Today is fired also
When I got out of bed this morning, two things were apparent:
1) george was gone, yay!
2) my right side to my tailbone had sharp pain, like a pulled muscle. :(
When I moved about, doing my morning stuff, the pain would be sharp at times, radiating from the tailbone to the right side, sometimes down my right buttock, sometimes down the front of me - down the pelvic bone to my thigh. I was sure I’d pulled a muscle in my sleep, or perhaps from being bedridden for most of the week.
I stretched slowly throughout the day, took it easy, took my time doing chores and such. But the pain didn’t go away.
By midday, I started wondering if maybe I’d taken too many pain pills over the past week and blew out my kidneys, as the pain seemed to radiate to both sides of my trunk. I chugged water all day and peed a lot, which is good news.
By late afternoon, the pain started to spread. It wasn’t getting any better - it was worsening. This scared me. I had not taken any pain medication all day because of the fear that I’d taken too much pain medication over the past week. But now the pain was getting pretty bad and so I waffled for an hour on even taking a 600mg Ibuprofen.
Finally I could stand it no more, but before taking any meds, I called up a friend who has endured debilitating back pain for years, and described my symptoms to her. She said it sounded like sciatic nerve pain.
Nerves, huh, not strained muscle or damaged kidneys? Hmmm. After talking with her a bit, I took the ibuprofen and chugged more water, and followed her advice of laying flat on my back on the floor with my knees drawn up, feet flat on the floor. This helped the pain to go away completely. I laid there for awhile, then got up slowly and went back to my computer to finish the work I was doing. Then my man came in the door with dinner. We sat down on the couch and GAH! The pain returned. Sharp, jolting death mostly on the right side, radiating down my leg.
My man fetched a pillow chair he’d bought me for george, and set it on the couch behind me, which pushed me up further on the couch and forced me to sit up straight. This helped immensely, and so we ate dinner and watched a movie.
About halfway through the movie, I shifted in my seat and cried out in the pain that followed. Now both sides were inflamed, with pain radiating out from the lower center of my back, above the tailbone. The pain was stinging, like pins and needles, like when one’s foot loses circulation, but worse. It was hot and stinging and sharp and took away my breath. The pain radiated down my buttocks and around the front of my legs to my knees. WTF.
This scared the shit out of me, as I’m used to either my chronic UPPER back pain or george pain. I had no idea what this was, so I began crying and asked to be taken to the emergency room.
My man didn’t know what to do but looked genuinely concerned, but didn’t want to take me to E.R. or else he was just paralysed with panic, I dunno. So after standing there and crying next to the couch, I slowly made my way to the bedroom and laid down on the floor on my back, knees drawn up like my friend told me to do by phone earlier.
This time the pain didn’t go away. I asked my man to please research WTF sciatic nerve pain is and how it affects one.
He read from wikipedia first, then from mayo clinic, and began laughing incredulously, because everything I described to him earlier was exactly what the mayo clinic was listing as symptoms of sciatica. He told me it looks like I’m a textbook case. Both of us relaxed, because now we knew what was going on, and we didn’t have to go to E.R., and as a matter of fact, the mayo clinic website advises against going to E.R., saying home remedies are best.
Unfortunately, it can take WEEKS to recover from a bout of sciatica. I do NOT need this right now. But I realise I brought it upon myself. Looking back to the past week, I was bedridden. I didn’t want to get up and about on Tuesday and Wednesday and stayed bedridden for much of those two days. I did get up and about at length on Thursday but was bedridden again for much of the day on Friday. During the times I was in bed, I would be on the laptop in reclined position, and my butt would ache until I shifted position or got out of bed for a few minutes. My butt even went numb at one point. THAT is what did me in. I had pressed on the nerves for too long and caused a bout of sciatica.
For the next month leading up to george again, I must focus on recovering from this nerve pain, and then focus on strengthening my back, taking my vitamins, taking the Chinese herbal medication, exercising, omitting sugar and alcohol from my diet again, and generally being well and sound of mind so that next month’s downtime won’t be so treacherous.
I can do this. I have to do this. I have to be well enough to fight again next month.