Aug 23 2008
These Morning Aches and Pains
Morning Aches and Pains are becoming a real “pain” in the you-know-what.
Three days ago I worked outside in 99 degree heat for about four hours just patching knotholes and splits in cedar wood decking. After applying the patching putty, I had to sand it and then paint it. There were over 100 patches! The deck is 15 years old and has been painted about four times. The cedar decking is really showing its age. Speaking of “showing its age,” my lower back is so sore today that I am wearing one of those stretchy wrap-around support thingy’s (thingies?). I am using cold packs and then a heating pad, but I have to tell you, the deck patching will NOT be repeated again…ever! If that artifical deck planking, Trex or whatever, wasn’t so expensive, we would have replaced the deck by now.
I felt fine after the deck patching job was complete–really satisfied–even had a beer to celebrate. The next day, I mowed the lawn. About 10 percent of the yard is inside a fence for the dogs, so it is too confined for the riding mower, and I used a front-wheel drive walk-behind mower. There was also quite a bit of “weed-whacking” to do, and holding out the weed-whacker puts some strain on the lower back too. Yesterday, I did some digging to repair a sprinkler head that needed to be replaced and moved it about a foot over so it wouldn’t be soaking my recent deck extension. Anyway, more stress on the lower back. I first noticed the pain last night. Today it is much worse. I can’t sit in one position very long or I can hardly get up. What really irks me is that I am also wearing a knee brace, again, one of those stretchy wrap-around things. My bum knee, twisted somehow a couple of weeks ago, is getting a little better with cold packs. I need to work on strengthening it again. All-in-all, I sometimes feel like I am just falling apart. Too quickly too.
My problem partly is that I don’t realize how much stress I have placed on various parts of my aging body until it is too late; the damage has been done. The Danger of Overexertion is one of the dangers of retirement that I have written about previously. I have to learn to take it more slowly, test my limits first, gradually build up activity until the damage is properly healed. That’s another discovery: healing takes longer as we get older.
This getting older is tough; it’s not for the young.
