Anyone know where I can buy a new back?
I woke up this morning with back pain. Not the "I lifted something heavy yesterday and I'm sore" kind of pain" but the "Who's stabbing me in the back with a knife and why can't I feel my right hand or foot" sort of pain." A hot bath sure would have been lovely, but there was a possibility that I would not be able to extricate myself from the tub after I'd had a nice soak. I had a good laugh imagining myself stuck in the bathtub all day and the folks at work wondering why I hadn't come in (did she quit after all?) I opted for the hot shower after deciding I really didn't want to have "stuck in bathtub" on my attendance record.

Good decision since we are lightly staffed on Thursdays at my tech level and I was the only one on the early shift that made it in on time. This had the unfortunate effect of requiring an amount of multitasking that I suspect may result in my head exploding some day. Well, maybe it wouldn't actually explode, but it sure feels like it is about to after a couple of hours. At least today more staff were scheduled at 10 am (and they showed up) so I didn't have to juggle that mess until 3 pm as has happened in the past.

Now I might have been the queen of multitasking at one time, but it doesn't seem to work out so well for me lately. This may be due to the fact that I only have one rather anemic desktop and monitor to use while talking to one customer on the phone while opening a repair ticket from a form submitted by another person for a different customer while replying to a support email from another customer while helping yet another customer over live chat and assisting three or more other lower level technicians with their customers over instant messaging. The tech level below me assists more techs over instant messaging at one time than I do, but they get the easy questions and the only other thing they do at the same time is take calls. Don't get me wrong, they have it tough too, but I'm the one that ends up with the questions that stumped them so by the time that instant message thread gets turned over to me, you can bet it's a mess. Oh, and don't let me forget the folks that walk up to my desk to ask questions. Plus I'm dealing with at least four different providers at the same time (I support about 20 different providers total) that all have different support policies, tools and tracking requirements. Just thinking about it makes my head want to explode, never mind actually doing it. There is a reason my computer crashes after about two hours of use (I usually need at least ten different applications open at one time) and I suspect my brain is getting the same sort of overload. But as I said, reinforcements arrived at 10 and the rest of the day was less harried. Plus I learned that it is possible to use a mouse even if you can't feel most of your hand, though I never did master the "double click".

Pain-wise, my back's not any better tonight, but I can feel my foot again so things must be improving. I'll have that hot bath before I go to bed since Rob is here to rescue me if need be. And who knows, if I sleep just right and don't get chilled then I might be good as new tomorrow morning. Keep your fingers crossed for me because this sucks a hell of a lot more than having to multitask to extreme at work. Jobs I can walk away from, but as far as I know, this is the only back I'm ever going to get.