Either Wednesday evening, or Thursday morning, I did something unpleasant to my back. I first noticed this while trying to get into Rocinante on Thursday morning. Climbing into a Jeep requires a bit of gymnastics on a good day. Trying to pull my left leg up into the Jeep, my back started screaming.

When I got out at the school bus stop, I almost couldn’t get back in, and it took me about a minute to take the handbrake off. When I got to work, I was pretty sure I would not be able to get out at all. But, being the loyal workaholic I am, I got out, almost collapsing in the process.

Sensible people would have gone home by this point, but I figured I’d at least check the schedule to see who I’d be ignoring by going home. And, of course, I was promptly sent to a customer site.

So, it was mostly getting down into a chair, and standing back up again, that were the problem. Once I was standing, I was mostly OK. So I tried to do desktop and server maintenance without ever actually sitting down. But after about an hour of that, I gave up and went to the doctor.

Seems I have a spinal bifida. It’s not clear that this is the source of the problem, but it’s just something the noticed in the xray. A spinal bifida means that there’s a bit missing from one of my vertebrae. This is often congenital, although it can be caused by trauma. But, I can’t seem to come up with anything I did that would have caused this, other than just generally being out of shape.

I feel a lot better today, but I’m still not particularly comfortable. Perhaps I’ll take this afternoon off and rest. I don’t want this to get any worse. Plus, I’m on 3 different drugs, and am feeling rather loopy.