September 23, 2012

• A Real P.I.T.A.

  Way back in May, I went on a boat ride in Jamaica that was incredibly bouncy and me being a little guy, got bounced up and down on the metal seats we were sitting on. After the ride, my back and butt were sore. Ever since then I’ve experienced some pain in my tailbone every now and then, but is only when I sit for too long in the same position on a hard surface. Now flash forward to this week. On Tuesday, I started having some pretty significant pain in my lower back/upper ass which I attributed to the tailbone. Only this time, it wasn’t just when I sat a certain way. It was a pretty severe, sharp pain that would come and go. I didn’t know what it could be but started to go through the five stages of grief:

  1. Denial- This was most of Tuesday. I kept telling myself it was nothing, “oh it’s just a little pain, nothing serious, it’s mostly just in your head. How the fuck could it still be sore from something you did in May?”
  2. Anger- Tuesday night I was pissed because I could not sleep because of the pain. I was in bed mentally yelling and swearing at my back “fucking stop hurting already you asshole!”
  3. Bargaining- By Wednesday I was debating on when I should go to the doctor. “Look, I’ll make you a deal, if it is still hurting by Monday you can make an appointment to go to the doctor.”
  4. Depression- As the pain came and went on Wednesday and Thursday, I grew kind of scared and worried that it was a fracture of some kind and that I would need surgery and would have to miss time at work not not be able to work out and get fat.
  5. Acceptance- Friday morning about 4:30 I was woke up by the pain in my back. I did fall back to sleep eventually but spent much of Friday morning in occasional agony as every now and then I was have the pain followed by a few more spasms of lesser pain. I finally said then that this really fucking sucks and called the doctor who gave me a referral to the immediate care in his building.

  A lady I worked with said she has similar pains in her back and that it was muscle spasms. She said sometimes the pain is worse than labor pains. Now it has been years since I was pregnant, so i really don’t know if this was worse than labor pains. All I know is that it really fucking hurt. On the pain scale of 1-10 with 1 being the lowest and 10 being the highest level of pain, this was probably an 8. And it seemed like anything triggered it. I might move the wrong way and there it went. I’ve also had a cold this weekend, so if I coughed or sneezed than the pain would come. When I went to sit down, I would get a spasm. The only time it seemed fine was when I was standing perfectly still without doing anything.

  By the time I left work, the contractions seemed to be only a few minutes apart. And being that I’ve got a car that requires one to sit while driving, I knew this would be the most painful drive of my life. Even the slightest bump on the road would set it off and I would be gripping the wheel and clenching my teeth with agony. What made it even worse was that I hit some traffic on the way there which made it longer than it should have been. The drive should only be about 20 minutes, but it was closer to a half hour. Fortunately though I did not have to wait so long before getting in to see the doctor who diagnosed me with muscle spasms and gave me a shot along with three pills to take. I’m doing much better today but that is with meds. I don’t know how it will be without them. All I know is that this whole thing has been a giant pain in the ass, or a P.I.T.A. as I like to say.

  • 12:07 pm
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