Gimpy

Hello, strangers! I’ve been out of commission for a bit. Let me catch you up…

Sometime during the first week of December, my back started to hurt. Nothing too serious, I had my regular chiro appointment in a couple of weeks. I figured he’d straighten things out then.

Sunday night, as I was taking some laundry downstairs, I had a sudden stabbing pain in my back, just above the left hip. I dropped the laundry basket and collapsed on the stairs, and there I stayed for the better part of an hour. Any attempt to move was excrutiating. Alpha Geek prowled around worriedly above me, unable to help.

Eventually I was able to drag myself back up the stairs, but after a while it became clear the situation wasn’t improving. I rounded up Alpha Geek and The Artist and they basically carried me out to the car and carted me off to the ER. We sat around for a while waiting, Alpha Geek working on a Calculus assignment and me trying to find the least-painful position to sit in a wheelchair, until they could take me in for X-rays.

They made some noises about some signs of degenerative disc disease, and finally gave me what I came for—the good painkillers. The nurse/intern/whatever came in and said I’d been prescribed 5/23. I looked at him blankly. “What does that mean?”

“It’s 5 (something) and 23 (something else), also known as Percocet.”

Oh, sure, that I’ve heard of. “Okay,” I agreed.

The Percocet took the worst of the edge off, and we made our way home. The next day Alpha Geek called my chiropractor to get me a more immediate appointment.

His diagnosis: I’ve sprained a ligament. Going down the stairs, holding the laundry basket, I was extended well past my center of gravity—as I stepped down I had my weight driving down on one side, and the stair driving my trailing leg up, and it twisted my already-sore ligament in bad ways.

So I spent the second week of December in bed, because I couldn’t sit up. At all. For the first few days I didn’t even care; I would take a Percocet, then sleep for six hours. After that I got pretty tired of it. I’ve been to the chiro several times, and he’s just about got me straightened out again; I still get a twinge if I move my leg at just the wrong angle, but I can go to work and walk and fun stuff like that.

So that’s where I was the second week of the month. This week I’ve been trying to catch up on all the work I missed last week. And while I appreciate that everyone at work was concerned about me and is interested in my well-being, I’m already tired of people asking me how my back is doing.

So that catches you up on where I’ve been. Tomorrow I’ll get you caught up on TEH DRAMA that I missed at work while I was out.