Back Spasms Not for the Faint of Heart

Wednesday morning at work I was suddenly paralyzed by a terrible spasm. I had tears in my eyes.

That is fairly normal and not a rare thing - but it is not every day, not even every week. Some times it happens but most of the time it doesn't. Sometimes life just flies by with no problems. And when I do get them, they just come, torture me for a little bit, and then be on their merry way. Not this week.

The spasms have been with me the last three days. We were lucky last night - both calls were cancellations, and so no lifting was involved. I can't get that lucky again, I don't think! Three days of this was too much and after two hours of sitting like a board in my office chair, I called my doctor. His fiery and energetic (ha, ha) staff told me he had openings at 1215 and 1230, otherwise I could come in Monday morning. A weekend of this? No, thank you! It was 1139 so I took the 1230, finished what I was doing, and drove from work to the doctor's office (just a mile from the house) in 23 minutes. I wasn't driving like a mad woman, either. I was just lucky it was August and there was so little traffic.

I got there, signed in, and they had me go to Room 1 right away. No sitting, no waiting. How much do I love that?! Usually there is a short wait. I went into Room 1, which has an examination table with paper on it. That sounds unremarkable, but the paper struck me. It has "Levaquin" printed all over it with the logo (I think it is a sugar derivative, probably for diabetics). Remember when examination table paper was just white? Sheesh.

I sat in a chair - sitting on the table (normally where I would sit) without back support of any kind seemed like a really, really bad idea. So I tried to read in the chair but it wasn't long until Dr. Papish came in. The first time I went to Doctor Steven Papish, I was expecting someone who is Hindi. He walked in and here was an older, overweight man with silver-white hair and a silver-white mustach and he's just Joe-American guy. I wouldn't care if he was Hindi - plenty of excellent Hindi physicians out there - but I was afraid I wouldn't understand him. No issues there. The only thing that worries me is he always sounds winded.

The house is shuddering with the furtive rumbling of thunder.

He came in and asked how I was and I replied that I'd had better days. I gave him the history and the problem. He had me stand up in front of him and he ran his hands along my shoulders, down the back, had me bend over in front, then back, then to each side. I was uncomfortable. He had me lay down on the table and then, to my total shock, he twisted me like a pretzel! First on one side, then the other. I was shell-shocked. I hated it when my chiropractor did that, and I did not like it when he did it, either. I didn't know if it helped or not. But I laid out at the front that I didn't want anything to do with pain killers.

He suggested putting me on a non-sedative muscle-relaxant, Skellaxin. I told him I'd been on that before and it had had no effect. He told me that he could give me another muscle-relaxant but it would make me drowsy. Well, OK. I can live with tired. I just hate that weird feeling that you get on Vicodan, Percocet, etc.

I went straight to the pharmacy, picked up the script, and came home. I took one of the pills and then ate. About 45 minutes after I took it, I found lifting my hands to be an enormous effort. I laid down and my eyes slammed shut. Damn! Is that what they call drowsy? Holy cow. Well, Jason did say that these would really knock my lights out. He was right.

Well. Beats being in pain, doesn't it? (Take my word for it, it does.)