the process of her job .. which involved surgery to "fix". She also had to have quite a bit of time off work to recuperate. As part of the formal assessment of her injury it was decided that a part-time teacher be employed to undertake a hefty chunk of her workload, while she did a "phased re-entry" to the job. I'm wondering if such an arrangement could apply to you. It makes no sense at all to me that you should be continuing to perform particular aspects of your job which are worsening your injury.

Worrying..
wish you could get a helper at work, but I assume that's out of the question.

Nah.


It was not a work-place injury...and, frankly, there is NO way where I work could affors such a thing.

Years ago, there were therapy aides who could help a bit with such things, in some places....but they all went because, when you look at the demand for the actual work of places like where I work, the money all ended up on employing clinicians.

Also, we are not a huge place like an education department....we are tiny, and everything is cut to the bone.

Even if I COULD be provided with such a person, I would change jobs rather than do so...as their salary would come out of our budget, and it would mean the loss of part of a clinical position.....and this would mean a burden for everyone.

I'm sorry it's not possible, Deb.

The obvious thing is that you need to be gentle with your back ... & it looks like that isn't possible, given the physical demands of your job.

Oh bugger!

It's actually hilarious that sitting and cleaning up crap after kids should be be seen as physical demands, isn't it!!!!!

Have you ever seen one of those gadgets with a long handle and a sort of claw on the end that people use to pick things up from the floor from a standing position? It's like what people use to stab trash but instead of a sharp point it has a sort of hand at the end and a long handle (like a broom handle) with something that lets you clasp the object on the floor, even though you're standing.

And then if you had a toy basket - you could just place the toys in the basket - and use the thing to pick the toys out of the basket when you needed them.

Or maybe getting the toys out and setting them up and then putting them back could be worked into the therapy (if the kids are at an age when they can do that)- sort of like how how teachers allow time in the lesson for set up and clean up.

I don't know what that thing is called and I couldn't think of words to describe it clearly enough to find an image in google - but it'd be a shame if you'd have to quit your job or experience pain if there was some simple and cheap solution.

Well, no. Not at all. Not if one suffers from serious back pain.

You mean this grabber reacher?

That's it Francis - I was thinking 'object picker-upper' and didn't come up with anything (not surprisingly)

Oh yes.....but I just get down on hands and knees...plus such a beast cannot grab glitter, teeeeeeeny pieces of feather, pipe cleaner, paper and such....and it is the twisting as well as the bending that gets me. Also, it is the wiping up stuff that is the problem.

Thanks for the suggestion, though. It is a helpful tool for many situations, just not mine.

Actually, even when my prolapse was new, I could touch my toes without effort or extra pain.

Sure....but it sounds so ridiculous when you think of the heavy manual labour that so many people injure their backs doing, and can never do again.


Actually, it's likely all those years of waitressing and cleaning...plus the study and sedentary work...that set me up for this.

When I cleaned someone's house, I CLEANED it.....it was like a heavy workout...but with stuff like vacuuming and mopping and such, that is murder for backs.

RP wrote:


and then Osso wrote:



Jeez you guys live in a dangerous country!

I don't know if these little black ants bite anyone on earth but me, but they love me. Fat welt city. Makes me pissier than usual.

Just a bit of info for others with a bad back....I haven't tried it yet, but I was advised not to do the sort of stuff I was describing on hands and knees...but on one knee, with the other leg bent in front of you, with that foot on the ground.

It's supposed to be easier on the back.

How are things, dlowan?

Kind of annoying.

I have experienced a generalized pain reaction from the whole damn thing (did I mention this before? Apparently it's not that uncommon) which means my whole body has been hurting.

That has diminished along with the specific prolapse pain, but it's still making life kind of miserable.

Still, as I said, apparently it takes at least six months or more to get back to normal...and its only been about 2 and a half.

It would likely help to work part time for a while, but I can't afford it.

I tend to feel like I have been hit by a car by the end of the week. I dreamed that the other night to explain the pain I was feeling in my sleep!!!

I DO have permission to use long service leave days...and I was vaguely planning to maybe use one of these a week for a while...but then I book people into every day, or urgent meetings come up, or I have to write reports, and it goes out the window. I did manage it once...but I walked in for a meeting at 4.00 pm on that day, which was important because the person was down from the outback.

I'm hopeless!!!!!!

I have to say, my office is a musculo-skeletal hell-hole!!!

Some of the really young staff have nasty back problems too...one lovely, fit woman still in her twenties discovered the other day she has spinal degeneration that is quite serious.

Her mum, who is a physio, said she needs to have babies within the next five years, if she is gonna have them, or she's going to have huge difficulties with her spine handling it...she'll likely find it hard now.

Another, who on the face of it has an injury far less serious than mine, has had a far worse time, and is only beginning to cope properly after over two years. And she's late twenties/early thirties. She had to take much longer off work, too.

So...I'm likely doing pretty well, all things considered.

Good grief!

That sounds really horrible. Even if other people are dealing with horribleness, your own horribleness still sounds horrible.

Six months, eh? Something to look forward to... but very sorry about all that horribleness that needs to be dealt with in the meantime.