I have taken my back for granted. After all, it doesn't really make much of a fuss most of the time, and it spends it's time behind me, so it's not something I used to spend much time thinking about. Until the day my back decided to stab me in the ... well, in the back.
I had just shut my front door, and was turning away when I felt a spasm, a tear, in the small of my back. It hurt, but not terribly. At the time I thought, "Well, that was annoying", and then went back to ignoring my back ... for awhile. The pain kept growing gradually worse, much like Michelle Bachman's media presence. By the time I went to bed my back was big bucket of agony, making sleep very difficult.
I got out of bed at 8:30 am the next day. It took me about 20 minutes to do so. I had originally decided to just ride out the pain, but this had become impossible. I went to the Urgent Care center in Stoney Creek. Sure, St. Joe's downtown is closer, but the last time I went there was about 2 months ago, and the wait for a doctor was so long I still haven't had my turn called.
There was no one ahead of me at the hospital, which was nice. For the first time in my life I rode a wheelchair for real, because walking was a torment. Sitting hurt to, but nowhere near as much as walking.
The doctor was great, and gave me a shot of morphine to help with the pain. I have to admit I was disappointed ... I had heard so much about the affects of morphine, and all I got was mild reduction in pain. The doctor later informed me he had given me a very small dosage as this was my first exposure to the medicine and he wanted to make sure it didn't like, kill me. For my part, I wanted buckets full of the stuff to take the pain away. Oh well, I guess better safe and sore than pain free and, like, dead.
So now I'm on 3 meds - Oxycodone for the pain, cyclobenzaprine for the swelling, and Naproxen for ... oh, I don't know, let's say to prevent involuntary spontaneous decapitation. I shuffle around like a refugee from a bad zombie movie, and am pretty much confined to quarters for the next few days. The pain is still present, but manageable.
All in all, it could be worse. I could be Stephen Harper.
