THEM BONES

"I don't wannt a be krippled kracked
shoulders wrists knees and back
ground to dust and ash
crawling on all fours."

[The first stanza of "bones" as written and performed by Radiohead, from their EMI CD, the bends]


Over a month since the last entry. Much too much time between posts, I know. But there are some real reasons for that overlong silence, both good and, unfortunately, many not so good. And while I don't typically care to discuss my personal problems publicly, I realize that I do owe both an apology and some kind of explanation for the long delay.

So. "What happened, and what's been going on?"

Well, the major and overriding reason can be traced to some pretty terrible back problems. I've had various problems with my spine for over 20 years now, all arising from a major accident in my senior year of high school caused by a passed-out drunken driver who hit my vehicle head on at about sixty miles an hour. Really put a crimp in my day and, more importantly to present purposes, my back. Nothing major at that point, mainly a hip and a few other joints slightly out of place. Kind of trivial problems, given that I should have died, yet somehow emerged from the wreckage with those hidden injuries, along with a bone-deep cut bisecting my right eyebrow and a broken right hand. However, while the last two, more obvious, injuries were promptly dealt with, the seemingly insignificant fact that my hip was knocked out of alignment was overlooked, along with any long-term consequences arising from that "unimportant" condition.

Flash forward just over a decade, to when I was beginning my PhD studies [in Theatre, with a concentration in performance theory and criticism] at Florida State University. That's when the first real signs of trouble manifested themselves as a piercing pain in my lower left shoulder blade; the closest I've ever come to describing this pain is comparing that discomfort to the results of sticking an ice pick deep into someone's back muscles, before rapidly rotating and wildly twisting it so that all the meat under the skin surface would be torn asunder.

Yeah, it kinda hurt. Constantly, and without interruption except in intensity.All of which made reading the heavy and high-minded theory and criticism necessary to my pursuing that my degree rather difficult at best. Often, it was simply impossible to keep focused upon the page, much less the meaning it might convey.

So I went to the health center, where an X ray revealed that I had developed a 30% scoliosis of the spine. Which explained the sharp and dull pains alike, as well as why I "naturally" held my head at a 15 degree angle to the side most of the time, although I was convinced that it was level with the horizon.

I won't bore you with further details of finding my way through the "cures" offered by traditional medicine at that time, aside from noting that it mainly consisted of offers for life-long prescriptions to some truly powerful--and stupor-inducing--painkillers, combined with having my spine "welded" straight and kept in that position by a steel rod which would run from the base of my skull to the middle of my back, thus making turning my head [among many other normal activities] literally impossible. Nor will I wax poetic over my discovery of chiropractic care, which, along with therapeutic massage, has been the only method that seemed to alleviate and even correct the damage. All I've got to say on that front is that, at present, I have no curvature of the spine and generally am able to hold my head level with little problem, thank you very much. Still, no matter how good the chiro might be, and I've been treated by some truly amazing and capable healers working in that field, some permanent and rather serious damage had been done to my body's framework.

Now flash forward once more to a period about two years past, when I again began experiencing some of those same, terrible pains which alerted me to the problem in the first place, decades ago. Naturally, I went to my chiropractor to deal with it, and to find out what had caused the old problems to reappear.

And that's when I discovered that my back had deteriorated to the point where I was unable to lift more than 25 pounds without injuring myself in some really horrible and painful ways. Worse, it seems that it's a permanent condition. And stress and working too hard and/or long will cause further pain and [you guessed it!] further damage to my ailing back.

Which all means, of course, that I had to completely alter the manner and length of how I work, and how I live my life. Much of it amounts to good time and health management, such as making myself take a 15 minute break every hour from desk work, and exercising more regularly and carefully. For the most part, these are minor changes. But the margin for error is extraordinarily slim in my particular case, and a simple oversight or overworking even a little bit can have some fairly major, and immediately painful, consequences.

Still, life and work don't always allow for such luxuries as a quarter hour break every hour at work. And then there's the fact that a lot of what I do for a living, such as working on a computer or reading the massive trade editions I tend to favor, aren't exactly what the doctor ordered. By now, I'm sure that you're beginning to get an idea of what I deal with on a daily basis, so I won't belabor this point. And, again, I ask that you remember that I'm honestly not looking for sympathy or trying to excuse my long absence from this blog; I'd just like to give you a fair idea of why I haven't been here for a bit.

Well, as it turns out, really detailed editorial work--what most folks refer to as "line editing," where you go through a text quite literally word by word by punctuation mark by word, making corrections and suggestions--is one of the worst things for my back. That, and transcription.

And guess what the past few months have been overflowing with? Yep, metric tons of both line editing and transcription.

All of which left me not only exhausted, physically and mentally, but also in extreme pain. Which, in turn, made even the thought of sitting down to write anything I didn't have to, well, more than a little daunting.

Things have, thankfully, eased up considerably of late, but the recent stress and long hours have taken a bit of a toll. I honestly didn't realize how large a toll until I began contemplating writing this entry, and gathering together the what I'd read over the past month to consider reviewing them. That's when I realized that I'd read only one book, the first Little Lulu trade from Dark Horse, over the course of about three weeks. By way of contrast, in the past week I've read two more Lulu collections, the latest Captain America Masterworks and a novel--still a bit slow, but more typical for me. A good sign, that, and one which bodes well for my return to regularly posting updates here.

Anyway, that's the story behind my extended leave from these pages. I plan on adding to this blog on a steady basis for the rest of this year, and for the foreseeable future. There will be an occasional break, for travel and other purposes, but I'm hoping that those quiet spots will be short lived and pass quickly. Also, I'll do my best to keep you updated regarding those periods as they arise, and how long they're expected to last, in the future. If things work out half as well as I'm hoping, most regular readers of this blog won't even necessarily be aware of them.

In closing, I'd like to thank for your understanding, and continued support of my endeavors. Look for another update within the next few days, when I'll return to my usual comics-related criticism, commentary, and reviews of what I've been reading. In the meantime, take care of yourselves.