My weekend.....
So Thursday we were all getting ready to break the boat out for the first time this summer with my father in-law Nick. Man, I was so excited! This is the first time since last summer that we'd get to hit the water, it was the first time that our new dog Sable, a black lab mix, would get to go swimming and boating, and we'd get some sun, and ya, it'd be fun...
Unfortunately, my body is getting older and I haven't been maintaining it as often as I should. I stepped out of the shower that beautiful Thursday morning and began toweling off. I lifted my right leg to dry it off and a severe sharp pain lanced up through my back and down my right leg and I felt something TURN in my back. I tried straightening up and almost fell onto my face, luckily I caught the doorframe leading to the sink area (it's a small two room bathroom).
I lowered myself to the toilet seat but the increased pressure almost overwhelmed me. Panting slightly from the pain, I lowered myself to all fours and knelt there for a while. I discovered that as long as I didn't move at all, the pain eased up and passed. I would feel almost normal, although I had a devastating sense of wrongness associated with me back.
Moving brought an immediate and devastating amount of pain, enough to force me to gasp out. Knowing that I can't spend the rest of my life on my knees, I managed to eas down onto my side and then roll over onto my back. I scrunched/crawled my way into the outer room of the bath to give me some space but I was physically unable to straighten my legs. I tried pulling my legs one by one up to my chest, hoping that the action would pop whatever shifted back into place. I managed to lift my left leg by using my arms but my right leg was immobile.
That was when I called for help.
I could hear my wife shivvying our kids into their clothes and trying to hurry them downstairs so that they could eat breakfast. I knew that there was no way that I was going to make it to the lake. I hated the thought of them missing out on the lake, but I am selfish enough to want someone with in a situation like this.
My wife, as awesome as ever in a crisis, immediately started the kids on breakfast, grabbed the phone and made the call to 911. She also called her father to cancel the trip to Chatfield Reserviour, but he had already left. During all this she managed to put some swim trunks on me, remember, I was laying naked and wet on the very dirty floor of the bathroom that I have been sharing with my extremely messy younger brother while he stays with us. I actually thought that she was going to start cleaning up the bathroom while we waited for the ambulance, but she had other things to do (kids, dog).
The fire department showed up first. They hate our stairs, stating that if these stairs were any steeper they'd have to use mountaneering gear, and the massive amount of pictures that my wife has hung along the hallway upstairs.
In a normal person's house there may be three to five pictures hanging on a wall in a hallway. My wife has three ROWS of pictures, in some places four rows, and the total is over twenty pictures in a thrity foot hallway. Needless to say, these big burly firemen (my sisters would have been drooling) had to remove a dozen or so pictures so that they wouldn't knock them down while trying to manuveur my not inconsiderable mass out into the hallway and then down that narrow but steep flight of stairs.
"Only a man who's heart is pure can reach the dagger. And only a man who's ass is narrow can walk down these steps, and if mine is such an ass, then I shall have it!"
So they got me downstairs and into the waiting ambulance. The ambulance took me to Lutheran Hospital, where I used to work as a security guard. My first nurse there, the Charge Nurse over the ER was an old aquitance of mine from my security days. Unfortunately, she left me in the care of a snatchy older nurse and a hurried doctor who just wanted me to go home.
They told me that I had slipped a disc or strained my back (how do you strain your back by lifting your leg? I'm six foot tall and weight 220 lbs. It's not that hard to lift my leg, believe me), either way, the treatment in the same. Lots and lots of pain medication. I let them know that I have a high tolerance to pain meds and that Vicadin is nearly as useless to me as apsirin, all true for the curious doubters out there.
They gave me something like four or five BIG doses of good stuff in the ER and then agave me a perscription for Percoset, the drug of choice among celebreties. Percocet makes me tired and does a good job od dulling the back pain, but isn't a drup that I could see anyone getting addicted to.
It was funny though, after laying strapped to a back board for over four hours I told the nurse that I needed to pee and that if she gave me another dose of pain meds then I'd be able to walk to the potty. She told me that I shouldn't even be concious right then due to the amount that I've already taken. But she did give me another shot and had a male nurse help me up. I walked to the toilet just fine, the male nurse didn't even wait for me to finish! I walked back just fine as well, although I do have to admit that getting in and out of bed took some work.
They sent me home shortly after that (they informed me that if I hadn't been able to walk that they would have hospitalized me, that would have sucked something fierce).
My wife had to run some errands and showed up at the hospital about an hour after I did. She brought a book and a magazine from the store but I was in too much pain, too much meds to be interested. She got me a Mad Magazine, I haven't read one of those since early high school and some novel that had "evidence" in the title because I like those Forensic Files shows on Court TV. My wife cracks me up!
So instead of going to the lake I went to the ER. Instead of having afun weekend, I slept through most of it. I had friends over the last two days. The first day I fell alseep on them. The second day I grilled (my wife got me to grill by offering to do it herself if I didn't feel "up to it". Manipulating little wench...) until I was a zombie in need of a mercy killing. But the brauts turned out real good...
Today is my first day back at work and all I wanna do is go back to sleep. I have auxillery pain meds here, namely Alieve and Ibuprofin, to augment my quickly dwindling supply of Percocet. I'll be visiting the DR tomorrow for more of those. Sorry, but Alieve isn't gonna work for pain like this.
One side benefit of this whole experience is to give me a far greater understanding of what my wife has been going through with this, her third pregnancy. The meds I take have been giving me horrible heartburn, I'm up four or five times a night to pee, I get cold sweats for no reason, and I'm ALWAYS in pain. Sorry babe, I think about this more before knocking you up next time.
Unfortunately, my body is getting older and I haven't been maintaining it as often as I should. I stepped out of the shower that beautiful Thursday morning and began toweling off. I lifted my right leg to dry it off and a severe sharp pain lanced up through my back and down my right leg and I felt something TURN in my back. I tried straightening up and almost fell onto my face, luckily I caught the doorframe leading to the sink area (it's a small two room bathroom).
I lowered myself to the toilet seat but the increased pressure almost overwhelmed me. Panting slightly from the pain, I lowered myself to all fours and knelt there for a while. I discovered that as long as I didn't move at all, the pain eased up and passed. I would feel almost normal, although I had a devastating sense of wrongness associated with me back.
Moving brought an immediate and devastating amount of pain, enough to force me to gasp out. Knowing that I can't spend the rest of my life on my knees, I managed to eas down onto my side and then roll over onto my back. I scrunched/crawled my way into the outer room of the bath to give me some space but I was physically unable to straighten my legs. I tried pulling my legs one by one up to my chest, hoping that the action would pop whatever shifted back into place. I managed to lift my left leg by using my arms but my right leg was immobile.
That was when I called for help.
I could hear my wife shivvying our kids into their clothes and trying to hurry them downstairs so that they could eat breakfast. I knew that there was no way that I was going to make it to the lake. I hated the thought of them missing out on the lake, but I am selfish enough to want someone with in a situation like this.
My wife, as awesome as ever in a crisis, immediately started the kids on breakfast, grabbed the phone and made the call to 911. She also called her father to cancel the trip to Chatfield Reserviour, but he had already left. During all this she managed to put some swim trunks on me, remember, I was laying naked and wet on the very dirty floor of the bathroom that I have been sharing with my extremely messy younger brother while he stays with us. I actually thought that she was going to start cleaning up the bathroom while we waited for the ambulance, but she had other things to do (kids, dog).
The fire department showed up first. They hate our stairs, stating that if these stairs were any steeper they'd have to use mountaneering gear, and the massive amount of pictures that my wife has hung along the hallway upstairs.
In a normal person's house there may be three to five pictures hanging on a wall in a hallway. My wife has three ROWS of pictures, in some places four rows, and the total is over twenty pictures in a thrity foot hallway. Needless to say, these big burly firemen (my sisters would have been drooling) had to remove a dozen or so pictures so that they wouldn't knock them down while trying to manuveur my not inconsiderable mass out into the hallway and then down that narrow but steep flight of stairs.
"Only a man who's heart is pure can reach the dagger. And only a man who's ass is narrow can walk down these steps, and if mine is such an ass, then I shall have it!"
So they got me downstairs and into the waiting ambulance. The ambulance took me to Lutheran Hospital, where I used to work as a security guard. My first nurse there, the Charge Nurse over the ER was an old aquitance of mine from my security days. Unfortunately, she left me in the care of a snatchy older nurse and a hurried doctor who just wanted me to go home.
They told me that I had slipped a disc or strained my back (how do you strain your back by lifting your leg? I'm six foot tall and weight 220 lbs. It's not that hard to lift my leg, believe me), either way, the treatment in the same. Lots and lots of pain medication. I let them know that I have a high tolerance to pain meds and that Vicadin is nearly as useless to me as apsirin, all true for the curious doubters out there.
They gave me something like four or five BIG doses of good stuff in the ER and then agave me a perscription for Percoset, the drug of choice among celebreties. Percocet makes me tired and does a good job od dulling the back pain, but isn't a drup that I could see anyone getting addicted to.
It was funny though, after laying strapped to a back board for over four hours I told the nurse that I needed to pee and that if she gave me another dose of pain meds then I'd be able to walk to the potty. She told me that I shouldn't even be concious right then due to the amount that I've already taken. But she did give me another shot and had a male nurse help me up. I walked to the toilet just fine, the male nurse didn't even wait for me to finish! I walked back just fine as well, although I do have to admit that getting in and out of bed took some work.
They sent me home shortly after that (they informed me that if I hadn't been able to walk that they would have hospitalized me, that would have sucked something fierce).
My wife had to run some errands and showed up at the hospital about an hour after I did. She brought a book and a magazine from the store but I was in too much pain, too much meds to be interested. She got me a Mad Magazine, I haven't read one of those since early high school and some novel that had "evidence" in the title because I like those Forensic Files shows on Court TV. My wife cracks me up!
So instead of going to the lake I went to the ER. Instead of having afun weekend, I slept through most of it. I had friends over the last two days. The first day I fell alseep on them. The second day I grilled (my wife got me to grill by offering to do it herself if I didn't feel "up to it". Manipulating little wench...) until I was a zombie in need of a mercy killing. But the brauts turned out real good...
Today is my first day back at work and all I wanna do is go back to sleep. I have auxillery pain meds here, namely Alieve and Ibuprofin, to augment my quickly dwindling supply of Percocet. I'll be visiting the DR tomorrow for more of those. Sorry, but Alieve isn't gonna work for pain like this.
One side benefit of this whole experience is to give me a far greater understanding of what my wife has been going through with this, her third pregnancy. The meds I take have been giving me horrible heartburn, I'm up four or five times a night to pee, I get cold sweats for no reason, and I'm ALWAYS in pain. Sorry babe, I think about this more before knocking you up next time.
posted by Keko at 09:57
1 Comments:
Bummer....
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