I Broke My Back (Fortunately Not Badly)

I posted about this on Bluesky, but realized not everyone uses Bsky or may not see it.

I got a call from the doctor today telling me that I have a stress fracture in my L5 vertebra. I'm not sure how it happened, but it seems to have occurred several months ago, maybe at the end of July or the beginning of August. I started having very severe nerve pain symptoms around then, and I assumed I had a pinched nerve or maybe a slightly slipped disk. Once I started stretching it seemed to ease the symptoms so I figured that was the issue and I'd bring it up with my doctor at my annual check up in October. She ordered Xrays for me which I had done yesterday, and then they called me today and told me to stop physical activity and exercise for now. I have a physical therapy appointment scheduled in 2 weeks and they'll evaluate me more then.

The good news is that I can still get around just fine. Walking is no problem, and sitting at my desk to work is also not too much of a problem. I do have pain if I sit for too long, but I take regular breaks so it's usually not an issue. And I have seen regular improvement since then, so I think it is healing up.

I will admit that it's been difficult to work these past few months with the pain. Now that it's been diagnosed, I'm kind of amazed at everything I was doing with this stress fracture. Everything from my regular lifting routine, to helping my parents dig holes in the garden, to hiking 10+ miles on the weekend. Even having sex, all with a broken back. I'm not sure if that's a flex or not! But seriously, at least nothing worse happened.

As far as my work for Patreon goes, it shouldn't be interrupted too much. I might take a day or two to just lay down more rather than sitting at my desk all day. But I'm still drawing, still at my tablet most of the time. I've been taking this week off from the comic to do some other things, but I'll be getting back to that soon too. That said, I might ease up a bit on my output for this month... we'll see.

So this is mostly just to let everyone know what's been going on.

Thanks for your support :>