2312 I think I've hurt me, Part 2.

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

I hurt me twice. Once by doing something stupid last night, and once by doing too much today.

Part 2 - Today

I volunteered at the nursing home. They were having a St. Patrick's Day parade, where the residents dress up and parade through the halls led by a 21-piece bagpipe and drum band and "floats" (shopping carts decorated by the various interest groups), and they needed about 35 volunteers to push wheelchairs and floats.

I'm not sure how it happened, I think maybe because I was the only volunteer that followed directions and didn't just run and grab someone but waited to be assigned, which we'd been told to do but it never happened because everyone else just ran and grabbed someone - anyway, I was the last to get a resident to push. Everybody else had shopping carts or regular big-wheeled pipe-and-canvas-type wheelchairs. I had a nice, but very large, lady in one of those big thickly upholstered recliner-type chairs. The only one like that in the whole building. (Imagine a LazyBoy with a too-small handle on the back and tiny serving cart wheels, on carpet. No kidding.)

Obviously no one else wanted to push that one, and I can see why. It was heavy and awkward, and the small wheels that spun independently would swoosh it off sideways if you didn't pay attention.

It had so much inertia to overcome to get it moving, that I, the smallest of all the volunteers, had to stretch out at an extreme angle to get it moving. Everybody carefully ignored my struggles, and by the time I realized how hard it was going to be, the parade was moving out, my lady and I were the last in line, and there was no one I could ask to trade.

The home is laid out with halls leading to circular nursing stations, and then halls branching off from the stations - sort of like a snowflake. Maximizes windows in the rooms. We followed the right wall, up and down the halls. Right turn after right turn, with a heavy awkward chair that wanted to skitter sideways into the walls, threatening to smash my lady's fingers, and me leaning sideways against the pull.

I had to throw my entire body into moving, turning, and maneuvering the chair.

I don't know how far we walked, but it was 50 minutes at a normal walking pace. In the first ten minutes, the inside of my right knee started to complain, from the hard right turning with it stretched out to the side. Twenty minutes in, I had a stitch in my right side. By the time it was over, even my sternum hurt.

Tonight it's obvious I've strained my back. I have upper and lower back pain, and abdominal cramps, which indicates a nerve under pressure. Bleck.

Oh well, with any luck I won't be able to move tomorrow, and I can honestly cancel the dreaded lunch.
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