"You look like a really cute old woman, who's too young to be that old."

I took that one as the compliment I think it was meant to be.

This morning, after arranging for someone to cover my class for the second day in a row, I went to the doctor to see if I could get some help for my back pain. As I hobbled, hunched over and in pain, from my car to the clinic, I really did feel like a 90-year-old woman. And not the kind of spry, spunky 90-year-old woman I'd like to aspire to be in another 60 years.

The diagnosis was not a surprise - I have a muscle spasming in my lower back. The cause is a mystery - it was not brought on by heavy lifting or by slipping on a wet floor or by Jin wrenching my back when he darted after a squirrel, but by putting on my running clothes. Which I've done without incident four or five or six times a week for twelve years. And the verdict is a little discouraging - it will probably take a good two weeks to recover fully.

But in the meantime, I have all sorts of medication to get me through this. I don't think I have ever had so many prescription bottles in my medicine cabinet, and a daily regimen of 11 pills makes me feel even more like a 90-year-old woman.


They seem to be helping. A couple hours after my first dose, I managed straighten my back for the first time in over 24 hours, and took a (slow) 40-minute walk around my neighborhood, and it felt so good to get out of the apartment and to be outdoors. I think I will be able to teach my class tomorrow, and I'm really anxious to get back to my students. When work is really busy and stressful, sitting at home on the couch all day sounds really nice, but it's much nicer in theory than in practice.

The plus side of all of this has been that I can now really appreciate the support system I have in being so near my family. Both of my brothers have helped walk Jin, and my sister brought me Aleve and Dr. Pepper and dog treats (for Jin) yesterday afternoon, and my parents have been wonderful about calling and checking up and offering good advice. My upstairs neighbor, Jenny, has been wonderful too, checking in on me and bringing me Panda Express and DVDs.

The other thing I realized, and this is the real reason I wrote this post, was that while I never failed to appreciate that my friends and my ward in Ann Arbor formed an equally strong support system, I didn't appreciate until now just how much that support system was like a family. These couple days have been a drag, but they have made me think a lot about how thankful I am that I had that family away from home during my years in Michigan, and how thankful I am to be so close to my family now. Sometimes it takes not having something to realize how much it means to you. (This includes my health, too - I have never been so wonderfully happy about my ability to take a leisurely stroll around my own neighborhood as I was today.)

By the way, I'm really not looking for sympathy comments, even if you are sincere. I've had more than my fair share of that in the last couple days, and I'm doing fine and ready to return to normality. But thanks anyway.

And by the other way, I have still more new posts on my book blog. That's what you get for me being stuck at home. They're both short reviews, one on Catching Fire and one on Peter Pan (and if your only exposure to Peter Pan is Disney or Hook or Finding Neverland, it turns out you're kind of missing out).