It’s been a while since this last happened, but every time it does I am reminded of the fact that my scoliosis can be a BITCH to live with.
It started early Saturday morning, around 1:30am. It always shows up in my dreams – this time I was in a meeting – constantly fidgeting and trying to get comfortable in my chair. I woke up with a start – gasping and sitting straight up in bed. Brian asked me what was wrong and I said, “Nothing,” though I knew it was the start of what we both have come to dread. Thirty minutes and 800mg of Motrin later I knew it was getting worse, so off we went to the ER.
The interesting thing about getting these muscle spasms in my back is that they occur on the concave side of my back – the “crunched” side. These muscles do little-to-no work. Yet they are the ones that spasm so hard that only a trip to the ER can make them stop. For anyone who has (thankfully) never experienced a muscle spasm try this at home: clench your muscle as tight as you can. Then drive a knife into that muscle and twist it. Make it last about 15 seconds. Repeat every minute or so. I imagine childbirth feels similiar. For anyone who has had a baby – you are both fucking insane and Super Woman.
The ER is probably my least favorite place to visit, and this trip marks the third time I’ve been there this year (not all for me, but for my family members). If you like to people watch, the ER is probably as good as the airport for spying all sorts of people. While we waited a young woman came in complaining of an allergic reaction. I believed her because she was constantly scratching at her skin, but she kept repeating, “I feel like I’m in a movie, I look like a herion junkie.” Another young man was lead in by a cop, hand-cuffed and shirtless and clearly fresh from a fight as he was covered in scratches and scrapes and was bleeding. One woman brought in an unconscious man she found at a party. She was anxious to leave so she could “get back.” Did she mean get back to the party or simply get back home?
After about 2.5 hours in the waiting room I was called back. Now to this doctor’s credit he listened to what I told him and treated it accordingly. I’ve had doctors insist on checking for kidney stones and other maladies even when I insist it is none of those things. But while he gets credit for listening to me and treating my back the way I asked, he loses a LOT of credit by not giving me ENOUGH medicine to knock out the spasms.
Usually I get two shots in the ass – one muscle relaxer and one pain medicine – followed by the same thing in pill form about an hour after the shots. This time I got one shot in the ass (the pain medicine) and HALF a Valium (in pill form). This is an important fact (more on that later). Thirty minutes later the nurse came back to discharge me. The spasms hadn’t lessened so I asked if she could give me more drugs to take with me until I could get to the pharmacy to fill the prescription they had given me. She said she couldn’t, the doctor didn’t want me to take any more. Fine, whatever, just get me the hell out of here.
By the time I got home at 6:30am the medicine had blissfully dulled it enough to let me sleep for a couple of hours. Unfortunately at 9am I woke up, the spasms back in full force and screaming through my back. I drove to CVS, gritting my teeth the entire time, and waited an excruciatingly 20 minutes while they filled my prescription.
The problem with the doctor only giving me a half a dose of Valium is it only took the edge off the spasms – it didn’t relax the muscles enough to stop the spasms completely. Because of this my back continued to spasm for nearly 24 hours while I took as many drugs as allowed to try to keep the pain and the spasming to a tolerable level.
And it affects more than just my back. My entire body – from neck to ankle – aches from constantly clenching as I try to ride out a spasm. I am exhausted and my brain feels foggy. Sunday morning – 36 hours from the onset of the muscle spasms – I woke up feeling relatively okay. The intense spasming has finally stopped, but my back is tight and sore and it feels like someone beat me with a baseball bat.
So dear friends, that was my weekend. But it wasn’t a complete loss as I did get this lovely bracelet as a souvenir:
