I probably shouldn’t complain about this, because at least I sit at a desk all day. I don’t have to carry heavy things or put together buildings. I’m not wrangling preschoolers or even just standing on my feet for most of the day. I sit. If you have to have some sort of back injury, my career is probably the “best” one to have it in.

Still.

I was in a car accident four years ago where I sustained a terrible case of whiplash. And ever since then, periodically my neck decides to stop playing nice. It makes me feel old and grumpy, to have a chronic neck injury, and it makes working rather difficult, being in constant pain, and don’t even get me started on the doctor situation. Except that I’m going to tell you about it anyway, because that’s what I do. And my neck hurts and that makes it hard to think of anything else to tell you about.

The thing about my neck is that it’s vastly helped by chiropractic care. Now, as a freelancer, if I was buying my own health insurance, I probably wouldn’t have any chiropractic benefits at all. Fortunately, I married well (heh), and my husband’s health insurance does offer coverage for up to 20 chiropractic appointments per year. That’s the good news.

That bad news… well, take your pick! Is it that only a sparse handful of chiropractors in town take our insurance? Is it that we supposedly have coverage for twenty visits but in fact you pretty much have to be in a full body cast for the insurance company to actually approve more than five visits? Or is it that I finally found a wonderful chiropractor here the last time I had neck problems, and he then moved away? Hard to say which is the worst issue, there.

In the meantime, would you like to know what I did, this time, to screw up my neck? I stood up too fast and whacked my head on something—just lightly, it didn’t hurt my head—and in doing so, I sort of retracted from the blow and something in my neck went *crunch*.

I’m sitting here at my computer, with a pain that starts at the base of my skull, encompasses half my neck, and radiates all the way down one arm and halfway down my back. It’s Not Good. I am extremely cranky.

Later this morning I’ll go see a new chiropractor (and start the insurance dance all over again), but in the meantime I’ve got the Freelancer’s Blues. Because if I had a real job, I could just take a sick day and lay on the couch whining, the way God intended. But because I have work and deadlines and no such thing as sick days, I’m sitting here telling you my sad plight.

I can see that you’re fascinated.

Shutting up, now.