When last we tuned in here, I was happily working on my play, although noting that while washing the dog I had somehow thrown out my back.

Since then, several things have happened — but not one of them has seemed notable compared to the pain in my back. It is a locked and angry mass, like a Lovecraftian horror trying to enter our world.

Sunday night after reading to my 6-year-old, I had to ask him to gently shove me off his bed and onto my feet because I couldn’t get up. Thinking it some sort of new game, he was delighted to comply.

On Monday morning I struggled to reach the phone from my bed to call someone — anyone — to help me get up. I couldn’t get the phone. Then I called for one of my kids to come help; none came. Finally I tried to shove myself off the bed and onto my feet, applying the methodology employed by my 6-year-old, but with my own hand rather than his feet. That worked. Once I was up, I was somewhat mobile, but over the course of the day gravity compacted the problem until I strongly considered calling out from my class. It’s team-taught, and my three colleagues could have divvied up my section of eight students among themselves, but since I had missed the previous Monday by dint of being in Amsterdam, that didn’t seem fair. Somehow I was able to lurch down to USC and walk around campus in a manner I hope was not reminiscent of Steve Martin in “All of Me.” Late that night, I soaked in a hot tub filled with Batherapy crystals. In my experience, there are two all-powerful cures: soaks in Batherapy Mineral Bath Salts, or doses of the miracle drug NyQuil. Once you know which to use for what, pretty much everything is covered. Both have the added benefit of helping people (even me, sometimes) sleep.

Tuesday morning I couldn’t get out of bed, so my wife took our kids to school. I did finally have to get up to give a speech at noon to a local service organization. I soaked further in Batherapy first, which helped enormously if briefly. On the way to the speaking engagement I thought about my speech and my back, not in that order. Later that night, my wife extracted the electric heating pad from whatever crevice of the house it’s hidden in and plugged it in downstairs for me. I lay on the couch and watched something (and no, I have no idea what it was) and thought about my back.

I would say yesterday was a blur, but it was more of a throb. I got up, barely, at the unconscionable hour of 6 a.m. to attend a conference in Beverly Hills. The conference featured a succession of speakers with unrelentingly bad economic forecasts. Now I was thinking about my back and the economy. When I finally couldn’t sit there any longer I left early (also, so I wouldn’t have to sit in crawling traffic). I found that my daughter had now laid out the electric heating pad and switched it on high; this was becoming a ritual. She and I watched the first half of a movie about the brothers Van Gogh, “Vincent and Theo,” directed by Robert Altman. When Theo kisses the ankle of his fiancée, my daughter, aged 10, covered her eyes, then ran up into the kitchen to inform her mother. My wife said, “If she’s too embarrassed to watch that, maybe it’s inappropriate.” I could only imagine what my wife thought was happening in this PG-13 movie, but didn’t have the energy to shout up there that it was just ankle-kissing. I wondered if the source of Vincent’s mania was an aching back.

Today I explained to everyone everywhere, “I’m crabby. Just so you know. Not at you – at everything. My back is killing me.” I shared this with the guy at the Apple Store trying to figure out why none of my contacts would synch from my laptop to my iPhone since my return from Europe. Except in his case, when I got back to my office and found out definitively that his fix had not worked, it was him I was crabby with, not just the back. Apple Store “genius” Michael fixed some of the problem; true genius elder son Lex fixed the rest. (“Genius” Michael: “They give us 15 minutes to fix each iPhone problem. This one has taken me an hour and forty-five minutes! This is the most complicated problem I’ve ever dealt with.” Me, acidly: “Congratulations. You’ve scaled new heights of achievement.”) When I got home to watch the remaining half of “Vincent and Theo,” my two younger kids fought over who would get to set the electric heating pad for me, and how high.

Now I’ve been invited by my marathon training pack to join them for an eight-mile run this Sunday. It’s tempting. I never had a bit of back problem while in training, or afterward. It was washing the dog that did this, and I’m doing my best not to resent her for it. As my pace group leader emailed me, “Don’t wash the dog.” So I may join them on Sunday, and I may get those marathon and Amsterdam photos up on this blog. If I can get out of bed.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 30th, 2008 at 9:14 pm and is filed under Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.