Why are you crying?

So Tuesday night I went to bed and laying down felt great and then about 3am BAM! I'm awake and it this horrendous pain! I tried and tried to get comfortable but nothing and I mean NOTHING helped me. I finally just started to cry and cry and beg and plead that the pain would subside. I fell asleep for about 30 minutes and was late getting up to get ready for work. Then again last night, I felt fine when I layed down and I fell asleep just fine but 3am rolls around and I'm wide awake again. This is getting rediculous. I have GOT to have more sleep than I'm getting. This whole degenerative changes in my disks business is CRAP man. My mom read out of one of her health books that most people don't experience this until they are at least in their 40's. You see over time your disks... which are like little catlidge filled cushions between your vertabrae...wear down and that's why so many old people walk slow and stooped and have back pains or even arthritis in their back. Well for some reason or another mine are disentigrating early... like 15 years early! While I should be out enjoying life and having a good time I'm sitting around in massive pain all because these damn disks are disentegrating slowly. Check out the nifty Diagram I made so you know what the heck I'm talking about:

So this afternoon I'm leaving work early and taking a little trip to the physical therapist. Hopefully they can give me some good exercises that I can practice at home for a week, because let's face it I can't afford PT more than once a week! It's $40 co-pay to go and that's just so expensive for someone that has no money.

I did find out, from my mom's book and from Scott, that I need to take vitamins that will strengthen the tissues in my back as well as the bones. So here's a list of the vitamins I need to pick up this evening :

Glucosamine and Chondroitin

Calcium

Vitamin E

Vitamin C

Hopefully these will help my back stay healthy once it gets better. Not only am I going to physical therapy but I am also getting a Tinge Unit. It's this machine that sends little electric pulses to my muscles to help them relax. Apparently it sounds more painful than it actually is. We'll see. I don't know what the one they're bringing me looks like but here's a picture of one

It doesn't look as ominous as it sounds so that's a relief. I'm also sort of going on a bit of a diet until my back gets better. I have to eat like salad and soup and basically anything that doesn't have meat (because meat causes some acids to be released by your muscles that cause back pain to get worse), nothing fatty, or oily and I have to drink a full 64oz. of water every day to keep the muscles in my back loose.

Once I get rid of all the pain in my spine then I'm going to start a healthier diet and loose weight and tone up my stomach muscles. Hopefully, while it wont prevent, maybe this will lessen the number of times I have back problems and how long they last. If I strengthen my abdominal muscles then they'll help support the weight of my body so that my back isn't the only thing supporting me. I think this is a good thing to have happened to me, in a weird way. I mean that because it's helped me to realize I've GOT to lose weight and eat better so that I wont fall apart anymore at such a young age. I'm only 25, stuff like this shouldn't be happening to me for another 20 years!