In the past month, I’ve transformed from a well-functioning and relatively healthy 25 year old male into a medical mess of the mixed-bag variety. In no particular order, my new best friends:
1) The Back - By far the grandest of the medical mishaps my body has dealt with recently is a little case of what the medically-inclined call “acute lumbar strain”. It just so happens that my work is… well… manual… in nature. Seconds after a heavy lifting session (that, I might add, I’ve done hundreds of times in the past) I was overcome with the most intense and powerful back spasms. Think of a cramp, but worse… and more painful… and in your freakin’ back! It was almost enough to send me to the ground, except that moving to the ground would have caused even more pain. I couldn’t walk for a good 10 minutes, literally. I just stood there… saying “oww… oww.. damn it…. oww…” over and over again. When I finally got around to moving again, I had to hold on to things and lift myself up with my arms because actually moving my legs was similar in feeling to having them ripped off (I’d venture a guess). Getting into the car to drive myself home was equally as complicated! And so it’s been for the past three weeks. I’m better now and back at work. But the last three weeks have been utter hell. Keeping in mind that I’ve been finishing my last semester in school, I’ve also had to deal with doing all of that at the speed and ability of a 95 year old polio victim. It took me a good 30 minutes to get out of bed in the morning. Once I made my way somewhere (like to a chair, for instance) I stayed there for as long as possible simply to avoid having to move again! Four trips to the doctor, four prescriptions, three x-rays, and one needle to ass later, I’m beginning to function normally again. Like I said, I’m back at work, although I’m restricted in what I can do. And having been bed/chair bound for the last three weeks has given my feet ample time to forget what it’s like to be stood on all day.
2) The Toe - Maybe the strangest of my new characteristics is my right big toe’s inability to flex straight out. I don’t know what caused this - I just noticed it one day. I can bend it, wiggle it, and stand on it. But I can’t straighten my foot out or try to extend my big toe - the pain is incredible given the toe’s relatively small size! And to top it off, when I do accidently straighten it out, it feels like something is stretching and pulling and ripping in there. Seriously… what the hell could that be??
3) The Ulcer - One of the prescriptions I got for the back incident has given me a big honkin’ ulcer. But it’s not a stomach ulcer - it’s in my esophagus! The way I understand it, one of the pills took a pit stop in the ol’ esoph and burned out a nice little home for itself. So every time I take a drink, swallow food, or just swallow I get a nice stabbing pain about 4 inches down my throat. And to top it off, when I get hungry and start thinking about food… the bugger fires up then too (something about getting excited about the idea of food makes it contract).
4) Insomnia - I’m going on day 4 of no sleep. I just can’t do it. I’ll get in bed around 11 or so - and come 2 am… 3 am… 4 am… I’m still awake. And I have to get up at 5:30 am for work! In the past four days, I’ve clocked a whopping 5 hours of actual sleep. I was a walking zombie today at work. I came home and ate (painfully) and now I seem to be fairly lucid. So I’m betting when I try to sleep tonight I’ll be getting another solid 60 minutes of z’s before it’s wake up time.
and last but not least,
5) The Migraines - These are nothing new. I’ve been having them for a couple of years now. But they only make the other problems so much more pleasant… haha. Sometimes they give me nose bleeds… once they made my ear bleed… and they usually cause every little sound and point of light to transform into a giant pain in the ass (well… pain in the head, technically… but that just didn’t sound right).
With all the new games, I’m actually surprised I’m as upbeat and chipper as I am. Maybe it’s because all of this didn’t kill me. Or maybe it’s because I’ve gotten a sneak peek at what it’s going to be like for me in 50 years. And I did always like that whole seeing the future thing…
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[...] 2) Insomnia: Oh yeah… it’s back. I’ve never really been a good sleeper. But I go through bouts of bad insomnia every so often. It’d been a while since the last bad one. Over two years, to be semi-precise. I’m not sure if it’s the new schedule or what. But I haven’t slept much at all in the last week or two. I “acquired” a single dose of Rozerem to try out and finally gave it a whirl last night. It actually helped. I slept soundly for about 6 hours last night. But I felt a little out of it this morning. I don’t know if it was the Rozerem or simply the fact that I’d actually been in a deep sleep for the first time in a while. [...]
[...] reads). But I’ll also be writing about stepping on slugs, putting my foot in my mouth, breaking my back, and the more personal aspects of my [...]