A Bump In The Road To Wellville

This past Sunday afternoon at about 4:30 I started feeling pain in my left hip.  Within an hour, I was almost in tears.  On Monday, I went to the Doc-in-a-box where I was irradiated and given codeine for pain.

This resulted in a man in great pain who was also high.  Not there fault, it was all they could do.

Other than get me an appointment with an Orthopedic specialist for the following day.  Whimpered my way there on the Tuesday expecting a "hip shot" (injection into the hip region) of cortisone and whatnot to resolve the pain and begin therapy.

When you go to an expert, you don't get to tell him what he finds wrong with you.  IOW, there's nothing medically wrong with my hip, thus no hip shot for pain relief, but I did get a much bigger bottle of codeine and an appointment for an MRI the following day.

That same afternoon I did get in to see my usual Doctor and he was able to look over everyones notes and accumulated work (x-rays and the like) and he thinks that, along with some arthritis developing in my lower back and pelvic region - not surprising in a man of 60 years, some hopefully still-minor damage has occurred to a disc in my L-spine or that possibly something else has pinched the nerve running down into my left leg.

Wednesday, I went to get the MRI.  I've had one before for my knees.  Surprising to me, a spine scan is less complicated than one of the knee; only took about 20 minutes, even with the do-over toward the end when I had to move or wet myself.  Something else I discovered - when in a building that contains an active MRI machine, don't bother texting anyone.  Your message(s) will eventually go through, but the (increasingly irritated) replies will all appear on your phone in a cascade of bloops and beeps once you get into the more usually constructed portion of the building, like reception say.  I wasn't taking notes at the time, but either the electronic symphony coming out of my pocket or the sight of me madly choking down drugs while whimpering my way toward the water fountain will likely get you looked at in a concerned fashion by everyone else too.

Just saying.

The ortho guy won't be back in town 'till next week, so I get to spend the next several days looking at the clock to see if my morally ill-prepared self control is stronger than the pain-addled rest of me (the label says "every 6 hours", which so far means my life still has unfulfilled aspirations as of yet) along with ice packs wedged dangerously close to the groinal region, resulting in sporadic (not to mention hasty) inspections for testicular frost damage.

So, I'm never not in pain and I'm too high to do much of anything more demanding than move the blue ice pack somewhere a little less close to my urinary tract.  I failed to mention that I did get a course of steroids to keep track of along with all the rest.  I'd forgotten how steroids make one urinate so much more frequently.  Levitating up out of bed from yet-another nap with one leg in agony and the other in cramp is not an experience I can recommend.  Note to self: just drink more water, you're too high to know if you're thirsty or not anyway.

I am told that there are good non-surgical therapies these days even if it turns out to be a ruptured disc in my spine.  I resolutely refuse to speculate, mostly because doing so requires too much mental horsepower.  I'll know more next Tuesday.