Bad back - written 2nd May

Notes from my sick bed


Actually I’m not exactly sick – more broken. I have done my back again. Which sounds like the sort of thing we all do at one point or another, with varying degrees of fortitude. Until I casually throw in phrases like ‘slipped disc’ or ‘nerve damage’. Then watch the sympathyometer creep up.

Anyway, sick bed sounds rather glamorous, as if I am being terribly brave, battling some disease whilst watching my Victorian sisters play hopscotch outside, and ideally getting worryingly wonderfully thin. As it happens, today was weightwatchers morning, and I lost 2.4lb. Well high fives all round! (If I could move.) That’s serious progress for someone who has lost an average 0.17lb a week for almost a year.

So the pain is god awful, and I am being typically unbrave about it. Lots of sharp intakes of breath, whimpers, sad faces. Though none of them put on – it is, did I mention, absofrigginglutely excruciating. I can’t walk, sitting is out, lying isn’t brilliant, and transitioning between any of them makes those closest to me in distance consider calling 999.

I think you’ve got the picture now. The only remotely good thing is the painkillers – should that have been ‘are’? Forgive me, I’m in a fug. This fug is partly induced by some tiny round pills that are a controlled substance. I know this because of the disastrous outing to Boots – well, all three of the local pharmacies in Acton – last time the disc prolapsed, and I limped along with the prescription from the private surgeon. Which wasn’t on the right colour form, because colour coding is crucial when it comes to foiling anyone trying to fraudulently obtain controlled substances in broad daylight from high street chemists. Surprisingly, I was less than understanding about this at the time. I may have cried. I may have rung the surgeon’s secretary and used my cross voice.

But this time, I made sure to get them from the private pharmacy downstairs at the London Bridge Hospital (yes, a jolly long way from Acton) before it closed at 6:30pm. And I look forward to taking them as much as my toddler does his yoghurt. Probably more. Thought he does get an actual jet of saliva squirting out of his mouth. I get a slight thrill from referring to them as ‘oxys’, because that’s what the substance-abusing mentor cop in Southland called them when he checked himself into rehab. Did you watch Southland? You should’ve. It was really good. And not just because it was made by the creators of ER, the best television programme ever made, where I go when I want to feel safe.

Normally, I wouldn’t be quite as genuinely annoyed about having done my back in, and having to lie down, take drugs and watch telly for six days. But I left my job last week. So I have no meetings to avoid, no frissons of ‘I’m home, it’s a weekday, I don’t have to get dressed’, no vast amounts of sleep to catch up on. Unfortunately, I had rather a nice week planned. On Monday, my mother was going to have the boy and I was going to Bicester Village to accidentally buy a dress to wear to weddings (you can never deliberately set out to buy anything at Bicester – it will jinx it). I mean, of all indulgences, can you think of anything better? (Oh crap, I was meant to buy my husband’s anniversary present there too. Help.) Mooching about, having a prolonged coffee over a magazine if it got too taxing, knowing in my heart I was going to buy that lace dress online anyway from such an uncool high street shop I am ashamed to type it. On a MONDAY.

Yeah well, woe is me. It is now Wednesday, and after two straight days of solo self-pity, I have a friend with small people coming to visit this morning, my dad for lunch (he’s doing the Dukan, I have to remain horizontal – it won’t be one of our famous lunches then) and an MRI in the afternoon. Manic.

I am very sad about my boy though. Even though he’s only spent one extra day at nursery so far, because I can’t pick him up, I am missing him awfully. I want to squidge him, crush him into me, blow raspberries on his fat bits. Though it’s quite nice being able to bark warning orders at my husband so he has to intervene with the annoying slash dangerous stuff – peeling paint off our bedroom windows and eating it, trying to top his battery up with my blackberry charger via his mouth, inspecting a fork a bit too closely ie actually touching his eye with it. The husband deserves a man of the match mention here, by the way. He has been a trouper. Each morning he gets all three of us dressed. Cooks in the evenings. Haemorrhages cash from his wallet to pay the cleaner, my taxi to London Bridge and back, etc. Really, it turns out I picked rather well. I feel pretty bad about that anniversary present.

The boy is delicious too. I know I go on about his hair, but it is especially great at the moment. It is totally his USP, that’s why I get in first with it. Because whenever I show someone a picture, they go “great hair”. Seeing as I can’t rough and tumble with him at the mo, I am trying harder to do some of that learning stuff. We’ve been trying ‘Logie, where’s your nose?’ but it usually only results in him replying with a beaming smile and doing the downward dog. Which is good enough for me.