This February was off to a rough start from day one. My lower back and neck pain aggravated so much that I couldn’t move freely. No wonder. I had been spending five to six hours daily on an urgent book translation for about a week. What with the translation and my usual duties as a mom and homemaker, I barely managed five hours of sleep. Exercise was not nonexistent, but it was mainly as a parent participant at Kids’ yoga and Kids’ Zumba classes or adult Glitz dance classes.
Thankfully, this time, I got my warning in time. At least I could move, albeit with excruciating pain. But I could feel that if I pushed it further, I would be in a similar place as a decade ago, when I was hospitalized for a month. Why so long? Well, mainly because the Korean Medicine hospital I chose specializes in non-invasive treatments such as acupuncture, physical therapy, and herbal medicine. Not that my condition wasn’t serious. I could barely lift myself and sit up, let alone walk. Even with intensive care of two acupuncture sessions a day, herbal medicine, chuna manipulation (similar to chiropractic), and physical therapy, it took me about a week to stand on my own.
I called an acupuncturist nearby that a friend recommended and got a same-day appointment. I didn’t even bother to contact Kaiser, because I knew I could never get a same-day appointment, let alone treatment. (If there’s one thing that I hate and don’t understand about the US, it’s the health care and insurance system, but that’s a topic for another day.) At the acupuncture clinic, I summoned my husband from work to pick up Sia later. The acupuncturist said to drop everything and rest. Thus began my 10-day bed rest.
Being bed-ridden was… blissful. Sure, I wanted to move around. I felt bad that I couldn’t do much. But how I enjoyed my well-deserved rest! Almost no housework except a little cooking and dishes, no driving, and much less tending to the whims and demands of my clingy, albeit lovely daughter. (Unsurprisingly, my husband looked worse day by day.) I was tempted to extend my “leave,” but then this happened.
One evening, Sia asked me whether I saw the drawing she had left on our whiteboard in the morning before leaving for school. I hadn’t. She urged me to look. She explained that I (the small stick figure in the middle) was lying down in bed, and that made Sia (the little girl on the left) and Daddy (the little guy on the right) feel sad. The big X stands for no more of this. She’s sending a big heart to make me feel better and a sweet note.
After one week of strict bed rest, a trial of a week to slowly getting back to usual, and two straight weekends spent without me, I could see that Sia was missing me a lot. In the mornings, she left for school after giving me a bear hug and a kiss. She was constantly leaving me notes with drawings. She was ever so sweet and gentle.
This is the second week I’ve returned to my normal routine. Sia’s school is on a break for the week following President’s Day. We are spending so much time together as if to make up for the past two weeks. It would be an understatement to say that it has not been easy. My lower back and shoulders still feel stiff and painful sometimes. Sia is throwing tantrums as I write. Still, I’m thankful that I am writing this post, seated in front of my desk with relatively no pain.
Uz's Alley 