Tuesday, May 22, 2012

Pain and whining

I came back from Michelle's memorial service with a cold that has just been impossible to kick. Family pressure finally pushed me to the doctor after about five weeks, when R refused to see The Avengers with me because he said that I'd cough too much and Dad offered to pay for the doctor's visit and K tempted me by reminding me that doctors sometimes prescribe cough syrup with codeine in it. The doctor put me on antibiotics and from my response to them, I'd guess that I did have a sinus infection. But a week after the antibiotics ended, I'm still stuffed up, still coughing (although not nearly as badly) and still sneezing. In my non-medically trained opinion, that's allergies.

Along the way, though, with the ferocious cough, I developed a pain in my right side. Pulled muscle, in my ever-so-competent, non-medically trained opinion. And yeah, it was weird that a month later, it still hurt to take a deep breath, but muscles are slow to heal. But yesterday, while swimming, I dived down to the bottom of the pool to try to retrieve a basketball.

If I hadn't been underwater, I would have screamed. For a second, I wasn't sure I'd be able to make it out of the pool. I spent the next hour sitting very still, waiting for the pain to stop and breathing shallowly. I actually watched the Neil Gaiman commencement speech that's been making the rounds during that hour and when he made me laugh, I followed it up with a whimper. In my not-so-competent, non-medically-trained opinion, I have a cracked rib. This makes me want to say lots and lots and lots of bad words.

On the pain scale of 1-10, the pain used to be ... maybe an inconsistent 4. In the right position, it didn't bother me at all, but if I did something like take a deep breath, it was annoying enough to stop me in my tracks. Now, sitting perfectly still, pillow against my back, it's a 5. When I move the wrong way, it's about an 7. Last night, it was lie in bed and weep pain.  I suppose the only positive side is that I'm finally rewarded for not having used all the pain pills from my dental surgery of five years ago.

I'm not sure why I felt the need to whine about this on my blog. Maybe it's because I really wanted to write a lot of A Gift of Thought today and I'm not sure that's going to happen. But at least I can tell myself that I wrote something, even if it's just a whine.

2 comments:

  1. Ouch! I separated some ribs once (sneezing while on my back in bed (swear to god) and it was the worst pain EVER. Worse than unmedicated childbirth times ten. Take it easy, and listen to your body....when it says slow down, SLOW DOWN.

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  2. Unmedicated labor has two advantages: the nice little breathing breaks between contractions, when you start thinking, "oh, this isn't that bad" and the sure knowledge that there's an end in sight, even if that starts to get a little fuzzy at points. I sneezed this morning and then walked around holding my side and grumbling for the next five minutes. Ugh. Anyway, thanks for the sympathy!

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