A Pain in the Neck

Yesterday morning I had a fitful sleep. I woke up every hour from 3:30 to 6:30. I got up, fed Shelby, and went back to bed, setting my alarm to 7:15. Woke up at 7:15, sat up, and...KINK! Oh my god, something happened to my neck. It felt like a pinching cord going from the left side of my neck down into my shoulder blade. I could hardly move.

It just so happened that I already had a doctor's appointment yesterday about my knee, which has been bothering me for weeks, due to my beloved jump rope which I can no longer use. I now had two issues to talk about with my doc.

Turns out my doctor had called in sick, so I was sent to urgent care. The building is undergoing renovations, and boy, did it look that way. I was led into a room that looked like it had been thrown together, with cabinets and equipment that were state of the art in 1984. The young woman who led me to the room took my pulse, blood pressure, and temperature, and then a nurse came breezing in. I would not be seeing a doctor. No matter, I like nurses. But not quack nurses. Read on...

Her name was Nurse Russo. I described the pain in my neck to her and she said it was a muscle spasm, which can often be due to stress. I wondered inside my head what I could be stressed out about. Was I stressed about the busy day I had had scheduled, which was now moot? Stressed about the IRS and my deceased father's dealings with them? Stressed about something I didn't even realize I was stressed about? Who knows, I was just hurtin'. Bad. She said she could write me a note to take the next day off and get a massage.

She asked me if I had taken anything, and I said I had taken Advil. "How much?" she asked. "Two, and then one." I replied. She said, "Oh, that's not enough. You need to take three." I explained that on the bottle, it said one or two, and she said that yeah, they had to put that. Take three. How was I to know?

She said someone would give me a shot of amothedkdhesin (insert proper name here, I didn't write it down), and then prescribe 600 mg. of Ibuprofen, which was equal to three Advils. She also prescribed me a muscle relaxant. I asked her if it was okay that I took a birth control pill, allergy pill, three Advils, and a muscle relaxant all at once, because that seemed like a lot to me. I said, "You know...Heath Ledger..." She said to me condescendingly, "Oh, you're cute. It's no problem." Cute, right. My health concerns are cute. Unlike the shoes she was wearing.

She then felt my knees and said she felt cartilage and that she would prescribe physical therapy. This woman was really into handing out prescriptions! I said that I wanted an X-Ray, just to be sure, and she sort of rolled her eyes and said, "Well, you'll just have to come back down here for me to read them!" like I was putting her out. Too bad, Nurse Ratchet, I want an X-Ray.

She relented and told me that "Maya" would be in to give me the shot of amothekdsein, and she gestured to her back. I asked her if I was getting an epidural. She laughed, went out, and a couple of minutes later breezed back in and said, "Well, looks like I'm going to give you the shot." Was she qualified? Was Maya too busy? Did she even know what she was doing? She told me to pull down my pants, and I did what I was told, good patient that I am. She gave me an injection in between my back and my backside.

I went upstairs to get the X-Rays, took it back downstairs, and Nurse Russo "looked" at them (I think she tossed them in the trash) and said that she wanted to go with the original plan of physical therapy. I asked her how it worked, and she said, "They'll call you. Or better yet, you call them!" and she gave me a piece of paper with the directory on it. I got a good close look at her face. Her eyes bulged out and they were bloodshot. Woman needed sleep. Bad.

The update is that the shot worked about 50%, I was on Ibuprofen and muscle relaxants for a week, and I'm getting a massage. No more pain in my neck, but the new theory of my knee pain is that I've compensating for my hip pain on my left side and putting weight on my right knee. I'm going to schedule the physical therapy.

I feel like I'm falling apart, and yet I'm still excited to turn 40. I'm going back to yoga classes.