My Waterloo is a Chair

I've lost track of the number of days since my life changed.  I know it's about 8 1/2 months, but I've stopped counting days.

I'm back in the office full time now.  And it's hell.  But not for the reasons I expected.

For some reason, over the past four months, the numbness in my legs has been getting worse.  My feet are always numb, and have been from early on, so unless I'm in hard soled shoes, or on my feet a lot, I'm getting used to it.  It's when my legs go numb that life starts to get challenging.

Anyone who has had anything numb (like an "asleep foot"), knows that putting pressure on said numbness turns to pain very quickly.  My intellect knows it's not actually pain, but nonetheless, all the self-talk and positive reinforcement cannot convince my brain otherwise.  So when my legs go numb, sitting gets to be an adventure in "suck it up".

I have a desk job.  I am fortunate that it's not a "tied to my desk" job and I have the luxury of being able to walk around, pretty much when I need to.  But lately it seems that all the walking in the world isn't helping, so my disability insurer called in ergonomic specialists.

I'm a skeptic.  I've never really believed in ergonomics.  Yeah, whatever. It's a chair. A keyboard tray never changed anyone's life, and spare me those gel wrist things ... I spent too many years playing the piano to ever rest my wrists on anything. Just get a decent chair and move on.  It seems like people trained to be ergonomic specialists have had it drilled into them that if you can get people into the proper kinetic position, their ails will disappear.  I learned fast that "proper position" causes my numbness pain to go off the charts within half an hour.  The pressure points are the same as my trigger points.

I'm generally okay at home (though there is a couch I can't sit on for more than 30 minutes anymore), but I spend much of my home time sitting sideways on the couch with my feet up, laptop on my lap. We've tried to replicate that with "the Cadillac of chairs". It didn't work. I tried the Cadillac leg rest - it really was beautiful ... like a supportive ottoman. It didn't help. There is one more footrest they are going to try and if that doesn't work, I will have to concede that I was right about ergonomics, for me.   There hasn't been a modification the specialists have been able to come up with that's worked yet.

I swung by Human Resources the other day to say that the ergo guy was coming in AGAIN to try a new configuration and she said to me "at what point does your doctor say that you just aren't able to sit for more than an hour or so".

I was stunned. It never occured to me that it couldn't be fixed.

I'm the queen of suck it up but the inability to find the right chair might be my Waterloo.