Tuesday, October 07, 2008

My aching back!

Interior windows looking from front gallery into my studio with my smaller paintings
Featured art in the front gallery, my latest large painting, "Grateful", 48 x 48", oil on canvas
Another of my newer large paintings, "The Calm Before..", 40 x 40", oil on canvas
left side wall in front gallery, my painting "The Vortex", 40 x 40", oil on canvas
The inner gallery/classroom space and art by other studio artists

Back wall in the gallery, another large painting of mine, "Chroma Sunset", 48 x 48", oil on canvas
Aaron in the main gallery
Me talking with a high school friend I haven't seen in 10 years!

The show opening on Friday went very well. We added several new names to our mailing list and had a few sales. It was a long weekend as we had to sit the gallery for our posted business hours for the first time. The weather was cloudy and rainy, so not many visitors on Saturday and Sunday. The bottom two photos above were taken by one of the photographers in the show, Susan See. The others are pics I shot before the show opened.

Monday morning I woke up with a major pain in my back. Actually, it feels more like my hip. I can't tell if it's out of place or if I just pulled a muscle. Either way, the pain is making it difficult to get anything done today. I had planned on painting, but it hurts to stand at my easel. So, here I sit, blogging and basically avoiding pain as much as is possible! 
UPDATE: It seems after talking with my brother and mom, that a may actually have a kidney stone! Yikes! My brother suggested I try drinking some cranberry juice, which I did, and the pain subsided almost instantly! This stinks! Any other suggestions out there? I don't have health insurance, so I can't go to the doctor.

3 comments:

Sus said...

Look into the UNM Cares program. It's what I used for about 8 months from 2006-07 when I was under & unemployed. My co-pays were only $5 and presc. were between $2 and $10.

As for treating...well I know it helps to drink lots of water. But here are some sites to look at:

http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/kidney-stones/DS00282

http://www.ayurvediccure.com/kidneystones.htm

Take care of yerself kiddo!!

Unknown said...

Congratulations on your gorgeous show and I hope you feel much better very soon Paula!

Paula Manning-Lewis said...

Thanks Jessica and Susan!

Jessica,
I am feeling much better now. I drank like 3 gallons of cranberry juice in 2 days and it helped! I don't know if I actually had kidney stones, but the juice made a huge difference right away, so I'm guessing maybe they were small???