Spinal Tapped Out

Reporting to you live from: horizontal position.

Welcome back to Where In The World Is Indie Scientist, the blog where I get to tell you about all of my travels and live music experiences. Today, I am reporting to you from the most exciting place on Earth: my bed!

Unfortunately the horrors persist, and I did not make it out of 2025 without getting pummeled by one of the most painful maladies - throwing out your back.

If you’ve followed my past blogs, you would know I am no stranger to this phenomenon. This is the third time it’s happened in the past four years, but it has been the worst bout by far. And I would love to say that it resulted from doing something cool or dangerous, like dune buggy-ing or backpacking through the Alps. But like most injuries I’ve incurred, it resulted from the mundane - I was sitting down, went to stand up, and couldn’t use my legs.

Me fr.

If you’ve never encountered back spasms, they are very harrowing - shooting pain across your body with any slight movement. Just like Hades’ most disloyal cronies, Pain and Panic quickly flew to my side, and I tried to get myself to a place where I could ask for help. Luckily this occurred while spending the holidays at my parents’ house, so I called for my mother with my best “Mom, I frew up” voice after finding myself passed out on the floor (fainting, that’s a fun new symptom!). There’s nothing more humbling than having your parents help you change your pajamas or act as human crutches to transport you to the bathroom so you don’t piss yourself.

As I mentioned above, these back problems have been following me for awhile, and luckily I had some medicine on me that was prescribed to me before my big summer abroad. The steroids did what they needed to do to tackle the worst of the back spasms, but the lingering back pain and sciatica is the longer battle to overcome. I took up residency in my dad’s Sleep Number bed, and started the year off by tackling a ton of movies on my Letterboxd watchlist. I was doing all I could to take it easy, committing to my previous physical therapy stretches, consuming a myriad of NSAIDs and muscle relaxers, and regaining some strength to take small walks around the house and yard. But make one wrong move and you’re thrown backwards, and the process repeats.

Even my coworkers know my constant struggles.

Despite having been here before, and “overcoming” my past injury, there’s something about experiencing non-relenting pain that makes it hard to ever imagine another state of being. Have you ever had a bad head cold and made wagers to an all-powerful being that you would never take breathing through your nose for granted again? Sometimes it feels like my body will never be wholly functioning again. Each year, the recovery process seems to get worse - gradual improvements are followed by swift setbacks. It can feel soul crushing to feel like you are going through the “right” motions and not seeing any change. The self-punishment triples down upon itself, and then comes the internal berating for the choices you have and have not made: not being active enough, or pushing too hard. I feel better on the move until I don’t, and then I don’t feel like I want to move at all, and that ends up being worse.

Kathy Bates is my scoliosis, coming back to haunt me.

Enduring chronic pain can also feel incredibly isolating. I felt like I was trapped inside a snowglobe containing my parents’ house, perpetual flutters coming down outside and no escape (ironically, I also chose to re-watch Misery during this time). I had to cancel New Year’s plans, and then NYC plans, and then any plans to return to Philly, not really knowing if or when I was going to be ready to travel again. It was incredibly demoralizing, and my mental health was definitely taking a beating. And with that there’s the deep desire for someone to understand and commiserate about what you are going through, to solve your problems, and to lift you along the way to recovery. And you don’t always get that, or at least at the intensity you desire when you are in that headspace.

At the same time, I think that many people can relate to something like this at some point in their life. Pain comes in many forms, whether physical or mental, and it often comes at you quick and without warning. I’m not really sure there’s a way that we can ever be prepared for it, and yet our first reaction to dealing with it is the desire to get to a past or future version of ourselves. It is (literally) uncomfortable to sit with the pain and face it head on. There’s only so many times you can hear the advice “listen to your body” before you frustratingly say, “Well maybe my body is stupid and I should discard it in the sea!”

That advice is hard to swallow when your body has been constantly nagging you. Multiple people (usually men I don’t know that well) have told me that I’m too young to have these pains and I should just exercise, and while I joke about being an old woman amongst friends, that commentary is kind of belittling. The fact is that I’ve been facing ailments “not fit for my age” for a majority of my life, to the point that I just have to laugh at the normality of it all. From chronic migraines to scoliosis to concussions to sprains, the health history on my hospital chart gives CVS receipts a run for their money. And while I have a few diagnoses, there’s no simple fix to make them all go away. I’ve developed this complex where I’m reliant on medical professionals to tell me what I have isn’t something worse, and yet distrustful or discouraged from seeking medical help as I’m often not “solved” in the end. Add that on top of years of misdiagnosed chronic pain and an unreliable national medical system, and it’s easy to end up in a place of defeat (you can read more about my four year battle with chronic appendicitis here).

I understand that there are solutions out there that can mitigate these issues, and I can see that’s what people on the outside are trying to push me toward. At the end of the day, I understand that my existing lifestyle is not helping these issues, and I need to make some adjustments. But my wish is for society to kind of adjust to an “recognize first, recommend second” sort of policy. It’s something that I’ve been trying to work on myself to be a better friend to others, and it’s probably something that I should work harder on to be a better friend to myself. When you’re locked into a state of pain, it’s hard to acknowledge behavioral change, especially if you are physically incapable of making those changes in that moment. Sometimes you just need relief.

Obviously, one of the biggest compromises that I’ve had to make as a result of this is taking a step back from live music experiences. So far, I’ve had to miss my lifetime favorites We Are Scientists perform their debut album in New York City, and UK post-punk band Shame perform at a small church basement show in Philly (I did cheat and attend a 30 min live radio show, and definitely learned that was my limit after not walking much for weeks). While this sacrifice might not feel brutal to others, it has felt brutal to me. Traveling and seeing live music sort of feel crucial to my identity at this point, and give me so much vitality when my brain is struggling - to physically not be able to do that and simultaneously endure brain anguish is not a winning combo, especially when I consider the long term impact of my health on the ability to do the things I love. And even if you can’t personally commiserate with my forfeits, you may be able to imagine the scenarios that have prevented you from doing something you love.

I am officially on Day 30 of recovery, and frustratingly I’m still not out of the pain zone. Standing or sitting for too long still varies from uncomfortable to agonizing, and a good day seems to be swiftly followed by a bad one. But all things considered, at least January is a slow month. I finally made it back to Philly after an torturous travel day, but at least I can commit to my long term healing solutions down here. I’ve got some physical therapy to attend and plenty of new music to parse through while I continue to recover. I don’t know what the year ahead will look like, but I’ve definitely been using this downtime to consider my goals and changes to make to my routine so I can build up a better foundation for myself. I hope that by springtime I can come back to you with some great live music recaps and adventures.

Until then,

x Erin

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