Back pain
Amigas del Señor
From Sister Alegria
Sister Confianza and I are back in Tocoa. Last week, on Tuesday, when I woke up ready for my nephrology consultation, I had fierce back pain and spasms. I had had no previous experience with this. We had the nephrology consult and the special dietary consult on Tuesday and were pooped—at least I was. Wednesday morning the dietary doctor was ready to present the results of her work. I was still icky, so Sister Confianza went alone. That worked out just fine. We decided to stay in La Ceiba one more day to rest up, then go to Tocoa.
That worked, except that the pain didn’t improve and we both continued very tired. I guess that means it didn’t work. Sister Confianza kept running errands. On Thursday afternoon, we got a consult with Dr. Fu, who is a general practitioner, chiropractor, and acupuncturist. Perfect, just what we need. We assumed the chiropractic would be most useful, but he explained that it is less useful when the spasms are active. OK. So he did acupuncture—needles (with lidocaine, an anesthesia) in my ears, and needles (without lidocaine) in my feet. I was to lie still for about a half hour while this went on. Afterward, I hurt worse. I mentioned that and he confessed that it is usual for the pain to worsen right after the treatment. (He had carefully avoided telling me that earlier).
I was to continue to use muscle relaxants (strong ones at night, mild ones in the day), a menthol lotion rub, and to return the next day after having an X-ray. The X-ray wasn’t much help, that is, it offered no interesting information. He did a minor chiropractic manipulation and told me to come back in a week or two.
We were both very tired and stayed tired. Pain can be tiring. Overwork can be tiring. For a while the back pain improved each day, then it stopped improving and every afternoon was a major drag. So we decided to return to Dr. Fu this week. He is not available today, but will be tomorrow. We traveled this morning, planning to rest this afternoon and have the consult tomorrow. We arrived at our hotel room about an hour ago and Sister Confianza is already out running an errand. She really knows how to rest, huh?
Hold us in your prayers, please.
Bendiciones,
Sister Alegria