Finally your back mutinied.
Mutiny quelled for the time being. As I will tell the PT folks this morning, I'm now below the threshold of the background discomfort and minor pain I have been living with for a decade, even while doing all that cruising stuff.
I'm also even below the threshold where I would even be aware of anything wrong in normal life if I was not obsessed with this and watching, on the PT's instructions, for even the slightest feeling of anything "different". That's what is supposed to guide my exercising and activity for the time being.
I can tell when I do my exercises that one hip is not working exactly in the same way as the other but I have to pay very close attention. I'm fully with the program of getting myself into a condition where I don't have an episode again.
I think this is a lot like the engine. If I hadn't failed to fully seat the dipstick, I never would have known about all the other contributing factors. If I hadn't suddenly started walking several miles farther than usual while tense and stressed, the strain from the anchoring adventure wouldn't have blown up into a major event.
With both systems, now that I know about all these contributing factors, it's worth getting them fixed because a cruise can end when everything lines up just wrong. Ironically, my back is going to cost as much as I feared my engine would.
I feel, and suspect, that I could probably just jump in the boat today and resume cruising while being a bit more careful. I'm not sure though so, and since I'm paying so much it, I'm going to follow the PT's advice to stop thinking, listen, and think of myself as an invalid for a while.
