I’m back <== painful pun

It’s been a little while. A big little while. I’ve learned something over the last few months, namely that while I am capable of doing many things at once I’m not so good at doing many things at once while I’m in horrible pain.

Horrible, horrible pain.

What happened? I herniated a disc in my lower back, and it has been by far the least pleasant experience of my life. If you haven’t experienced it yourself, I can best describe the sensation as comparable to being stabbed with a bolt of lightning, except the stabbing goes on and on and on. The human body is an amazing thing, and it is amazing how something as simple as picking up a bottle of shampoo can make you lie on the floor of your bathroom sobbing for half an hour. Seriously.

I like to think of myself as a pretty stoic guy when it comes to physical discomfort. I haven’t taken a sick day in the last four years, even when I had an Exorcist-style stomach flu (my co-workers were impressed by my dedication, even as they stood at a safe distance and yelled at me to go home). I have been struck by a falling log full of nails (true story). I have had a bottle broken over my head, I have been kicked in sensitive regions, I have accidentally stapled my own hand to a stack of papers – never, not once, have I accepted so much as a Tylenol to ease my suffering. I can take it. Then this happened:

That bump is my nucleus pulposus, popping its little head out through a tear in my annulus fibrosus to say ‘Hello! I’m crushing your sciatic nerve!’. My body’s immediate reaction was to tie my lower back into a solid steel knot, which my pain receptors then used as a stage for a week-long performance of ‘Screaming Anguish: The Musical’. During this time I discovered that the best way of getting around my apartment was crawling. Backwards. I ate an entire raisin challah and washed it down with a pint of pineapple juice because that’s what was on the bottom shelf of my refrigerator.

The weeks that followed are a blur. That’ll happen when your diet consists entirely of breakfast cereal and oxycontin. Fortunately I had more than a month’s worth of days off saved up at work; unfortunately, there was so much urgent work to do that I didn’t take any of them. You know you’re living the dream when you’re lying in bed, talking to a client on your cell phone, and pressing ‘mute’ every three minutes to scream obscenities at the ceiling.

The good news? I’m feeling better now. Not all-the-way-better – not, for example, so much better that I’m not still munching Schedule IA narcotics several times a day. But a rigorous regimen of having steroids injected directly into my spine with what I’m pretty sure is a bayonet has gotten me back on my feet, and with some luck I may avoid needing surgery (or a spinal cord stimulator, the idea of which gives me nightmares). Work has eased up a bit, too. So … here I am. Back again.

Hi!

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