To play or not to play?

How has my week been??? Pretty exhausting.

Here is a picture of my only darling left, Leo.

I have a pretty dodgy back and so I have seemed to yo-yo from osteopath to chiropractor to masseuse for the past 10 years. I play netball and I know this is not the best sport to be playing for a bad back with all the pounding up and down asphalt court. This has all come to head in the past week.

We played a pretty rough team on the 5th of May and we were thoroughly beaten physically and mentally. My back was sore afterwards so I stretched and had a hot bath and used a heat pack. The next day I went down to the Murray River in Albury and stood in the cold water up to my rib cage for 15 mins with some of the football boys (this is supposed to help bring out bruising) and then went home for a hot shower again. I was still pretty sore and this continued into the next day, Monday.

I rang an osteopath and was able to luckily get in the same night. She asked a zillion questions to which I answered and then started to assess my back, well she got a shock. She was probably think 'this girl is being a sook, it can not be as bad as she says!!!!' I am very tight! I have knots from my hamstrings to my right neck. She played around with my neck and my shoulders as well as my mid back for around an hour and did spoons to bring blood to the surface of my skin. Spoons is a technique of using a Chinese porcelain soup spoon and scraping this across the skin. It brings up some beautiful purple and blue bruises and goes down in around 4 days. Most of the time it is not sore to touch. I then did not do netball training Monday night.

This kinda helped on Tuesday and Wednesday and I thought I'll try an easy practice game in WA on Wednesday night. After the first drive I strained something in my lower back! :{

I have a friend who is in her last year of Myotherapy and asked if she could look at it, but she couldn't until Sunday and I was supposed to play of Saturday. I ended up taking the game off as it was even sore when sitting in the car.

Has anyone ever had an injury but felt guilty for not playing because you're part of a team? No one said anything to me, but it felt as though I needed a medical certificate not to play.

So I am in two minds. I said I would play until I leave to go OS, but I am having second thoughts, should I give netball up and rest my back so it's right when I get OS or do I continue to get almost weekly treatments to fulfill my commitment? I know I want to spend extra time with my Mum before I leave and so I'll be finishing up early anyway, should I just finish up now and if I do, how do I explain it to my team?

I didn't train on Monday past because my Myotherapy friend did acupuncture on my lower back as she found a stiff joint, my butt is aching cause I think I've got knots in it and its almost like sciatica and I am only going to do a light run through on Wednesday if my back pulls up OK after my next acupuncture session on Wednesday, but it is still pretty sore today and it's been a few days. I went swimming last night because it is supposed to be good for your back and i have been doing exercises to stretch it out...

I don't know what to do!!! I could go on and on about it...

What else -

I got a gym membership, I am going to start doing Body balance, maybe some pilates and do some swimming as well to start with, do you know how expensive it is? $295 for 3 months!!!! WTF??? Luckily I can claim some on my private health ;)