Double Fisting

I am aging.

BACK STORY:

7 years old - I can no longer read the chalk board without my glasses thus requiring that I wear my glasses during class but I take them off for recess. By a year later... I can no longer see people any further than two feet away thus requiring that I wear my glasses EVEN DURING RECESS! (Fast forward maybe 3 years to when I can't see more than a 1/4 of an inch in front of my face thus requiring that I need glasses even for the short trips from the bed to the bathroom.)

9 years old - I suddenly recalled, one summer, that the girl I was being introduced to had been my bestest friend the year before. Paula. But I also realized that I could recall NONE of the previous summer. "I must be getting old," I thought, "I'm losing my memory!" (Either that or we were slipping into and out of parallel universes but that's really a conversation for a different day.)

16 years old - My best friend Becky finds my first white hair and through possibly deceptive means managed to convince me that it was pretty fucking cool (thus calming my freak out) ... and to this day I admire my pretty fucking cool white streak in the mirror at least once a damn day.

20 years old - I begin to realize that I ache. I have ACHES and PAINS! What the hell? Suddenly my neck and shoulders couldn't handle staring at the computer all night doing "homework." I begin to think about things like personal massagers and lumbar support. I also come to realize that I'm allergic to cats. Allergies?? I never had flippin' allergies before!!

24 years old - My neck pain is an everyday thing but added to the mix is a mysterious new pain at the left base of my spine. Most days it's an annoying "presence." I make my first visit to a chiropractor where I'm x-rayed and informed that I stand funny. Really? Why didn't anyone ever point that out before? A day after my intro visit to the chiro... I break out in hives. What in the freaking god damn is this rashy, itchy HELL?!?! For about two weeks I have this annoyance on my arms and torso - I wear latex gloves to bed to stop the itching, the latex gloves are too small so I fine-tune them to essentially finger tip gloves connected to a rubber bracelet, I take a variety of drug store "solutions" and bathe/soak in Oatmeal, rub in calamine lotion, etc. etc. until eventually I heal. After trying to figure it all out Miriam (my then girlfriend who nursed me through all that loveliness) put two and two together and realized... the robe! At the chiropractor's! When I had the x-rays!! Allergic!!! Fear.... of fabrics! I decide it must be some sort of hospital-grade detergent but the office can't tell me what it is because they send their items "out" to be laundered. (Anyway... tangent!)

So I return to this chiropractor's office and he proceeds to explain that apparently my neck bones and pelvic bones are just all fucked up. "See here they're about an inch misaligned. And here in the neck you're about a quarter inch off. I can fix it here with 10 or so visits but anywhere else they would recommend surgery!" I think ... Hmmmm... first of all - this chiropractor is in the ass end of nowhere so 10 visits here is entirely too inconvenient (my x-rays and evaluation were a part of a "free" offer to get things checked out) and second of all - I'M AFRAID OF YOUR GARMENTS! So I ask to kindly take my x-rays with me so that I can "show my parents so that they'll pay for it." (FYI - I've been sans any kind of medical insurance for about 9 years now.)

I end up taking in my X-rays and all effed up back to my mom's preferred practioner, a holistic chiropractor named Catherine, for a second opinion. Catherine explained that rather than being all messed up (per Dr. Evil Garments) I was actually just a mutant. "See," she said while pointing with a pencil that probably advertised Om, "he's looking at the bottom of your pelvic bone and the bottom of your neck discs while I prefer to look at the top. If you look at the top - you're perfectly aligned... which means that the left side of your pelvic bone is actually just shorter than it's supposed to be. Same with your neck. Oh and if you don't fix your posture soon - you're going to develop a hump."

Oh...a hump. Wonderful.

So after that and with some wonderful humming and body talking - she gave me a pleasant little adjustment and some exercises ("pretend you're looking up AND over a fence"). I ... felt ... OK .... for about a week until Miriam conquered me in a rousing game of "Queen of the Bed" and knocked that left bottom spine thing out of whack again. ("OH quit your whining ONLY CHILD!" was her response to my "Oh you just fucked up that thing!! Dammmmmnnnn youuuuuuu!")

Eventually it settles back into that mild annoyance back pain and only acts up after long bouts of walking or .... kickboxing. (Ha. Kickboxing. Me. Ha.) I begin to be careful about things like bending. And I also become that girl that can't sleep without my tempurpedic neck pillow and would just love pillows positioned lovingly in such a way that my knees are always lifted just so. Miriam took to pointing at me and saying, "Old."

(On a side note... I'm 5'4". Miriam is 6 feet tall. When we stopped seeing each other on a daily basis... my neck started to feel better.)

FAST FORWARD TO:

27 years and 11 months old - Monday, July 24th, 2006

I had spent the previous day at ComicCon walking briskly around the San Diego convention center floor and getting tuckered out. My back, in that left base of spine area, began to throb in its annoying little way but I paid it no mind. I'm used to this stupid nonsense now! But alas - I was not. After diving in and out of a tall wardrobe box (retrieving posters...not important to the tale) I made one apparently wrong bend and felt a HORRIBLE OUCH. When I scream... I scream silently. And I was afraid I'd just become one of those people that you see on TV sitcoms that say things like, "Oh honey I've just thrown out my back!" and then they proceed to walk around in a right angle for 25 more comedic minutes. But after a few moments of "Oh holy crap, what do I do!?!" I managed to straighten up and walked to my nearest parent and said, "I hurt."

Mother determined that I must have pinched my Sciatic nerve and instructed me to do an exercise that Catherine had given her for such moments called the "Hitch in your Get-a-long." It involved outward kicks and 45 degree angle kicks. I did this for a few minutes on each side and felt a little looser so I continued to do it every 10 minutes or so.

But the sting wasn't going away and I kept grabbing on to things so I decided I should probably use a cane for walking and standing support. Since my dad has a cane collection and my mom has bad knees... canes were more than available. I had a wide selection, in fact, and chose to use a nice black thorn walking stick from Ireland. (Mother's cane of choice.) That night I drove my car, went to a movie screening (of Little Miss Sunshine) and then went home... the whole time in pain. I went to bed sure that it would be gone in the morning.

Tuesday I woke up, got out of bed and still I hurt. But then I made the error... (well I suppose it would have happened at some point in the day but it happened to happen then... so I suppose I can't really call it an "error") ... of bending over. Bending AT ALL was so the wrong move and at that moment I experienced the STRANGEST FEELING I'd probably ever felt in my life as something very wrong happened. First I felt a shooting pain that traveled simultaneously down my left leg and up the left side of my body. My arms both went numb, I was completely overcome by nausea, my vision blurred and I started to fall and there was nothing I could do to stop myself because everything was locked up. Essentially - I practically fainted. (I have to say "practically" because I didn't lose consciousness... so "fainting" is still something I've never actually done in life. It's on the list of "almosts" and "near misses" along with black eyes and bloody noses... I've had "near" bloody noses but never a real one. Oh and stiches.. never had those.)

So there I was... on the floor... unable to move... in my pajamas.... behind a locked door. I realized that I was in a predicament. A painful predicament. After several minutes of the plain fear of moving I managed to retrieve my cell phone and called Brigitte in Minnesota who pep-talked me into scootching to the door to unlock it so that I could get actual help from someone who could actually help.

By the time I got to the door (a good ten minutes or so later) I was also able to stand so I calmly walked to my mother and stated, "Something happened and I think I passed out." To which my mother responded with a "Do you want me to see if I can get you in to see Catherine today?" "Yes, please."

(Another back story: Once I tried to give Miriam a piggy-back ride during a summer break from college. This was a mistake which ended in me stepping wrong as I threw her to the grassy ground - knocking the wind out of her and breaking two of my toes. Miriam begged me not to tell my mom what happened (she was afraid my mom would get mad because it was her idea and she "broke me") and called me a sissy-la-la for limping but I AM a sissy-la-la and the next day I was all... "Mom I think my toes are broken!" "Oh your toes are NOT broken you hypochondriac!!" was her response. But the next day... "Mom my toes are purple!!" led to her calling the doctor and taking me to the urgent care where I got my special shoe for broken toes and VALI-FUCKING-DATION that I was NOT wrong!! Queen Barb felt guilt for telling me otherwise.

A couple of years later - Miriam got pneumonia but just figured she had a bad cold and worked through it. Then she gave it to me and proceeded to call me (what now?) a sissy-la-la for whining about how I couldn't breathe and told me to go to work and just power-through it. Being the self-diagnoser that I am - I had my mom look up symptoms for pneumonia and said, "Yes, yes, I have all of those. I have pneumonia!!" To which my mom replied, "You do NOT have pneumonia you hypochondriac!!" Then after Miriam was mostly healed she called in a panic to inform me that her father had just been diagnosed with pneumonia and that she probably HAD given me pneumonia and that I should go to the doctor right away! I told my mother. She took me to the urgent care. I was once again VALI-FUCKING-DATED! (The doctor also told me that if I'd been any older I could've died.) I was supplied with medicines (which I was fucking allergic to!), an inhaler and a daily schedule for medicating. My mother was once again guilt-ridden.)

Back to the current issue at hand - I said "Ouch" - Mom said "How far and fast can I jump?!"

Catherine was able to see me within the hour so I got on some clothes (dressing without bending is not so easy) and we rushed over - I now double fisting two black-thorn walking sticks! Catherine assessed the situation and informed that, "Ooooh! You're in Category Three!" (I don't know what the categories are but category three sounded pretty bad.) Apparently - some joint had slipped out of its proper position (back there on that left base of my spine) and on its way down decided to pull a disc with it. And for the first time in my life I was given "doctor's orders" (note and all) to not attend school the next day.

My next few days were a flurry of ice packs, lumbar supports, pillows, Advil, slow walks in pajamas around the block with my double-fisted canes and I was never far from my easy gripper for picking up things like remote controls and strange robotic attempts at putting on socks.

(That's when I officially became old.)

I also instantly informed my friends so that they could roll on over to point and laugh in person. (This is how we relate.) (In fact this blog has been posted NOT for your sympathy but so that you, too, can point and laugh.)

My visits to Catherine were scheduled for every few days at first... and then a week.. to ten days. And each time she would hum and talk to my body and tell me things about how "your energy is trapped in your ovaries now and that means that you're probably having feelings of loss," and etc. (All valid, fyi, but not a tale I will share.) My category three went down to a two. I was given rehabilitation exercises (involving Tai Chi and yoga positions) as well as time to get trapped bad energy out and flowing again.

(For the record - when I am rich and living my life of luxury - I am SOOO keeping a holistic chiropractor on staff!)

And this, my blog reading friends, is where the "story" comes to a halt because we have been brought to the present. My last visit to Catherine was supposed to be the LAST visit. I know this because the second-to-last visit was when Catherine said, "So next time we should probably start thinking about setting up a plan. You're now at that age where you should start thinking about regular visits." Great - I've turned 28 and I'm "at that age" where my body stops growing and instead starts dying slowly.

BUT to throw a wrench in that "last visit" plan - I went and fucked my back up all over again at the birthday beach bonfire barbecue last weekend by getting all cocky and lugging around heavy things and running around in the sand. I'm back to a Category Two and, though "your joint IS stronger because this time it just slipped but didn't pull on the disc," I had to make a quick new appointment for tomorrow. And I think I pissed off Catherine in a "after I did all that work!" kind of way because in that last visit she hummed a little more agressively and poked and pushed harder than she usually does. (I had to ice after her visit but not before!!!)

Today... the damn joint feels worse... not better. I can feel it WANTING to pull on that disc. Apparently I must now live in fear! I must now heed warnings like, "People with a history of back injuries should not ride this ride." I have become THE LAME.

(Ahh who am I kidding... I was "the lame" already.)

- The End -
(of this chapter)

Bday Card!

On my birthday I received THE BEST CARD EVER!! One of Hallmark's new singing cards that featured a Fried Green Tomatoes quote on the front and the "Ghost Train" theme music when you open it!