The vulnerability of the body
Late into a big event we had the Hall, I started limping around. I had been up since 3:30am getting ready and by the time I hit the 12-hour mark of continuous movement, lifting, squatting, my body started resisting. The very next day after lifting, moving and squatting to pick up the chairs and wipe down the tables and set up for the next event, I thought to myself – just get me through the next few hours.
Miraculously, my body did it. It hosted over 500 people over the course of two days by moving, lifting, squatting, stressing and then on Sunday afternoon I went deep into the couch to Lounge for the Lord as I like to put it. My body needed a Sabbath.
The next two days were spent cleaning up, which involved lifting heavy bags of gumbo bowls, bottles, cans into the garbage bins, moving and stacking sacks of wood chips we had bought as a hedge against the rain, and putting chairs and tables back in place. A lot of what I do is rearrange – I move things out of the Hall into my house and vice versa. I do this with handtrucks. One handtruck holds four extra large ice chests that I stack on top of each other and then bungee chord all of them together. Yesterday, as I stacked the ice chests and was trying to top the stack off with the fourth one while standing on a stool, I tipped over, fell into the four ice chests and came down hard on the hand truck metal plate.
Then I was back on the sofa with an ice pack in my groin where, with my entire body weight free falling, I had landed on the most unforgiving industrial size handtruck. I was grateful it wasn’t worse, it could have been, but I was still in pain and rueful that once again, I had pushed my body to the breaking point.
Folks are always saying you need to ask for help. I do and could not do this without help. Two friends/neighbors always come to help me when I call, but there are some things that I don’t call for because I believe I could do it myself. Lately, the answer that comes back from body is a resounding why? Why are you putting me through this?
I had just finished a long bout last year of a right hip problem that required xrays, mri’s, physical therapy, casterol heat pads, anti-inflammatories, and now here I am in pain once again after moving into a period of being pain-free that I was hoping was here to stay for a while.
Surely, I need to re-evaluate my lifestyle.
