This one weird trick fixed my back pain (hint: Bed Log)

On the time my body stopped working.

After a good run of around 43 years, it seems my body has decided it has a problem with lying horizontal for long periods. Which is inconvenient, to say the least.

It’s my back that’s the problem. I’ve been waking up in pain during the night. A deep, unrelenting ache and twisting of muscles means that I’m unable to find a comfortable position.

Week one I’m still thinking it’ll blow over. One or two physio appointments and I’ll be fine. Then week two rolls around, and I’ve settled into a new morning routine. In my sleep deprived, aching state, I analyse the previous night: what worked, what didn’t. This is the thing that keeps me on track early on. Holds the despair at bay.

If you’ve ever had to deal with a persistent health problem, there’s a particular kind of fatigue that hits once you’ve seen your third or fourth medical professional. Each time having to start from the beginning. Yes, I’ve tried this. No, that didn’t work.

Because of this, I find AI to be a welcome source of relief. Yes, the current AI chat platforms may be factually incorrect on occasion, prone to hallucinations or just blatant pandering - but any excuse to not have to explain myself again.

A doctor eventually prescribes me some opioids, which makes me nervous, but this too buys me some relief. And sleep.

If a health problem drags on long enough, you also slowly start to become an expert in your own ailment. Which is both necessary and depressing. It’s given me a new skill set; within a matter of minutes I can sniff out if a medical professional is floundering, and whether I’ve wasted my time.

And then there’s all the information fatigue. Weeding out what to pay attention to - what’s relevant and what’s bogus. That takes effort too.

Mum texts me about Grandpop. Reminds me how he used to hang upside down twice a day to fix his back.

My Grandpop is part of the family folklore and gets referenced often. How he apparently not only fixed his back by hanging upside down every day, but also sported a full head of brown hair well into his retirement years. This being attributed to all the hanging upside down; something to do with the blood running to his head.

He also suffered with gut issues, something he managed to keep at bay through a dogged commitment to chewing fifty-two times per mouthful. According to my Dad, this made meal times with Grandpop a real slog, and as a result I don’t think my grandparents got invited to many dinner parties. The fact that he could sometimes be a bit of a surly bugger probably didn’t help either.

‘Remember your Dad set up that old door on a 45 degree angle out the back of the house, and it had loopholes for your feet’ Mum’s text reads. ‘Scott [my brother] used it a few times when he had problems with his back’.

Even though my Grandpop is long gone, his legacy still lives on in our family. Modern medicine may have come on in leaps and bounds in recent years, but we’ll be fine stretching our spines out on an old door, thanks.

Had I been tempted to go door shopping, the fact that we are full-time house sitters means each purchase is done thoughtfully and carefully, knowing that space is limited in our small hatchback. And I’m not confident I’ll be able to talk KB into a door being added to the mix. Although I suppose we could strap it to the roof.

After a few other duds, I find a new physio that offers a bit more hope. I decide not to tell him about my Grandpop, or the door.

At the three week mark, we move into a very old, stone cottage in the country. Out along a dusty gravel road.

Not off the back of advice from my physio either. From a medical standpoint, I daresay it would have been strongly discouraged.

This is a time where being full-time house sitters doesn’t work in your favour. Moving semi-regularly creates unpredictability, and so there couldn’t have been a much worse decision at this point in terms of my recovery. Or lack thereof.

Despite the warm early Autumn weather, stepping inside the cottage you are accosted by a heavy, cold air. The kind of deep cold that gets into your joints. Thick stone walls like this are indifferent to the outside elements. Should the planet eventually become unlivable due to climate change or some other doomsday scenario, those left to pick up the pieces and start again will be the cockroaches and whichever (un)lucky sod happens to be inside this stone wall fortress at the time.

The inside is a vintage collector’s dream. Couches and chairs with curly wooden feet are covered by handmade blankets, layered with more handmade blankets. A dusty record player and enviable record collection sits in the corner. Every wall has an ornate mirror. For some reason the main bedroom has 10 on one wall. This does nothing for the feng shui, but skyrockets the spookiness up to 11. As does the solitary blue paint-chipped child’s chair next to the pot belly fireplace. There are endless knick knacks covering every spare surface. On a coffee table is a magazine with instructions on how to weave your own eel trap. And of most importance, the bed looks like it might be the same one slept in by the Bucket family in the original Charlie and the Chocolate Factory film. All in all, there appears to be zero ergonomics to speak of.

Perfect for catching eels and long, slender members of the general public.

One final note on our lodgings in regards to the lighting, which is that: there is none. Light fixtures feebly cast out their luminance against the weighty gloom. Each room has a single small window which provides about as much sunlight as if you’d fallen down a well.

Under different circumstances, I might have found it all quite charming. An adventure even. The four days and nights we are here though instead feel brutal.

And so in these new surroundings, I pick up my routine where I left off. Each night after a couple of hours of sleep, the pain forces me up and I take my pain meds, apply my heat pack and try not to let my mind go to dark places.

I consider that if there is a low point, it might be this. In fact, I hope it is this. Pain is isolating and lonely, and sometimes confusing. As it turns out, never more so than when it’s 2am and you are sitting on handmade rugs on top of handmade rugs on top of antique couches, amongst more mirrors than walls and a tiny blue paint-chipped child’s chair, in a stone cottage out along a dusty road.

Pain eventually wears you down after a while as well. It slowly chips the paint off you. It’s a reminder that you are not an impenetrable stone cottage. You are a fragile casing of muscle and bone. You are susceptible to the elements.

Back during daylight hours, I make a booking to see a local physio in town. The pain has shifted and I want to understand why. Is this good? How can I fix it? The physio is not much help. They look confused and by the end, suggest I get some scans, and I walk away having lightened more of my bank account and none of my mood.

Afterwards I walk around in the warm Autumn sun and try to let the warmth seep into my joints. Letting as much as I can in through the cracks before having to return back to the cottage. Back to the comforting embrace of AI, where together we will hatch a new plan for the night. Laptop glowing like a light at the end of a tunnel.

Since it all began I have put parts of my life on hold, because that’s what you do during a crisis. If your house is on fire, you focus all your attention on putting the fire out. You turn down plans to go out for cocktails. Sorry, you say in your group chat, I don’t think I can come out for cocktails tomorrow night because my house is on fire, so all my attention is on that currently. Maybe next week?

But then next week becomes the following week. Then it hits a month. And a month feels like a long time for a house to be on fire. No one seems to be panicking either. The professionals tell you it’s fine but it doesn’t seem fine. Then eventually you decide to go out for cocktails and pretend like your house isn’t on fire. And you try to ignore the troubling thought that keeps appearing in your brain, which is: What if this is just my life now? What if the fire never goes out?

At the one month mark I have a very small breakthrough: I try propping up various parts of my body with pillows and rugs in bed - something that had not worked initially but on this occasion I actually manage to find a small amount of relief.

This lasts two nights in the stone cottage before we move again. Back to the city mercifully, but also onto a new mattress. One that sags in the middle, and so I find myself back to square one. I keep trying different combinations until I find something that works again. I visit a sleep store and buy myself a new head pillow as well as a body pillow, which I nickname Bed Log. By now I’m sleeping with so much plush padding that someone could have put a cardboard box around me and posted me overseas. At this point, I’m open to anything. Maybe the rumbling of the cargo bay will be soothing?

This marks the start of a new bedtime routine, and each night I grip onto Bed Log and ride off into the night. And I can sense the flames starting to die down.

On one particular day when I was struggling mentally, I’d gone for a run. Following a path next to a creek, the water moving at a good clip from recent rainfall, my running playlist in my headphones. And on the way back, just as I was hitting a sizeable hill, a particularly uplifting song came on. Normally this would have given me a boost, but instead I just felt emotional.

The last month had taken its toll. I felt weak and frail in my body. I was tired physically and mentally, and at times, terrified about what was happening to me. The new sleeping arrangement had provided a glimmer of hope, as had my new physiotherapist, but I’d had so many setbacks already and at this point, nothing was guaranteed. It was also unnerving how much of it had all come down to trial and error, and luck. To be project managing your own health issue in this day and age, and with access to so much more information and resources - if you’re that lucky - ultimately requires immense discernment. In the end, I am on the path to fixing my back using essentially the same approach as my Grandpop. Fuck around and find out.

A good friend recently shared a letter with KB and I about her struggles with her chronic pain journey. One that has been going on for four years - a timeframe, and level of complexity and upheaval that I cannot possibly comprehend.

And at the end of the letter was this quote:

People speak of hope as if it is this delicate, ephemeral thing made of whispers and spider webs. It’s not. Hope has dirt on her face, blood on her knuckles, the grit of cobblestones in her hair, and just spat out a tooth as she rises for another go (source: @CrowsFault).

Perhaps it’s this that I have rattling around in the background during my run, when I have this thought: we are not innately equipped to handle big difficult things. But we become someone who can through the process of facing it. Not the entirety of it, but by facing each day as it comes.

Yes. Apparently, this was my great realisation. Literally, just taking it one day at a time.

And so when the moment came, I ran up the hill with uplifting music playing in my ears, and the whole way up thinking: God, what a fucking cliche.

And now a metaphor about climbing a hill. I mean, honestly.

Tragic.

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As of writing this, eight weeks on, I am almost entirely pain-free and sleeping normally. Although I am still very much taking it one day at a time, and as a result, continue to sleep with Bed Log every night. Our hatchback has never been more full, but it still carries its original amount of doors and so I count that as a win.

Hey, it’s been a while. Thanks for reading this far. It felt good to put everything that’s been happening into a new post. Let me know what you thought in the comments, and if any of this felt relatable. Do you sleep with your own Bed Log? Have you ever weaved your own eel trap? If so, would love to see photos. Also, shout out to my wife who laughed at the Bed Log drawing because it looked rude (to be fair to her, it does). Finally, please give that like/heart button a click too or share the post with someone who might appreciate it.

Hope you’re all well and healthy, and I’ll see you next month with a new post!