I woke up at 3:00 a.m. with a dull pain in my lower back. It wasn\u2019t sharp or unbearable\u2014just a steady, pulsating discomfort that refused to be ignored. Not exactly painful, but persistent enough to keep me from falling back asleep. I lay there in the dark, trying to shift positions, hoping it would fade.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Of course, my mind wandered to the worst-case scenario. I couldn\u2019t help but worry that it might be the early onset of kidney stones. The thought alone made it harder to relax. Since sleep wasn\u2019t coming back anytime soon, I decided to be proactive and sent an email to my manager letting him know I would be taking a sick day. It felt responsible to give a heads-up, even in the middle of the night.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Thankfully, I was eventually able to drift back to sleep and didn\u2019t wake up again until around 10:00 a.m. The extra rest seemed to help. I felt more stable\u2014still aware of my back, but not as fixated on it. I ended up logging on to work afterward, easing into the day at my own pace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the evening, I made a point to take it easy. No pushing, no unnecessary strain. By 10:00 p.m., I was ready for bed and grateful to turn in early, hoping for a deeper, uninterrupted sleep.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I woke up at 3:00 a.m. with a dull pain in my lower back. It<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3671,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[134],"class_list":["post-3669","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-journal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jsantos.net\/_blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3669","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jsantos.net\/_blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jsantos.net\/_blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jsantos.net\/_blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jsantos.net\/_blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3669"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.jsantos.net\/_blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3669\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3672,"href":"https:\/\/www.jsantos.net\/_blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3669\/revisions\/3672"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jsantos.net\/_blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3671"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jsantos.net\/_blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3669"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jsantos.net\/_blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3669"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jsantos.net\/_blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3669"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}