Saturday, February 18, 2012

The butt chronicles continue...

I hate to keep going on about my butt/leg problem, but it's kind of on my mind constantly since I am essentially dragging a dead body around with me all the time.  If you are sick of hearing about it, please stop reading here.

To those that are still with me, I went to the physical therapist yesterday for yet another appointment.  My PT decided I needed to try traction.  I don't really know what traction is, but apparently it involves some sort of apparatus/harness thing.  She pulls the one she wants off the wall and starts to mess with it.  One of the clips falls off of the strap.  I look at her and said, "That can't be good."  None the less, she kind of fixes it and tries it on me.  Now, I'm not sure if I was just too fat or what, but as soon as she puts it on and buckles it up, the clip jumps for it's life again.  She says she figures this one isn't going to work, so I take it off.  She looks at the others she has hanging on the wall and seems to not like any of them.  She says, and I quote, "Well, this one is the least broken out of all of them."  I said, "Um, that is a pretty sad statement that we are using the least broken piece of equipment you have...are we all out of operational stuff?"  She decides we'll do something different, which I appreciate, because I don't know what was about to happen to me in that harness, but I am pretty sure the harness wasn't up for it. 

The PT goes on to torture me for an hour, butt shocking included, and I asked her, "exactly when do we decide that I've had enough pain and that I'm not getting any better and we actually do an MRI or maybe look at other alternatives?"  She informs me that her hope is that I will gradually get better.  I stared at her.  Let's try this again.  I said, "you don't seem to understand, I limp all the time, my leg and hip hurt so bad ALL THE TIME and nothing I do helps it."  She looked at me compassionately and says, "Well, we will hope that gets better."  Hope is not a strategy.  She said I would need to go see my doctor.  I advised her my doctor sent me to her.  She said, "well, you'd need to go see him again."  I decided to give up.  I just laid there while electricity pulsed through my ass and thought about the fact that I could be an invalid for the rest of my life at this rate.  Fifteen minutes later Junior showed up to care for my sticky pads. He must have lost the coin toss and was once again the one to pry the sticky pads off my ass.  I don't know where the kinda attractive muscly guy was that brought me in, but I sensed he was not going to be the sucker that had to care for this part of the appointment.

I left there, in pain and feeling defeated.  I was going to have to do something.  I don't know what, but something.  I could barely get in my truck and now was feeling worse than before I went in for therapy.  A friend suggested those heat pad things that you put on your back or where ever you need them.  I had tried that yesterday, but ended up having a rodeo in the bathroom trying to get it on.  You see, according to the instructions, you aren't supposed to put it directly against your skin, so I was trying to put it between my jeans and underwear.  It wasn't going well.  The pad thing kept sticking to my hand instead of my pants, and then I would finally get it on my pants and then I'd pull my pants up and it was in the wrong place.  Where is Valerie when I need her?  I mean, I am trying to limit the number of people that see my bare ass, but sometimes a girl is in a bind.  I thought about getting her, but then decided to tough it out.  In the end (no pun intended), it didn't really help anyway.

I got back to work, grabbed Valerie and we went shopping, after all, the queen is coming.  I won't go over all the mundane details but I will tell you about one guy that really inspired me.  We went to Target to buy a mini-fridge.  We find the one we want and ask them to bring it up front because it is pretty heavy.  Some nice stock boy takes it up front.  We get a few other items and then head to check out.  This other guy is leaning on a cart with our fridge.  I can tell right away that this guy is not employee of the month.  We checkout and head outside.  Cart-leaner guy says, "can you bring your truck around front?"  We said yeah, we could.  My truck was already in the second parking spot right up front, but clearly, if it involved going off the sidewalk, this dude could  not be bothered.  He sits there in the front of the store, watches us get in my truck, sees we are right there and still does not move a muscle.  This guy was killing me.  After fighting a bunch of cars to get to the sidewalk and pull up by the curb, he finally takes his cart off the curb and rolls it towards my truck.  Are you kidding me?  It was a life altering experience for me.  I realized, I try way too hard.  If this guy can keep his job, then I need to tone it down at work.  I need to lower the bar.  I think taking on this new attitude during the queen's visit is just the ticket.  Why stress?  Cart-leaner guy, you have inspired me.  Thank you.

Anyway, we finished our errands and returned to work.  People kept telling me I should go home because I looked like I was in pain. All I could think was, "I wish someone would have said that to me 14 years ago." I did finish out the day, I had stuff to do.  Cart-leaner guy definitely would not have approved.

Three cheers to a weekend full of muscle relaxers.

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