Past updates
Thirty years ago, I threw out my back and decided I needed to change jobs.
In the spring of 1994, I was working for a local community college as a tutor and adjunct teacher. I was part of a lab system that dealt with students who needed remedial math or language instruction. We were dealing with returning adults, mostly Black, who had been so badly failed by the public school system that they could barely read on a third-grade level or write a complete simple sentence with no errors, but they had been passed through from grade to grade and allowed to graduate high school. Our task, our mission impossible, was to try to bring these people to a point where they were ready to take on introductory college-level work.
It was, of course, impossible, for so many reasons. There were people who wanted new careers, better jobs, but had to show proficiency in basic academic stuff in order to grapple with the requirements of learning nursing or social work. There were immigrants coping with English as a second language whose written work was often good, while their speaking skills lagged behind. They all needed more specialized and more intensive help than we were able to give them, and at the same time, they wanted, reasonably, to be treated like adults, not like sullen children. Every one of my co-workers was overworked, stressed, and aware of the moral dilemma of the college taking the students’ money and promising them an education it could not deliver.
One morning I was getting ready for work when I had the bad luck to sneeze violently while I was bent to pick up my tissue off the floor. A wash of pain went through my back that should have told me to stop everything and lie down. However, like a good wage slave, I continued to get dressed. I think I had one sock on and one foot still bare when it hit me: My lower back contracted into a mass of pain.
My then-husband had already left for his day job at a bank. I was sprawled out on our futon, which lay on the floor with no platform under it, one arm under me, half-dressed (I think I was wearing a top but no skirt or pants), unable to move because every movement caused another intense spasm of pain. Not moving also caused intense muscle spasms, just not predictably. I think I must have struggled for a while just to get to the bedroom phone.
Did I call 911? No, of course not. I called my husband, getting a cold reception from the teller who answered the phone, but when I spoke to him, he said he would come home right away. Of course when he saw my condition, he called 911.
A team of three or four from the nearby fire station showed up pretty soon. After examining me, questioning me about what had happened and then my husband about the building, they gave me the bad news. Due to the fact that we were on the fourth floor of a building with a miniscule elevator and stairs that wound around it, they were going to have to take me out of the bedroom through the window. On the cherry-picker.
The cherry-picker is the fire truck that has an extension ladder with a little platform at the top. I was strapped carefully to a flat board, to stabilize my spine as much as possible. If the cause of the spasms was a slipped disk and I was handled the wrong way, I could be permanently disabled, paralyzed for life. I must have resembled a mummy by the time they got me secured, arms crossed across my chest like a pharaoh. Then the truck had arrived, and they lifted me up, put me on the platform, and lowered me slowly through the air.
Have I mentioned I am terrified of heights?
I don’t remember much of the emergency room visit; I’m sure I waited quite a while to be seen. I do remember the nurse who, after my exam, told me coldly, “You can’t just lie here. We need this room.” I was still having muscle spasms at that point. They sent me home with ibuprofen and a muscle relaxant and advice on how to sleep. I inserted myself carefully into my mother-in-law’s spacious Honda Odyssey and spent a week sleeping on my back with pillows under my knees before going back to work to finish the semester.
That was around the middle of May. I began searching for a new job and saw a listing for a part-time position at the city library. I interviewed for that sometime in June and heard about the job in August; my husband and I did the Dance of Joy that Larry and Balki used to do in Perfect Strangers. I started the job in the first week of September, working under one of the three librarians who had interviewed me.
Thirty years later and my back is still a problem. My then husband divorced me in 2013 and then passed due to cancer four years after. My interviewers have retired, but I’m still there, full-time as of 2006. I think about retiring probably three out of five work days, but I can’t really afford to, and I guess I don’t really want to. Not only do I need the income, I need to have a reason to leave the apartment, ride the bus, interact with people. I might become a moldy little hermit elsewise.
And that’s the story of how my back problems caused me to change jobs. I hope you have a good weekend, friends. I plan to.
Rembrandt's wife is Merri-Todd Webster