Welcome to my pity party

My lower back has been hurting for...umm... ever. I think I have a pretty high tolerance for pain and have pretty much just been ignoring it and pushing through life.
On Thanksgiving Day it was particularly bad. Maybe I twisted funny handling the 25 pound bird or something. I don't know. But for whatever reason, it was unbearable that day. I not only took a narcotic pain reliever (which I never do!) but I washed it down with a couple of glasses of wine for good measure. And I got through the day.
I realized that my pain was also making me generally unhappy, impatient and grumpy all the time.
The next week I finally went to see an orthopedic surgeon. He took some xrays and also sent me for an MRI.
The xray showed degenerative disk disease at L5 S1. It's pretty common. Lots of people have it with no symptoms at all. And lots of people have lots of pain, like me.
So I had the MRI to make sure there wasn't anything happening as far as nerve damage. And I started physical therapy a couple of times a week.
Yesterday I had the follow up visit with the ortho doc. He said that the MRI doesn't show any significant nerve impingement. He also said that cortisone injections would not be useful for this problem and that surgery has what I consider to be a low success rate. Even he, who would benefit financially from doing surgery, does not recommend it in my case even though I am supposedly a candidate that he would expect to be at the higher end of the success chart.
So, what it boils down to is that I just need to scrape some hours out of my day to take better care of myself. Stretching and conditioning of my core muscles will take some of the burden off my spine and reduce my pain.
It's all up to me.
So after that I went to my physical therapy appointment where I proceeded to break down in tears.
The poor physical therapist. *sigh*
I pulled it together and got the work done.
Afterwards I thought about why I broke down like that.
It's totally irrational (I know!) but I think I wanted that MRI to show something specific and fixable. I wanted the doc to say "So it turns out that you actually have XYZ problem and here's what I can do to fix it and you will be good as new".
Ha!
Maybe I would have handled this better if I hadn't waited till December to take myself to a doctor. There is so much going on this time of year. Christmas, Kenzie having preterm labor and needing my help, working on the nursery for her baby, big school projects for the kids before they go on winter break, and being there for my kids and grandkids for things that come along in life like needing help with sick kids and surgeries. I'm not one of those people that says YES to everything and then complains about being too busy. I have no problem saying NO to things that are not important to me just for the sake of appearing to be Super Woman.
More than one person has suggested that my problem is procrastination. They have said it in humor and out of love for me.
But it stung. It contributed to the tears yesterday.
It isn't about procrastinating.I haven't made a conscious choice to put off doing any of the things I've been doing.
But I suppose it is about time management and prioritizing taking care of myself. Which sounds and feels selfish to me, even though I would advise any of the people that I cared about to do just that for themselves.
And I'm not even going to go into the frustration of  hearing people tell me how much worse they have it than I do. I know there are worse problems to have and worse pain to endure. That doesn't make mine less real or valid. I really want for NONE OF US to hurt, in any way.
To really recover from this back pain I need to spend about 2 1/2 hours a day on exercising.
TWO AND A HALF HOURS
Who has time for that?!?!
Of course we make time for what's important, for one reason or another, to us.

gah!
So I guess I will pencil time into my calendar twice a day for exercise. Which will mean saying no to other things that also matter very much to me. But there are only so many hours in a day. And hopefully, once I get my jiggly jello core muscles in shape, it won't require so much time to keep them in shape.
I will take responsibility for making me better.

BTW I have rejected any kind of medication other than ibuprofen and that Thanksgiving Day Lortab.
The pain is the absolute worst at night. I have to almost fully wake up and brace myself for the pain each time I want to simply roll over in bed.
Yesterday I finally agreed to take something non narcotic if it will help me rest.
I took the first Celebrex at dinner last night.
I still woke up every time I needed to move. Out of habit I suppose. But there was almost no pain. So that was an improvement.
Maybe if I can get some rest I will be less likely to dissolve into tears.
That poor physical therapist. *sigh*