I’ve been in varying amounts of pain since [the fall](http://www.flyingsquirrel.ca/index.php/2007/03/19/winters-final-crushing-blow/). That was nearly two months ago now. Cracked ribs are meant to heal in 4-6 weeks.
And I think they did. The ribs themselves seem fine. It’s my back that’s the problem.
My sister’s some sort of athletic therapist or something. To be honest, I never figured out exactly what she does. She travels around with sports teams and tends to injured players, fits people for braces and that sort of thing. It’s all very mysterious. Anyway, she told me I should book an appointment for physiotherapy or something.
And then she remembered that one of her former classmates worked for a clinic in Kitchener. She started instant messaging him while she was talking to me and figured out a bunch of the details for me regarding insurance and whatnot. I called the next day and booked an appointment.
I drove down on Wednesday and sat on a bench and he asked me questions and stuff to ascertain how I was in pain. Not entirely easy to answer, though, because at that moment, I wasn’t, much. If I take it easy I’m fine. It’s only from sitting upright, standing or walking that I have problems. He checked out the ribs and they seemed okay, felt around for bad spine stuff, and that seemed generally to be in order as well. Then he worked out one of the muscles in my back. You know… massage.
Muscles spasm to protect a broken bone. I guess the stabilizer muscles in my back did that and have stayed tensed up. Or something. He didn’t give me that much of an explanation. Whatever he did to that side of my back, though, it seems to have worked. The other side is bothering me a lot more, where it wasn’t nearly as bad. So I’ll get him to work on that one next week.
I’m very glad that it wasn’t some horrible spine thing.
My back’s still pretty weak, so I’m not going to push anything too far. I did manage to mow the front lawn today, though, and I’m quite happy about that. Maybe next weekend I can sow some grass seed and get some gardening done.