Laid up!

Laid up with a bad, bad back ache is what I have been of late. And it is beyond horrible.

In between visits to specialists, trips to the hospital and sending a fairly hysterical e-mail to the one professor I know at the Wits Medical School I have been going in to the office. Hobbling like a geriatric and sitting gingerly with my pink bunny hot water bottle neatly place against the small of my back - but present and at work all the same.

Life goes on and papers go out daily - but it's not so much fun to be part of the process when your back is sore and drains all your energy and enthusiasm to the point where you watch the clock and count down the hours til you can go home and lie down.

But it has not been all bad news. Oh no - I was booked into hospital for a mylogram which, I was told, is a hideous test where you get dye injected into your spinal cord. And that's the fun part.Then you have to lie flat for 24 hours so your spinal fluid doesn't leak out, and you get a crushing headache. However, the radiographers who do this procedure took pity on me and decided to try and see if they could rather do an MRI. This is a whole lot better, and it actually worked!

I got to lie down in a hospital gown, get wheeled into a tunnel and then wait for what felt like about an hour while machines took pictures of what was going on. It was a big machine and I had to wear massive earphones because it all sounded like a bunch of jackhammers around me - but I was not going to complain! It all makes your body weirdly hot, so winds are blasted on you throughout the whole process.

I discovered the power of visualisation as I imagined myself raving it up at Ibiza (never been there, but I figure it's an island, there must be beach breezes) with the thump-thump-thump in my ears being nothing more than really loud, bad techno tunes. And hey presto, it was all over.

Then more specialists, more fights as I declined their polite offers of spine fusion surgery.

So far I am winning.

I got fitted for a lumbar corset today, and on Tuesday I go into hospital for an epidural and spinal block procedure.

Let's hope it works and that I get to spend a few more months happily living my life before I go under the the knife.