Think Before You Sleep
2 weeks ago (edited)
I just got out of the emergency room. A few hours ago I injured my back doing bent over rows and fell down crippled unable to move on my floor waiting to see if I could walk it off. After about an hour of staring at my treadmill, I had my family come over. When they couldn't help me move we called the paramedics and it REALLY hurt like hell to get from the floor to the ambulance.
The paramedics gave me some IV Tylenol and after I got to the hospital, I was still completely immobilized and had a lot of trouble moving so of course I had to be moved a bunch of times when I got there. Fortunately the technology they have these days for moving patients with spinal injuries is pretty good. About an hour after I got to the hospital they did a CT scan and shot me up with like 4 different drugs. The doctor came back with the results and I was very relieved to hear that I will be able to keep the use of my legs. I had a very slightly herniated disc between L5 and S1 which is effectively like getting pulled over and getting off with a warning after going 30mph over the speed limit. They then told me to get up but I refused because I still could not move despite all the drugs. After about 10 minutes of them telling me to not be a wuss, we did things very slowly, I was actually able to get up, walk around the ER and in about 5 minutes I was almost perfectly fine. It's incredibe to go from bed ridden and crippled to walking almost like nothing happened in just a few hours. My back does still hurt though.
I'm very thankful for my family in friends, without which, I would probably be dead right now. Or something. I was very lucky to have had my phone within reach or I would have been stuck on the ground because I was stupid and didn't activate the google voice assistant in case of emergencies. Lesson learned.
Moving forward as soon as I heal I will be dropping down my weight and increasing the number of reps. I think I got a little to stubborn after I got sick for 3 weeks and was unwilling to lower the weight when I lost strength. Probably going to go more to the 10-15 rep range instead of 8-10. And I will be watching posture and form videos for the next several weeks because I probably was doing something wrong.
Stay safe everyone and be careful when you are working out. I got very lucky today that it wasn't something worse. Being able to put 20 more pounds on the barbell is not worth it.
Enjoy the obligatory ugly emergency room photo with smelly old workout t-shirt