Que Sera Sera

As soon as you take your vehicle in to a mechanic, it stops misbehaving and the awful noise goes missing. Ain’t it the truth?
I had an appointment with my doctor today because my lame back just didn’t seem to want to get any better.
Yes, I have a wonderful clinic that makes appointments on Saturdays and I have a lovely female doctor close to my age and actually get to see her and not a PA and she takes whatever time the rhythm of the appointment demands without seeming to be in any kind of a hurry.
As soon as I made the appointment Thursday for today, things changed. By Friday, most of the muscle spasm symptoms had diminished and bending to pick a toothpick off the floor was possible again. I didn’t even have to second guess the move — I just went down automatically, forgetting, and had no trouble getting back up. But then this morning, a knot in my right side woke me up at 6 am and wouldn’t let me go back to sleep. It wasn’t a muscle spasm, it was something else that wouldn’t relent.
“Oh no!” I thought, “The spasms were just the prelude to identifying a tumor lurking in there beneath the outside layers of flesh!!!”
You know how crazy the mind gets.
Of course, since I couldn’t sleep, I went right to the internet to look up what might be the cause of lingering back pain. Nothing seriously negative matched. The appointment was at 2 pm so I boiled water eventually to take a bath and wash my hair.
Yes, I still don’t have a hot water heater but that problem too, is getting resolved. And yes, it would have been lovely all through this to have been able to have had soaking hot baths.
As I moved around all morning, the constant ache that was not a spasm seemed to be fading away. There was still a certain feeling of there still being a knot, so I didn’t consider cancelling the appointment. Might as well face the bad news if there was any and if I didn’t go, the lame back would probably come back.
It seems that sometimes, just facing the facts gives one a feeling of more agency over any possibly horrible outcome. It’s that darned crazy mental inventing that is the biggest trouble.
The doctor said she could feel a little tension in the spot that I pointed the best that I could to and said it was likely from constantly clenching and ended up giving me some papers with exercises to do to strengthen the muscles that might have been needing some strengthening. She said I probably just moved wrong — that it could be something that simple and that none of my symptoms made her think anything different.
The worst part of it all has been the mental gymnastics that I have had to do to endure the getting through — first thinking it wouldn’t ever get better and that I might have to now live with this kind of pain and diminishment. I had always believed that I was going to be one of the lucky ones who would age well and be flexible and standing to the end. Thinking otherwise, has been a huge hurdle. I have always been so capable and to think that I might end up crippled was almost unbearable — but I tried to keep my spirits up and settle for whatever might become of me — que sera sera.
Facing aging isn’t for the faint of heart it’s said and I can attest to that.
But, now that the pain is subsiding and though I’ve never had a baby, I’ve heard that as soon as it’s over you forget it and I am feeling like “what was I thinking to be so pessimistic?”
I’m also sure that this is highly unlikely to be the last of the mental gymnastics that aging is going to impose on me but it might just have been that this has been an exercise in building mental muscles. We just don’t know what we don’t know. But for sure, this is a prescription for losing oneself in loving whatever there is that is good in life.
Que sera sera, I’ll have to say it again.

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