Last night I strained my back lifting Jasper into the tub so we could give him his bath using the special shampoo the vet gave us for his skin. Having been a stray he was quite flea-bitten when they took him in, and although he doesn't have fleas now his skin is still a bit tender. Our instructions were to bathe him weekly until it clears up.
Go on, you try lifting a 50 pound dog that doesn't want to get into the bath tub. There's a right way, and there's the way I did it. Oh, shiii....
I knew I'd done a bad, bad thing to my back, but I thought I could ice it down and do some stretching exercises and come through it okay. Not a chance. After two hours I couldn't bend over more than 5 degrees and couldn't get up from a sitting position using my legs and back alone. By bedtime I was unable to climb stairs other than sideways holding desperately to the railing. This morning even standing still was almost impossible. I saw my chiropractor at 8:15am.
Somehow, despite the seriousness of my impairment I thought he'd be able to just crick crack my spine and off I'd go to work. Wrong. I couldn't even get onto the table, roll over, or get off the table without his assistance. He did adjust my spine, but sent me home with strict instructions to ice, ice, ice and take Advil to the limits allowed. I'll go back tomorrow perhaps 50 percent better and get a second adjustment. We're talking serious restriction of movement and a whole lot of pain. I shouldn't even be sitting here typing this, but I'm going out of my mind with boredom and discomfort either lying down or pacing through the house.
All the pets are thrilled to have me home, of course. In fact, coming home we discovered that our little prisoner had broken out of jail and was loose in the house. The baby gate thing isn't working any more. Dang. The cats were fine, they were up on their cat tree giving him the hairy eyeball and he? He was on the sofa, living it up. I'm going to break him of that habit immediately. The sofa business, I mean. I am not at all sure we can keep him locked up now, and we certainly aren't going to crate him for 10 hours while we're gone. So we're all hanging out today, two cats, one jailbreak, and me, Gimpy McFeeble. Ooh, my back.
But by golly Jasper is one clean doggie.
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