Teetering on the brink

As none of you know, I have a bad back. It began one summer night when I was 16 and, being somewhat tipsy, attempted to perform a kind of high wire act across the backs of the row of spectator seats at our local bowling alley. Not being especially well-balanced, and drunk, I mis-stepped and fell... landing on my coccyx. X-rays and examinations were not performed until after school started and I found myself unable to sit up the morning after having done some sit-ups in Phys Ed.

Although I was warned by the doctor that I might suffer future pain if I did not wear the girdle he prescribed daily until he told me otherwise and I that I would doom myself to needing a cane by the time I was 30, I wore the corset for a total of two weeks before tossing it on the floor of my closet where it was quickly buried under other things I no longer wore or cared about. Basically, it forced me to sit up straight and I figured I could do that on my own.

It was manageable enough that I made it through boot camp (we did no sit-ups during basic... oddly) and my Navy days without a problem.

I still cannot do sit-ups without suffering an incredibly sore back. And there are times when I stress out support muscles and suffer for several days with excruciating pain. It feels like my upper body is sitting on a tiny ball bearing at a point just below my hip line. Picture two pyramids with the top one upside down, balanced on a ball bearing set on the tip of the lower one. This is the mental image I have of what goes on in my spine.

The agony is such that I must be careful as I walk, stepping off a curb (or down a stair step) feels as if my vertebrae are being smashed together. To avoid this condition, I cannot wear shoes with hard plastic heels, I cannot stand for longer than 15 minutes (this has shrunk from 1 hour in my late teens and early 20's) in one place.

I tell you all this not because I am going through this agony at the moment. But because it is also my view of the economy in general over the last 20 years. It has teetered precariously , threatening to tip over and fall into a permanent depression. This also describes my life. A balancing act between comfort and pain.

All of this came to mind because I am in the beginning stages of a lawsuit against a CPA who denied my mother a stipend she was entitled to under a trust left by her former employer. And my lawyer died of a heart attack two nights ago.