The worst moment of my life

I’m not sure exactly what the worst moment of my life has been, but I think I can make a good guess.

The first thing you need to know: I seem to have a relatively high pain threshold. No, I’m not bragging – I’m actually a big baby about pain. It’s just that there’s been times when I’ve hurt myself, and was able to keep going when I really really shouldn’t have. One of those times was when I sprained my back.

A few years ago, I was absolutely nuts about playing recreational volleyball. I was playing three times a week at the recreation centre at Eglinton just west of Yonge. One day, I stumbled over somebody’s foot, and fell over. The next morning, I couldn’t turn my head to the right. I mean, not at all. This was a warning sign. I ignored it.

The next Monday morning, I bent over to pick up some laundry. It wasn’t even wet laundry, as I recall. When I bent over, I felt a sharp pain in my back. But I could handle it, I thought, so I went to work as usual. On the subway, I bent over to pick up my knapsack, and it hurt a little worse. I made it to work.

By mid-afternoon, my back was stiffening up as I was typing away. I tried to get up to go get a drink of water. And then realized that I couldn’t stand up. Immediately, I saw that I had two choices, neither of them wonderful. I could inform a co-worker that I could no longer stand up. I would have had to have been wheeled out on my chair, down the elevator, presumably to a taxicab. Or, I could grit my teeth, suck up the pain, and stand up.

I stood up.

That may have been the worst moment of my life, right there.

The next day, my back was literally bent over at about a 40 degree angle. I didn’t go into work. When I wandered into my bathroom and looked in the mirror, I would do my best Peter Lorre imitation. That was the only fun part of the whole thing. It took a year and a half, and a bunch of physio appointments, before my back fully healed.

This morning’s Globe contains a report of a man who saved someone’s life on the New York City subway. The person in danger had fallen off the platform, and his rescuer saved him by pushing him into the rut between the train rails, allowing an oncoming train to pass over them both. Neither of them was hurt. Wow. Imagine having that much nerve and presence of mind to think and act that quickly.