A few weeks ago, shortly after my birthday, I must have slept in a bad position, because for no apparent reason, I suddenly had severe back pain that hit me in the middle of the day. It got worse at night when I tried to sleep, but painkillers didn't work and I spent the next two weeks on the road unable to get more than a couple hours of sleep a night due to the pain waking me up constantly.

I thought it was just a particularly bad sprain, but it didn't get better, and once I got back home, I went to an urgent care clinic, and they took xrays and did tests, and they didn't seem to know exactly what was wrong, but they figured it was a muscle spasm, and prescribed several painkillers and a muscle relaxer to help me make it through the night. (at this point, I wasn't having pain during the day, just at night), and the pills greatly helped me sleep, and I went to Furry Fiesta with the pills. I tried lessening on the painkillers the first night, but got woken up by a dull pain, so decided to continue the painkillers during the con weekend. The hydrocodone and muscle relaxer kept me in a somewhat dull mental state and killed my sex drive somewhat, but I didn't have to deal with lack of sleep from pain at least.

After getting back from the con, while the pain has mostly died down and I can get by with just Naprosyn (prescription strength aleve basicaly), I was still having a lot of weakness in my rigt arm, and difficulty moving it into some positions. Biggest worry was the fact my scalpula on my right side was seriously winging (pushing outward) when using my right arm, so I went back to the urgent care place.

More xrays, and they ruled out any dislocation, but mentioned there may be issues with my rotator cuff, or possibly a pinched nerve screwing with the signals to my muscles making the ones connecting to my scalpula to not work in unison, so they are going to refer me to an orthopedic doctor (he said ortho, I'm assuming that's orthopedic) when I get back home from work in a couple weeks (I go on the road tomorrow)

I'm worried I may need surgery eventually, but I'll try a chiropractor before getting surgery, since I want to avoid that at all costs. Several family members have had back surgery and the recovery period was hell for all of them.

And as a bonus, I was informed by a radiologist that I have mild degenerative disc disease in my neck. They said that isn't bad enough to be able to cause any problems like what I'm experiencing now. But it sure doesn't bode well for my future health. My lifetime of horrible posture, lack of exercise, and sedentery lifestyle are catching up to me. Seems as soon as I hit 30, everything has started going downhill with my body. I'm 32 now. Wonder if I'll even be walking without a cane or walker by the time I'm 40.

I've been in a serious funk lately because of all this, so if I seem distant a lot, and less chatty than usual, this is the reason. I have severe anxiety and just the thought of my body wearing out prematurely has me terrified.