I spent most of last week in Miami chauffeuring the Germans around. It was easy work and I ate a lot of really good meals, but I did miss, as one man put it, “The most snow I’ve seen in Batesville in the 25 years I’ve been here.” Annoying to this native Michigander, but what are you gonna do? When duty calls and offers to put you up in a four star hotel and take you to gourmet restaurants, you just have to grin and bear it.
Snow and food aside, here’s where the story gets good. Friday morning when we were loading luggage into vans I hurt my back. I was stupid and performed a kicking maneuver to flip a bag up and into my arms. The bag came up just fine, but as it did, I was hit with a shooting pain in my back so bad I couldn’t hold onto the bag. It fell down while I doubled over in pain. It was safe to say that baggage loading was done, but not wanting to feel useless, I still drove the van. Every bump and pothole I hit sent pains shooting from my lower back down to my ankles.
Fortunately, our doctor was going on the cruise too so he was at the hotel. In between trips I had him take a look at me. He poked and prodded, put me through a serious of positions and concluded that yes, I had hurt my back. Apparently, at the time, and in the doctor’s office that was my hotel room, there wasn’t much else that could be done. So he helped me roll onto my side and gave me a handful of painkillers that apparently he keeps in his luggage for just such occasions. Lucky me. I was left facing the wall in the fetal position with explicit instructions not to lift anything, not even my own luggage.
Fast-forward a bit. After a day of lying curled up on my hotel bed watching movies and crappy daytime television it was time to fly home. The do not lift anything instructions had been passed on to the guy traveling with me. He took them as gospel; I was hardly allowed to lift my finger. We made it to the airport with no problems and got on our plane. It was only after we boarded that it was announced we would have to wait another 20 minutes because of bad weather at our destination. That left me sitting painfully at the back of the airplane, sandwiched between two screaming children. At that point I pulled more pills out of my pocket and asked for a bottle of water.
Eventually we touched down in Atlanta. My traveling companion used his phone to get on the airline’s webpage and look up our connecting flight. With a bit of good luck, that had been delayed too. The downside was, it was on another concourse and we only had fifteen minutes to get there. There was no way I could move that fast, so he asked the stewardess—excuse me, flight attendant—if we could get a wheelchair.
Picture this: Me being wheeled through an airport at high speed while another guy runs beside me with our bags. Looking back, I’m not sure why we didn’t put the bags in my lap. Hmm… Anyway we made it and I had an uncomfortable, though much quieter, flight from Atlanta to Memphis. In Memphis we picked up our bags (actually, he picked up our checked luggage) and carried them through the windy, stinging snow to my jeep at the far end of the long-term parking. I have never, in my entire life, felt more useless than I did throughout the whole ordeal. I even had to have Kathryn come out and carry my bags from my jeep to her apartment. In fact, I probably looked like the bastard boyfriend when we went to the store and I didn’t carry any of the bags to the car.
I spent the weekend recovering and most of the pain is gone now, which means I didn’t slip a disc and won’t need surgery. Thank goodness for that. I’m still stiff and in a little pain, but the mere fact that I can stand up without nearly falling over is a good sign. The moral of the story is never use the patented Johnny Rockstar Luggage Kick Flip to pick anything up. And always lift with your back because you don’t want to hurt your knees.
