I Googled My Back Pain in a Hospital Queue.
A few years ago I was standing in a queue outside Steve Biko hospital — more than a hundred people ahead of me, the Johannesburg winter sun not enough to thaw the cold in my bones — googling back pain on my phone because mine had been screaming at me for over a week and I couldn't figure out why.
My husband had been shot in the left side of the head during a home invasion seven weeks earlier. He had survived. He was alive and back with me and I was so, so grateful for that.
And I was also completely alone.
That's the part nobody tells you is allowed. That you can be flooded with relief that the person you love made it — and simultaneously feel like you are standing in the middle of the ocean with no land in sight. Both things, fully true, at exactly the same time.
For five weeks while Ant was in hospital I had been carried. My cousin's spare room. A borrowed car. Friends and colleagues quietly covering my work, my little business, my life. I hadn't had to think about much beyond getting through each day and calling the hospital for updates — it was COVID, so no visiting was allowed.
Then he came home.
Two weeks later, we moved back into our old house — the one the tenants had just vacated, the one that needed everything. I picked up my work again. I became Ant's carer — helping him learn how to dress and make coffee again, doing speech therapy with him while homeschooling my girls at the same table. I became the one who cooked and cleaned and shopped and managed everything that he had always quietly, capably handled before any of this happened.
I didn't even know the PIN numbers to our bank cards. He had always done that. I didn't know which side of the car the petrol cap was on. He had always done that too.
I had spent five weeks being held up by everyone around me — and then overnight I became the person holding everything up instead. And I hadn't even noticed the shift happening until my back started making itself impossible to ignore.
When I finally searched it — standing in that queue, half distracted, not really expecting much — what came up stopped me completely.
Upper back pain. Feeling emotionally unsupported. Being the strong one. The capable one. The one who holds it together while quietly wondering — who is holding me?
I put my phone in my pocket and just stood there for a minute.
Because here's what I hadn't let myself say out loud yet: as grateful as I was that Ant had survived, as much as I loved him and wanted him home — I was overwhelmed by this new version of our life. I was grieving the husband who had known the PIN numbers and filled the car and made everything feel manageable. And I hadn't given myself a single moment to acknowledge any of that, because what kind of person feels loss when their husband is alive?
The kind of person whose upper back is trying to get their attention, apparently.
I didn't need a chiropractor or a pain pill. I needed permission to admit what I was actually carrying.
That's what Bodhi Cipher does. Not fix. Not prescribe. Just — point you toward the conversation you've been avoiding with yourself. The one hiding underneath the symptom that won't shift.
Your back might be talking about support. Or guilt. Or the weight of being needed by everyone while quietly needing something yourself.
Bodhi Cipher covers lower, middle and upper back pain — and the very different emotional stories each one tends to carry. If your back has been trying to get your attention, it might be worth finding out what it's actually saying.
