My very selfish attempt at time travel

I while back I wrote a letter to my teenage self that was featured on this awesome site. My letter was well received by my friends and family and even brought some of them to tears (or so I am told). For that, I am humbled.

But now I want a do-over. I would like to write a new letter to myself that says this and only this:

"Get off your lazy ass and listen to the doctors when they tell you to take care of your back."

My back problems started at the ripe old age of 13. I think I was in Junior High the first time I threw it out from tying my shoe, sneezing or something else equally as embarrassing. My back went into spasms, my pelvis tilted to the side like a teeter-toter and I was out of commission for several days. It was painful but I did get to miss school and I recovered within a few days so I went on with my junior high life of bad fashion choices and hormonal cry-fests. But that first time was all it took; it was the proverbial straw that broke, well, my back. About once or twice a year, from that point on, I suffered from one of these episodes. I remember one time it happened while on vacation at our family cabin in Washington state. It was probably around '96 or '97. Those little butterfly clips were all the rage which meant my sister had roughly 37,000 of them in all the shades of an iridescent rainbow. She would twist and twirl her hair and attach about half of them to various places on her head every morning, the colors always corresponding to the "outfit" she had chosen for the day. The clips, colorful eye shadow combinations and silver, platform clown shoes were just her version of a giant neon sign with arrows pointing to her head and flashing "Look at me! Look at me!"

But I digress...

In a simultaneous effort to embarrass and make us laugh, my father thought it would be funny to attach the little clips to various parts of his face and body. When the clip he placed on his eyebrow proved to be a bit to painful and he yelped like a four-year-old girl, everyone at the table started to howl in laughter. I just started howl. Apparently laughing was just enough to send my back into those painful spasms I had grown all too accustomed to. I was so twisted and in so much pain that I couldn't put any weight on my feet so my family dragged a mattress from the bedroom into the kitchen so I could sleep right there on the floor. It took me nearly a half an hour to get from the chair down to the mattress. Once I finally made it down there I said, "And now I have to pee."

My aunt, who is an occupational therapist, said to me, "You know what honey, I deal with this all the time. If you want, I can go find and empty jar and we can do this right here."

"I'M UP!" It's amazing what a little motivation can do for you, especially if that motivation is to avoid showing your lady bits to your family members. Somehow I found the strength to crawl on my hands and knees to the bathroom and drag my body up onto the toilet. The next day I was still pretty uncomfortable but my dad located a back brace and some pain killers at a local drug store and after a day or two I was enjoying my vacation again.

We tried to figure out why I had a back that appeared to be made out of construction paper and macaroni noodles. I had xrays, MRIs, was taken out of PE classes, and sent to Physical Therapy. My diagnosis was basically that I was very tall for my age and had weak core and back muscles. I needed to exercise in general but more specifically, I needed to work those areas of my body to prevent this from happening in the future. However, the problem was that I stood in the choir and looked pretty. Exercise was bothersome, sweaty and made my make-up run. Basically, I didn't do it and now, at 30, I would do just about anything to go back in time, shake some sense into myself and do few crunches here and there. Because chronic back pain with a 20-month-old is no joke. Try doing crunches now with a kid who thinks by being on the floor, you want to wrestle and so he throws his body on top of yours and says, "Sit on Mommy!"

So I was at physical therapy the other day (which is now a normal part of my life, at thirty) and I told my therapist that the pain seemed to be moving into my mid back and sometimes I feel numbness. I am no doctor but I am pretty sure this is not a good thing. He felt around and told me I was quite tight in that area and he wanted to try a technique on me that will "probably bruise" but should help. At this point I am willing to be stabbed repeatedly with knives if someone promises me it will help so bruise away! He had me lie face down and with some kind of poking device, which in retrospect is probably better that I didn't see, started massaging. It literally sounded like he was crushing Cheetos on my back.

"Yeah, do you hear that?" He asked.

"Um, yes."

"This is not a new problem. You have years of damage in there which has basically caused scar tissue to form on your muscles. That is the crunching sound you hear." Oh thank God! Because I thought that sound was because my back was actually made of a gravel driveway. But it's not that! It is just YEARS AND YEARS of damage! Hooray!

He also told me that another side effect of this technique was addiction and many of his patients want him to do it every visit. "Ha ha. That is funny. I wonder why?" I said as innocently as I could, and then decided it was probably best to refrain from asking him to come home with me, live in my bedroom and do that to me everyday. Because whatever he did helped tremendously and if I am being totally honest, I have not felt this good in months.

But don't tell my teen self this. No, no, no. Because this does not mean I am "fixed." The truth is, I am finally (begrudgingly) starting to accept the fact that this is more than just a tweaked muscle. This is going to be a lifelong battle I will have to fight. So I am telling you, teenage me, find something active that you like to do and freaking do it. Stretch and do some crunches every day. Trust me, your post-baby abs will thank you for it anyway. And maybe, if you do all of this, you won't be in pain all the time. Maybe you won't be scared every time you bend down to tie your shoe or pick up something you drop on the floor. Maybe you won't feel like you can't do your fair share of the housework. Maybe you won't have to quit doing things that you used to really enjoy. Maybe you won't worry every time you reach down to pick up your son. Also, if you don't listen to me now, you will have zits all over your face on your wedding day.

Ok, that last part might not be true.