Somewhere in central Jersey this weekend, I was standing amid the clamor and havoc of a seven-year-old's birthday party, but continuing to obsess about my inability to run without back pain. I had just been reprimanded by the bowling alley party hostess for stepping onto the wood floor without the proper, approved footwear after I had frantically chased my cousin's toddler a quarter of the way down one of the lanes. He was a sneaky little monster that day and was hellbent on getting a strike the most expedient way possible...none of that inefficient ball rolling for him. I'd gotten a couple of fingers looped under his collar and in the process of trying to scoop him into my arms, his feet slipped forward on the oiled wood and his head snapped back. I got my other hand under his head before it hit the floor, but inflicted a nice little wrench on my already cranky hip. So smarting from the shoe misdemeanor and with Josh's frustrated wails still ringing in my ears, I retreated to the popcorn and pretzels on the tragically unmanned bar. While there, I discovered that the edge of the bar was a pretty effective instrument for massaging the muscles of my back. I sat there on the bar stool for a while, like a bear scratching an itch on a forest tree, just shifting back and forth, rolling the hard, rounded edge into the tense tissue on either side of my lower spine. And what a treat to get up and realize that the aching had temporarily disappeared, though the shrieks and whines unfortunately continued around me.
So when I saw Mr. Acupuncture today, I told him about the bar room massage technique and he concentrated on basically that same small area. The electric spasms went off immediately when he did his wiggling needle trick and I really had to focus to try and stay relaxed. After he stimulated all of his little trigger points, he left me on the table for about half an hour and I swear, I could really feel something happening. It's hard to describe this part, but I concentrated on deep breathing and the feeling that the tension built inside the muscles with each long inhale and then dissipated and dissolved as the breath flowed out.
There was a brief shock of sharp pain when each needle came out and I felt all tight and sore as if I'd been sitting in an uncomfortable position for hours, but by the time I'd walked the 17 blocks back to work, I was feeling a whole new glow of optimism. I think that was it. Whatever was out of whack back there....I have this feeling that today's treatment really finally got to it. I'm still going to take one more rest day just to recover from the acupuncture, but Thursday morning I'm going to slowly (and very cautiously) begin the process of trying to be a runner again.
It's been a challenging week for an awful lot of reasons, so I'm really trying to focus on the deep breathing in general to try and give my body its best chance at healing. Today marked one year since I lost two colleagues in a car bomb incident (who I did not know) and very nearly lost another (who I did work with fairly often). What struck me most was thinking about all the pain and grief and loss that revolved around that incident and then multiplying it by what every family goes through when they receive that call or answer that knock on the door. This May has been the deadliest month of this year for US troops in Iraq, the third deadliest since the start of the war, and you know that means there are around 900 wounded that we barely even hear about.
I know we get immune and since I stare at these violent images all day long I have no choice but to harden myself to most of it, but it pissed me off to see a commercial today glorifying GMC's participation in a program that sends thank you notes to soldiers. Screw the stupid thank you notes, why aren't we sending armoured vehicles? I don't understand how we can send our military into a war and not mobilize the civilians to make some sort of material sacrifices themselves. It's just too easy for people to support some amorphous military action in the pursuit of some amorphous fight against terrorism when they don't have to do a darn thing themselves to contribute to the cause. At least the ones who send thank you notes are thinking about the kids running patrols, but I want to know what the average Halliburton executive has done to personally contribute to helping the soldiers who are supposedly bringing democracy to Iraq.
Though who am I to talk? I dont even know what I'm personally capable of doing to help since I don't use gasoline, don't own any extra body armor that I can spare and didn't think we had a reasonable plan when we headed to the desert in the first place.
At least tomorrow's big story will probably be about the whales in California finally making it back to the San Francisco Bay. Breathless coverage of animal news usually infuriates this girl's hard news heart, but for once I think it's probably exactly what I want to watch.