Back

Ages ago, when I was in college, I had a good friend who used to suffer from terrible menstrual cramps. I think she used to take Motrin (which was still relatively new at that time), which I had thought was a muscle relaxant. Years later, though, it seems to be nothing more than the same Ibuprofen found in virtually every other over-the-counter pain reliever.

I helped an old friend move, a few years ago. He is an avid reader and an accumulator of stuff — and had lived in the same apartment for ten or fifteen years. What was supposed to have taken a day took three, and as a result, I sprained my back. (That's much more serious than it sounds!) Ever since, every so often, it comes back to bother me, usually after I've done something thoughtless to provoke it. Yesterday, it was helping to carry a new mattress up the stairs.

It isn't so much the pain or discomfort that bothers me, just that when these episodes occur, I have almost no strength in my lower back. I can still get around, slowly but surely — I shuffle around sort of comically for awhile, then with a bit more energy once my back muscles loosen up — but if I sit down, getting back up becomes a complex process of shifting my weight and finding a way to lever myself to a standing position, or at least something I can pull myself up by.

It inevitably goes away in a few days — but it's not much fun until then. Ugh.