Dont Mince Words

As anyone with back pain will tell you, when you find relief it is as if the clouds parted and the angels sang. You remember what it is like to move again. And live.

My lower back has been tight since my episode in early July. My mobility was limited and I lived every day in fear of moving the wrong way and re-injuring myself. I felt old for the first time in my life.

One day I trolled the Internet for a Thai massage specialist in my area. I remember my friend’s husband got “fixed” by one session and I decided it couldn’t hurt – hopefully. I found the perfect guy – eastern influenced, teaches Kung fu, and he himself had suffered from sciatica.

I had met my match.

I exchanged an email and phone call with Perfect Guy who sounded like he could cure me with one session. That was a little hard to believe, but at this point, I’d pay a guy to touch me for an hour.

Perfect Guy ended up being too perfect in so many ways. He was about 6’3” and 215 pounds with nice salt and pepper hair. I lay down on the mat and he gave me 20 minutes of deep tissue to warm me up. I was feeling relief already when the worst thing possible could happen – I had a wicked nasty fart brewing in my belly. I spent the remaining 40 minutes so elated my lower back felt relief as I continued to clinch my butt checks. He bent me in positions I could only hope to achieve in yoga and worked out some L1 scar tissue.

When it was over, I felt like someone who had attended a revival. I felt no tightness. I was healed. Hallelujah. I was immediately overwhelmed with a bad case of Guru-itis. I wanted to dry hump Perfect Guy’s leg and be his follower. This was really an amazing massage that topped the relief I got from muscle relaxants. I left his Kung Fu studio farting with a big smile on my face.

He called the next day to see if everything was OK. “Well, you probably don’t need to see me again, but I’d be happy if you’d send me referrals,” he said. He called me again today because he was curious how I was feeling more than a week later. I thanked him again.

“Well watch yourself at the gym and see where you have problems and come back and we’ll focus on those specific areas,” he suggested.

Oh, I’m going back, there’s no doubt, but it will be on an empty stomach. I will find any excuse I can to see the Perfect Guy with Kung Fu grip again.

I noticed the reduced flexibility and tightness in my lower back many months ago. While I could still flip my legs over my head and be smothered by my boobs and gut in yoga class, I decided to see a chiro to determine if an adjustment would help me be more nimble. Three weeks of chiro visits left me envying women with walkers.

The doctor’s autographed picture with Lou Ferrigno was comforting, at first. If he could fix The Hulk, there was hope for me. I thought I was getting better until he said “for every action, there’s an equal and opposite reaction.” This was the excuse he gave me when I told him I had a pain in my ass radiating up my back to my neck and down to my foot, numbing it.

I cancelled all my future appointments and walked out. A few hours later, I was in a doc-in-the-box being prescribed muscle relaxants for the July 4th weekend. “You may have sciatica,” the female M.D. informed me. Of course, that sounded like something a Brooklyn Jewish mother gets, so I denied it.

My weekend up north consisted of ice, rest, elevation, pills and hot, beating showers. I managed to get upright long enough to attend a drag dinner show at a Paso Robles winery. I was feeling remarkably better thanks to the pill+alcohol combo. The next day, I was even better when we decided to go across the street and pick fava beans. That’s when I decided it would be a good time to sprain my ankle.

Slumped and hobbling, I elected to go home. I was never so thankful for cruise control in my life. I drove with my thumbs in order to reduce the need to press the brake or gas with my bad foot. I avoided the Santa Barbara merge crush by taking Rt. 166 east. Midway through a remote stretch, I had no choice but to release the gallon of tea I drank on the side of the road near an avocado tree. Unfortunately, my reduced state of mobility permitted me to undershoot my trajectory and piss on myself. My wet, lame ass pulled my beach towel out of the trunk to sit on the rest of the way home, while I downed muscle relaxants like they were Skittles.

But this Trouble Comes in Three’s story isn’t over. Since my GYN probably wouldn’t know what to do with me, I diligently searched my health insurance directory for a doctor or neurologist who would see me. As you would expect, nobody had immediate appointments. This sent me directly to the ER for care.

Overall, it was a good experience with the minor exception of the geezer next to me who yacked when they tried to shove a feeding tube down his nose. I had a middle-aged, white doctor who performed some physical tests and told me I wasn’t going to die.

“My back went out last week,” he said. “You just need to need to rest, reduce mobility, and see how it is in a week.”

“What about sex?” I had to ask.

“You won’t be doing that for a long time,” he responded laughing.

Fabulous. The doctor revoked my sexual freedom rights. That’s OK, he made it all better with a prescription for Vicodin.

Better living through chemistry. Take that Tom Cruise.