A friend with whom I worked with many, many moons ago, and have not seen in about 9 years visited yesterday. It was a lovely visit, for the girls too, as she happens to be their guardian (or god-mother if you believe in the old man upstairs) and so we caught up on a lot. Apparently I haven’t changed a bit, but then, nor has she so I think age is affecting us both. As she showed me her photos on her camera I asked her why didn’t she use something like Flickr so that she could share her photos there.
As I started to show my friend hows it works a message from the Twat popped up saying that he’d need a hot bath when he gets home as he’d sprained his back.
“How?”
“I sneezed. You may laugh.”
My greatest fear is of falling over and hurting my back, sciatica aside, but I had never considered sneezing to be a dangerous hazard.
How we live on the edge.
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Sneezing. I may be able to beat that: I put my back out last July while sleeping. I went to bed one night and fell asleep and all was well. I woke up in the morning and could barely move because of the pain. Maybe I sneezed in my sleep?
Oh, my. By all the Deities. The Twat sneezed hard enough to sprain his back?
Of course you can laugh. Loudly. Often. Frequently. See caution below.
When the laughing slows enough for you to catch your breath, give him a peck on the forehead (or let Herman do so) as you announce he has to sleep on the sofa because you can’t stand the smell of the linament he’s using for his bad back. Tell him it reminds you of your great-great-grandpa.
CAUTION: I take no responsibility for any military action that results from paranoid EU officials hearing a loud “MWAH-HA-HA-HA!” from your vicinity.
I put my back out several years ago just by picking up a pencil.
Not your huge 50lb comedy pencil, you understand. No, just a common or garden HB writing implement.
It took about 5 days to get back to normal.
It was about then that I gave up writing. Nobody could read my handwriting anyway, so it was no great loss, but jeez, it hurt.
I didn’t realise that you’d moved, just thought you were too snowed in to post. I hurt my back picking up a lettuce in the supermarket a few years back.
If you think sneezing is living on the edge, try coughing. I tore a chest muscle doing that once…Here’s hoping he feels better.
20 years ago I did my back in by stabbing a sausage with a fork. 6 weeks of physio….. agony…
Usually the “trigger” that sets off the back spasms isn’t the thing that threw it out, though.
My first bout of Old Lady Back came when I was about 33 or so. I helped my Dad bring some of that heavy green wallboard up the stairs to his 2nd floor bathroom when he was remodeling. Dad is nothing if not impatient, so I didn’t get the best grip on it and carried it awkwardly. My back didn’t complain at all.
The next morning I reached to pluck a coffee cup out of the cupboard and fell to my knees in agony. Just that one little stretch more… and 8 weeks of physio.
Please Zed, don’t you sneeze now.
A man yawned and displaced his jaw.
So you see, Zoe, it’s not your back you have to worry about.
Would you believe I strained my diaphragm* by coughing? After that, every time I coughed my diaphragm would go into spasm making it impossible to breathe in. It’s not a good feeling.
*the muscle that controls your breathing not the method of birth control.