Mowing and Back Spasms

Well.  Joe had a one-track mind Thursday morning - mowing. He got up and out there mowing without saying hello, getting a drink of OJ or anything. I mean, I was in the kitchen making coffee when I heard the mower. You gotta laugh.

I wasn't last night. Laughing, that is. I was trying to watch "So You Think You Can Dance," and Joe and that mowing obsession made me miss the first part of 5 dances. First it was start the mower. Then when it quit, it was restart the mower. This mower doesn't want to restart quickly; I don't know why. I told him to let it sit. In five minutes, he was on me to start the mower. Too early. He let it sit for another 15, and it started. Ten minutes later, he let it quit again. After another false start, he finally decided that since it was after 8:00 p.m. it was too late.

So Thursday morning after mowing about 10 rows across the yard, I heard the mower quit. After a few minutes when Dad hadn't come into the house, I checked on him, and he was sweeping clippings off the driveway. He came into the house saying, "Oh. Oh." As he walked in the door, he said his back was broke.

As humorous as that might appear, say, as a way of saying what he had just done had worn him out, in reality this could be a very bad thing. Dad has suffered from a back thing as long as I remember. Sometimes, for no apparent reason, his back simply goes "out." It can range from a few days of an achy back and his walking crooked to dropping him to the floor in a split second with muscle spasms.

The muscle spasms can put him in the bed for a few days.  I've never quite known just how bad Dad's back really was. As the typical sick man wanting to be babied, he's the epitome. He's rarely sick, but when he is, he's pathetic. Moaning and groaning. Lordy, don't ever be around if he has a stomach flu.

I've seen him drop to the floor in the living room screaming, "Don't touch me. Don't touch me." I don't have a chronic bad back, but I've had a few spates of back spasms in my life - probably four. Whenever my back "goes out," believe me, I've wanted help getting sat back down. Anyway, my childhood memory doesn't contain just how Mother handled getting him to bed or off the floor. It just contains the scare of Daddy dropping to the floor screaming.

I surely hope he's not going to have a spell of back spasms and need to be in the bed. Lola's not competent enough anymore to handle it, and I'm certainly not the balm Joe will need.

I got him breakfast and got some Ibuprofen in him. I'm keeping my fingers crossed he sits most of the day and lets this back thing calm down rather than trying to locomotive his way through it.