A Minor Crisis

Sitting marking this morning, around 10.00, I suffered an excruciatingly painful spasm in my back. The strange thing was that I hadn't actually changed my position or moved in the slightest when the spasm struck. It felt like an electric shock, and for a couple of hours afterwards I could hardly move at all. I needed to walk bent over and lying flat on the floor did little to alleviate the pain.

I didn't have much choice, however, but to keep on marking, kneeling at the coffee table, since sitting in the chair at the dining table, where I'd experienced the spasm, felt impossible. The remarkable thing was though that after two hours and taking a couple of pain-killers the initial trauma of it all seemed to suddenly dissipate. Since that time I've felt uncomfortable certainly, but the sense of having done real damage, which was so acute in the immediate aftermath of the spasm, has gone almost entirely.

I've managed to get through quite a bit of work today, something I severely doubted would be the case this morning. I've also managed to almost finish Boswell's Life of Johnson. Reading about the real extended crisis of Johnson's painful final months certainly put my own difficulties into perspective.