This past Monday was Remembrance Day. While others were out paying respects to those who fought in all those great wars, I was at home, sitting on the bed, getting ready for a run. When I hopped off the bed, I felt a strange and unpleasant twinge in my lower back. I had spontaneously pulled a muscle. I’m pretty sure this is the same one I’ve spontaneously pulled before. I’m also pretty sure I know why this happens, but more on that in a bit.
The pain was immediate and my mobility curtailed just as swiftly. No bending, no stooping, no anything without being reminded that my back was no longer operating normally. I decided to take a Robax and suffer quietly. I went to work the next day. My suffering became less quiet. I took the following day off to actually give the back time to recover.
Fast-forward to Friday afternoon. The lower back is still a bit sore, which is annoying, but tolerable, and it’s not stopping me from doing things other than lifting heavy items, which I generally don’t want to do, anyway. I am planning to do a run on Sunday.
Before dinner I prop myself on the bed and color some of my sketches on the iPad. This is very soothing and relaxing. As I am doing this, the back muscle starts talking. At first it’s a murmur, but it becomes more insistent. I finally get up and now instead of feeling a little sore, it feels more like a pinched nerve, radiating waves of constant pain. This, I think, is not a good start to the weekend.
Apparently laying on the bed was a very bad idea. Who knew beds were so bad for you? (Our bed is kind of terrible, really. You almost need to leap to get onto it, for one thing.) I muddle through dinner. I take some Advil. I later take a T3. When I finally fall asleep I dream that I am flying, which is not entirely inaccurate based on my current medicated state.
By morning the pain has not diminished, and while I don’t think it’s an actual pinched nerve, there is no doubt it is hurting a lot more than before. I have breakfast and go to the nearby walk-in clinic. They tell me they can see me at 3 p.m., which is four hours hence. I imagine even the worse case scenario at the Emergency room won’t take that long, so I cross the street to Royal Columbian.
The triage area is curiously quiet. There are no injured people there spouting blood or holding out mangled hands. No one is barfing. An old man seems confused and I show him where to stand to be called forward. I am next after him. I answer all the questions, they take my blood pressure, temperature and tag me. When asked for allergies, I say, “Penicillin, sulfa and another antibiotic I can’t remember, but would recognize the name if I saw it.” The nurse consults my file to check. It describes my allergies thusly: “Penicillin. And more.” We give each other a look.
A young guy paces past saying to someone/no one that he is positive he is having a heart attack. He looks surprisingly hale for someone having a heart attack. I think I see a band on his wrist, so he’s already checked in, or has already been seen and is back, possibly due to the alleged heart attack. He wanders out again.
I am told to go to the Zone 2 waiting area. This is new to me, but it’s just another waiting area around the corner. There is a door to Zone 2 that requires a keycard and a sign that says a nurse will let you in shortly. I wait.
There are a few other people here, but I am again struck at how quiet it is for a weekend. The entrance where I came in is in view over to my right. I look out on the soggy gray day and the heart attack guy wanders in again, talking about the heart attack he is having. An intern and two security officers arrive and they all go through the sliding doors outside to discuss the heart attack. The heart attack guy leaves at the end of the discussion. Or maybe he goes around the hospital and sneaks back in through a different entrance.
A nurse takes me into Zone 2. I wonder how many zones there are. I again sit and wait, but this time there are no others in the chairs beside me. Conveniently there is a sign that tells me exactly where in the process I am and what steps lie ahead. Across the hall from me is an exam room with a number of beds and the curtains that provide a modicum of privacy. Another nurse waves me in to the leftmost bed, and tells me to take off my clothes, emphasizing that I do not need to remove my underwear. I can only imagine the stories. I put my clothes in a provided bag, put on the always-stylish hospital gown, have it sexily slide off one shoulder, gingerly try to make it fit better (remember, nearly every movement at this point is causing pain), then finally sit on the edge of the bed and wait for the doctor.
On the other side of the curtain is the old man I was directing earlier. He talks about burping a lot. I can’t quite tell what his issue is, but it seems related to not pooping because the doctor is telling him to make sure to drink lots of water and put some bran and green vegetables in his diet so he can go regularly. He mentions Metamucil as a last resort. He asks the old guy if he is feeling better now, and the old guy says yes. I am perhaps relieved (ho ho) to not get the exact details on why he feels better now. They then seem to repeat most of the conversation for reasons unknown.
The doctor comes in, asks me a bunch of questions, including if I have difficulty peeing or pooping. I say no to the former and that I hadn’t done the latter. I think he thought I hadn’t done the latter since Monday, which would be alarming. I assured him that I was “irregularly regular” (whatever that means) and that seemed good enough for him. He then did some pulling and prodding on my hands, arms, feet and legs. The left leg pull nearly caused a technicolor explosion to go off in my brain, as apparently the afflicted muscle directly connects to whatever muscles were being stretched in the left leg.
He said I had muscle spasms and gave me a prescription for an anti-inflammatory, and a pain reliever. He told me if I moved a lot, it would hurt more. Very logical. He told me to avoid laying down, as the muscle would stiffen. Also logical. I thanked him, got dressed and bumbled around for five minutes, walking into various rooms before finding my way back to the entrance. Some of these rooms were very close to people-holding-out-mangled-hands but I averted my eyes to avoid mental trauma to go with my physical trauma.
I headed to Save On Foods to get the prescription, and cookies.
While waiting at the pharmacy counter, a guy came up to me and asked a question.
It was the heart attack guy. He pointed to a shelf and asked which aspirin was the correct type to take if you were having a heart attack, because he was having a heart attack. He was actually pointing at the correct aspirin, so I confirmed this, he said thanks, gave me a fist bump and presumably paid for the aspirin and will go on to live a fruitful life.
I got my drugs and cookies and went home.
At home I discovered the pain killer is an opioid and it comes with a full sheet of dire warnings and precautions that basically amount to “BE CAREFUL WITH THIS KILLER MEDICINE, PAL.” The sheet mentions horrible side effects, addiction and uses the word “death” multiple times. I took one of these deadly opioid pills and my brain mushroomed through my skull and I saw the universe as I never have before.
Actually, nothing happened. It took awhile to kick in and now that it has, the pain is muted a bit, though that could also be the much less scary anti-inflammatory. I vow not to operate any heavy equipment, though, out of respect for all the dire warnings. We’ve hidden the keys to the bulldozer.
As I type this, I feel better than I did this morning and am cautiously hopeful that tomorrow will not be too bad, though there is no way in heck I will be running. I might look at treadmills, though. I’ve also promised to revive this year’s resolution to start stretching. I will be setting a stretch goal, if you will, because as the title suggests, I am as flexible as a plank of wood, and these sorts of muscle pulls/spasms are likely due to how inflexible I am. I need to stretch out. Literally. And I will.
Soon™.
In the meantime, I am quietly grateful that this emergency room visit was so surprisingly not bad. And I hope heart attack guy is okay.