A companion piece to the PsA series — not a toolkit post. Just an honest account of one of those days.

I was supposed to write Post 3 today.

Instead I am writing this, because today was one of those days when the body simply said no — and I think that is worth documenting too. Not just the management strategies. Not just the comfort layers and the supplements and the things that help. But the days when none of that is enough, because the body has already spent everything it had before you even got to the evening.

Sunday was not a rest day

It should have been. But I built a shed.

Not metaphorically. An actual shed — levelling the ground underneath it, working with my hands and my back and my legs for hours in a way that felt productive and satisfying in the moment, the way physical work always does when you are wired to override the signals your body sends you.

I am wired to override. I have been for as long as I can remember. The signal comes in and something in me processes it as optional — as information I can choose to act on or not. Most of the time I choose not. Most of the time I keep going.

Sunday I kept going.

Monday was normal. Until it wasn't.

Time with my personal trainer. We have been working on lower core structure — which, if you have read the other posts in this series, you will know is not a casual undertaking for me. I have five compressed vertebrae, starting from the tailbone. I will write about that separately, because it deserves its own space. But the short version is that the lower core is not a neutral zone. It is a place where things are already complicated, already fragile in specific ways, already asking for careful handling.

We moved focus to the lower core structure. Half bridges — hips lifted to a supported position, every fibre in the body recruited to hold it. The kind of exercise that looks simple from the outside and is, in practice, one of the most demanding things I do. The pain when those muscles activate — the ones that have been compensating for compressed discs for years, the ones that are not used to being asked to do their actual job — is not the kind of pain you push through without noticing. It is the kind that makes you go very still for a moment and breathe carefully and decide whether you are going to continue.

I continued. Because those are exactly the muscles that need to be strong. The ones that support and protect the discs. The ones that, if they were doing their job properly, would take some of the load off the structures that are already damaged. The pain is not a sign that something is going wrong. It is a sign that something is finally being asked to work.

But darn. Did I feel it.

Then the chiropractor

Later that day — the appointment I had been looking forward to, because I needed it. The adjustment. The relief of things moving back into alignment after days of the body holding itself in whatever position hurts least.

Did I need it? Yes. Very much.

The problem with a chiropractic adjustment when the body is already under significant stress — when you have spent Sunday building a shed and Monday doing half bridges until you nearly fainted — is the release. The manipulation works. The joints move. The nervous system, which has been braced and guarded and holding everything tight, suddenly gets the signal that it is allowed to let go.

And it lets go of everything.

I walked out of that appointment 96 years old. No core strength at all. Pinching nerves. The kind of post-adjustment collapse that I know, intellectually, is temporary — the body recalibrating, the muscles that were doing the compensating work suddenly not needed in the same way, the nervous system exhaling after weeks of bracing. I know this. I have been doing this for a quarter of a century. I should be used to it.

It still takes me down every time.

The override instinct

Here is the thing about being wired to override your body's signals: it is not a character flaw. It is a survival strategy that worked for a long time and now, in a body with five compressed vertebrae and psoriatic arthritis and a nervous system that has been managing chronic pain for decades, costs more than it used to.

The stress on the body combined with the relief and release from the manipulation left me with nothing. No reserves. The kind of empty that is not tiredness — it is depletion. The body has spent everything it had on the shed and the half bridges and the adjustment and the recalibration, and there is simply nothing left in the account.

I know this pattern. I have known it for years. The problem is that knowing it and acting on it are two different things when you are also the person who left the house in a state for almost two weeks because the body needed building — the gym, the appointments, the recovery — and all the other tasks we all carry in life outside ourselves and our homes.

The house

Two weeks of some negligence — overlooked chores, the kind that pile up quietly when the body has been managing other things. Laundry. Dishes. Sheets that needed changing. The small accumulation of a life that had been on hold.

I could have left it. I should have, probably. The sensible version of this story ends with me going directly to bed after the chiropractor and letting the house wait one more day.

But I am not always the sensible version of myself. And there is something about a disordered space when you are already in pain that makes the pain feel larger — the visual noise of it, the sense that things are out of control, the low-level friction of not being able to find what you need or sit somewhere comfortable without moving something first. I needed the house to be manageable. Not perfect. Just manageable.

So I did the laundry. I did the dishes. I changed the sheets. I tidied what needed tidying.

And by the time night came and it was time to go to bed, there were no possible movements left in my body.

The end of the day

I rinsed off in hot water. That was all I had. Not a proper soak — there was nothing left for that. Just the shower, the heat, the standing still and letting the water do what it could.

No half bridges. No stretching. No evening wind-down ritual with tea and a heat wrap and all the things I know help. Just the water, and then Tylenol PM, because there was no other way into bed. Not to knock myself out — to get the pain low enough that lying down was possible, and to stay there through the night without waking every time the body shifted. When you are at that level of depletion and the nerves are still pinching and the muscles have nothing left to brace with, sleep does not come on its own. You help it along. And then bed, and the particular kind of sleep that comes when the body has genuinely run out.

I am not writing this as a cautionary tale. I am not writing it to say I did everything wrong — I built something on Sunday, I worked hard on Monday, I kept my appointment, I got the house to a state I could live in. Those are not failures. They are the things that needed doing.

I am writing it because this is also part of living with a complicated body. Not just the toolkit. Not just the strategies. The days when the override instinct wins and the body pays the price and you end up in the shower at midnight with nothing left, and that is just what happened, and tomorrow you will rest properly and the day after that you will be a little more careful, and the week will continue.

Tuesday morning

There was no way I was taking a hot Pilates class.

My other daughter — the one who usually picks up my daughter from home when there are extra classes — had her own class today. So I went to the gym with the one who holds me accountable. She went to her class. I went straight to the recovery lounge and got into the water jet massage chair for about half an hour to an hour.

That chair. I did not know how much I needed it until I was in it. The jets working slowly through the back, the hips, the lower spine — all the places that had been quietly holding everything since Sunday. That time in the chair felt like a full workout in itself, just running in the opposite direction. Not output. Input. The body receiving something instead of spending something, for once.

And somewhere in that time, something shifted. Not fixed. Not resolved. But the edge came off. The nervous system stopped bracing quite so hard. I could feel the difference between the body that had walked in and the body that was going to walk out, and I was grateful for both of them.

I finally understood it properly — not just in my head, but in my body, which is the only place it actually counts — that I need to recover the same way my daughter does. She trains and she recovers. She does not just train. I have been doing the training part — the half bridges, the chiropractic, the pushing through — without giving the recovery the same weight, the same intention, the same respect. Tuesday was the day that actually landed.

When she was done with her class, I made us both the Earth Restore Smoothie. Because that is exactly what it is for. And because she deserved it, and so did I.

A quarter of a century of this. I am still learning when to stop — and, apparently, still learning when to sit in the chair.

Not medical advice. Part of an ongoing series on living with psoriatic arthritis and a complicated spine. Post 1: When the Ache Has a Name · Post 2: Soft Layers When Enthesitis Hurts · Post 3: Fuel When It Hurts