Be Strong Like the Bamboo

It's been a while since I've blogged, and there is a reason. Since My birthday, September 29th, 2012. I have been preparing and working towards my upcoming art show called "Release the Butterflies", happening on July 13, 2013 at the Orpheum Annex in Vancouver, BC. I wanted to blog everything from the beginning and my day to day dealings and everything but it was too much to record. I decided to blog today because the month of April is coming to a close, and it's been by far my most difficult month of the year. It may not have seem very long. A month, but a lot can happen in a month. For most of the months before I was scouting out venues, and designing and building art easels for the upcoming show because it was too difficult to find someone I would be able to rent easels from in Vancouver. ( I will back blog for everyone which means everything on my blog dated September 2012 - April 29th, 2013 has been back dated. )

I pulled my back on April 4th lifting a big box into the car which was filled with art supplies.
I didn't think this would happen considering I lifted the box from the basement of my parents house, up the stairs and out onto the drive way.

April 5, 2013


 During the day I was still able to walk until the late afternoon around rolled 2-3:30pm about when the dog began to get bored and feeling bad and decided to take him out for a washroom break. I was able to slowly walk to the door, strap the leash on to him and head out of our building, just as I got outside to the cement pathway my back began to spasm and I found myself letting go of the leash and bracing myself against the concrete planter sidings along the path of my building. My legs felt like they were forced to go against my every being to want to stand up straight, and a hidden force of nature was pushing down on me to go onto all fours. I ended up on the ground, outside, on my knees and hands. Waiting for the muscles in my back to stop tensing up, and  my spine to stop feeling like it was trying to escape from my body. At this moment, I don't think of calling for help. If someone saw me fall, I would think they would come assist me, right? It's embarrassing, but compared to the pain, there is no such thing as embarrassment, in that time frame it did not exist. I crawl back up using the concrete siding, and call Koji over to my side so I can take hold of his leash and try my best to make it back in to the building. It takes me ten minutes to walk a few meters into the building. After reaching the internal hallways of my building, I fall to the ground again with another spasm. Koji looks at me in a daze, and looks down the hall for any one who may be approaching. I'm on my knees again, and this time I can't try to stand because my back will no long allow me to support the weight of my body being in the vertical position with out sending spasms in to my back turning my legs against me. Koji once and a while decides to lay down next to me as I slowly crawl to my door. My mission: to get back into the suite safely. I take about 20 minutes to crawl a few meters to my front door. I call Koji again he comforts me with a little kiss on the face, he sits before me as I command him to and allows me to use him to help myself sit up in a kneel, before trying to reach up to unlock my door and get back inside, close the door and lock it. I get inside quickly only to fall again in the kitchen, dropping my keys in the process. I brace myself always before falling and I'm down on my knees again and palms, my body does everything to force me to lay on my back, but with my back against the cold tiles was painful, as the spasm began to become more frequent. I start to cry and Koji lays beside me to let me know I'm not alone. I roll over to my stomach eventually and army crawl to my cellphone. Yeah, stupid me, left the cellphone inside when I took the dog out. The house phone rings, my cell phone rings, I become emotional because I can't reach neither of them. I'm army crawling and when I reach my cellphone I text B- to tell him what had happened. He texts me to see if I'm ok but he doesn't realize the severity of the series of events that has just occured. He soon requests a file for work. It being tax season, I believe everything is important during his work. I text him back asking how urgent he needed this file and he replies within the few hours. I army crawl to the office a few feet away and some how manage to prop myself up with his office chair, take his computer off sleep, find the file and send it to him via email. I text him that I uploaded the file and lay on the office floor for almost a half hour and I look over to Koji who is napping from the drama, before army crawling back to the living room area.


A few hours pass, and Koji becomes upset, IT'S DINNER TIME! We can't miss dinner time. It's all like clock work when it comes to him and dinner time, but lately he's been off since day light savings. I haven't had a spasm for few hours. I believe I'm alright, I use the sofa to prop myself up and make it to my feet. I walk, but ever so slowly to the kitchen, I find his food and scoop him some, my back starts to spasm a little and I try to pour his food in his bowl, I fail because I can't bend down to pour it correctly and when I do, from the height I am pouring it at, the food is bouncing back out of the bowl and some into his water dish. Koji, being him, cleans up after the mess I've made with his dinner. I start to spasm again and I move myself slowly onto my knees again and then onto the ground. It's 5:30pm. I'm away from my phone, again. I army crawl back to the living room, it takes me about 45 mins. I lay there the rest of the time, waiting for B- to come home. When he comes home, he finds me on my stomach. He did not realize the severity of things until he saw me in this state. I think he tries to analyze the condition I'm in and sees if he can get me off the ground and on my feet. He fails, we were 80% there until I try to stand upright, the spasms begin down my spine, my legs become weak and I yearn to go back onto the ground because it's too painful any other way. I can't help but cry. B- helps me down onto the ground, my back tenses up and I cry out, without knowing I'm breaking his heart. B- sees no other solution but to cancel our regular Friday night plans and calls for a non-emergency ambulance to go the hospital. We wait for an hour and half before they arrive. Two paramedics come, Jason and Jason, whom one strangely looks like an older version of my friend Jason. They take my heart rate, feel down my spine, press some muscles, rotate my hips and let me breathe in some oxygen with "medicine". All that didn't help me ease the pain, just made me feel a little funny, like numbing in my fingertips. They lift me up onto the stretcher, which was very painful for me. But after the initial lift, they did everything to make the trip to the hospital as easy as possible. I found the stretcher bed to be quite comfortable after being on the ground for so long. I don't remember being in the ambulance for too long before arriving at the hospital. During my trip to the hospital, Jason who sat with me in the back took my heart rate again, and tried to start an IV drip line for me but failed three times. So I ended up going into the hospital with bandages on both wrists. I waited to be checked in by the ambulance guys for 15 mins and was wheeled into a spot. Jason and Jason made me as comfortable as possible before leaving me there by myself at the Hospital. All in all when I was at the hospital, in the span of 5 hours, I was drugged 3 times. Why you might ask. Well the first time was given to me after the doctor saw me for about 1-5 minutes, he took my reflexes and then felt if my butt muscles were tense and listening to my pain symptoms said I had a slipped disc and needs strict bed rest for a few months only in a couple of days would I be able to be allowed to walk around and sit up . ( MONTHS?! - I think in my head - no way is that happening!) Then he prescribed a pain killer. During the last 3 hours I was there the nurses tried to get me to get up and walk around. ( I like how they encouraged someone with a spinal injury to get up and walk around when Doctor said not to do so) I was in so much pain when I tried to walk or even was up vertical for too long my back would start to cease up and the spasms would start. The first time I cried out in pain, they gave me more pain killers, the second time they gave me a sedative ( which worked in making me relaxed and sleepy ) By the end of it, I couldn't stay at the hospital and my dad who showed up at the hospital with my mom because my boyfriend had drove them there was had to be driven back to my parents house to get his Van to transport me home because it would take several hours more till there would be an ambulance available to take me home. I got home around midnight, feeling like a pin cushion, defeated and broken. Wondering who's phone number is on the info on wrist.

The next two weeks only having one rest day in between the two, I would go for acupuncture daily. It helped a lot and I experienced how much love my parents had for me. It felt like being driven so close to insanity and almost loving me so much I was about to be smothered to death by LOVE. I love my parents but only healthy to be in their presence can only be taken in - in doses. It didn't help that my mobility was restricted and I think that was amplifying a lot of the emotions I was to go through. I would lose the month of April, recovering from this injury and spend the month of May trying to make it back.


Now in June I am still not 100% but I push on working towards my art show.


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