Braced For Impact Wrench

With the heatwave we had today, I knew it was a good day to get outside.  With temperatures soaring just above freezing, I took my wife's car to my workshop for an oil change.  I put on my "abdominal brace" and waddled to work.

Up to this point I have only been wearing my abdominal brace when walking around the yard.  I haven't been doing anything that requires bending with it on, because quite frankly you cannot bend with it on.  For just walking around the yard, it doesn't do too bad.

With the snow beginning to melt, I also put on my heavy snow boots.  I was up in my workshop with the abdominal brace's lattice work digging in to my back and immobilizing me from the waist up, and clomping around in the heavy rubber steel-toed boots that really don't bend at the ankle at all.  I was stumbling around up there like an arthritic Frankenstein after hemorrhoid surgery.

I will say this much for the abdominal brace, it did help my ailing incision with only a mildly intense pain in my back.  I don't know if it was from trying to bend over with this complicated contraption on, or just the nature of the brace itself, but I feel like I have been bailing hay for eight hours, then decided to lift weights for another eight hours, all after spending the night sleeping on the hood of a '54 Cadillac...sideways.  In other words, my back is really hurting.  But the oil is changed and that is all that is important.  Now I don't have to worry about the car breaking down while my wife drives me to the emergency room.

My incision area is still bothering me, I am assuming it is the stitches dissolving like the doctor said.  Even though the brace causes severe back pain, that is a lesser evil than severe abdominal pain.  Until I heal I will just continue to wear it and walk around in the snow like a cowboy mummy.