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Have you ever hurt so bad that you sweat uncontrollably? Hurt so bad that you have to remind yourself to breathe? Hurt so bad that you literally scream when touched? That is where I am right now, and have been since yesterday morning. Have been typing blog entries to try to distract myself, but it's about as effective as ignoring the elephant in the room when he's standing on your foot.

Best as my primary care doc can figure out, what must have happened is that I overdid it with the yard and home maintenance. She thinks that perhaps on Sunday, when I was pulling weeds, instead of reaching straight forward while doing it, I may have been turned at an angle while tugging on something. That alone would be sufficient to knock my already fragile right SI joint back out of alignment. She says it's possible for a slight dislocation to not be noticeable until the next day. So that would explain why it was on Monday morning right before aquacise when I got a very sudden huge spasm in my lower back.

Now, I get muscle spasms all the time and know they can be helped by gentle stretching, so I proceeded with my class as usual. It seemed to help for a bit, and then I started getting worse toward the end. Shortly after I got out of the pool, I started getting knife-like pain in my right hip to accompany the "dagger" just above and to the right of my tailbone. And it just went downhill from there.

I tried resting on the couch with my feet elevated and my knees pulled up to release the pressure on my back. I tried Icy Hot. I tried Valium. I took extra fish oil capsules. I took a long hot shower. Nothing even made a dent in the pain. By 10pm, I was in tears, wishing in vain that I could tolerate narcotics so I could go to the ER and maybe get an injection to stop the spasms. Somehow, Lunesta combined with the Valium did enable me to sleep for awhile.

I awoke this morning feeling much better. And then I moved, and the spasms came flooding back, even worse than before. The pain was traveling down the sciatic nerve, all the way down to the foot. And it traveled to my left side, I guess so it wouldn't feel negelected. And it began traveling up my back for good measure. That fibromyalgia's specialty, to greatly enhance any ouchie.

Desperate to loosen the muscles, I did the stretches I learned in PT when I was rehabbing the SI joint. I found that I physically couldn't move my legs in a certain direction, not so much because of pain but because they seemed to get stuck. That's when I realized that my back was no longer aligned properly.

I had to get a friend to drive me to the primary care doc's office because I was too busy crying and sweating and trying not to scream. Unfortunately, all the doc could do was to recommend ice packs and Baclofen and urge me to get to the osteopath. So I will make an appointment tomorrow, even though it will not be covered by my new insurance.

I've iced my back a few times, and it helps a tiny bit. And I've taken two Baclofen, which normally would knock me out to the point of being incoherent, but tonight it barely takes the edge off enough for me to be able to type this. I'm hoping I'm not looking at weeks of more therapy, especially since I'm no longer covered for it (I will be once I move to South Dakota).

The most frustrating part is that I still have a house to sell here. Dan is 600 miles away and can't help me. I have to be able to function well enough to organize a move once someone makes an offer on the house. That offer may come tomorrow, or it might come sometime around Christmas since it's taking an average of four to six months to sell in my area.

In the meantime, I guess all I can do is breathe in, breathe out.