My Painful Week

It has been a while since I’ve posted to any of my blogs, but this week has been significant enough to take the time.

I went to a movie and dinner with a friend on Sunday. As I left the movie theater, I noticed my lower back was extremely tight.

Monday morning, as I was getting ready for work, I put my left foot on a low stool to tie my shoe and felt 3-4 small non-painful pops in my lower left back. I got as far as sitting down in front of my computer to work, but within a very few minutes I felt major pain. No position would relieve, it just got worse with every attempt. Then it became excruciating just to sit, lay, or walk. I couldn’t even get into my bed - achieved finally by flopping my top half on the bed and pushing my non-painful leg against the wall to push myself the rest of the way on. These movements were accomplished by what I’ve termed “bohemian anesthesia” - otherwise known as screaming.

I was flat in bed until Tuesday at which time I decided to seek medical help. I couldn’t drive. A neighbor took me to the nearest Urgent Care. Before a diagnosis, the doctor plied me with Dilaudid that made me very sick. I was there all afternoon taking anti-nausea meds and having blood taken from me. Nothing relieved the pain. It seemed to fluctuate according to its own will.

Around 7 pm, they arranged for an ambulance to take me to the hospital specifically to get an MRI - it’s where I spent the night. There were moments when pain was relieved some what, but would then zoom to 10. Two doctors stopped by to say they thought it was the piriformis and discouraged the MRI. The hospital released me with meds late afternoon.

In the middle of the night, I woke up to take some meds and noticed that I my left upper leg was numb and my groin was so painful it was hard to lift my leg even to walk. Back to the hospital ER.

Finally saw a doctor who thought it would be a good ideas to get a “real” diagnosis. He arranged for an MRI appointment, wrote prescriptions for more appropriate meds, and set me up with appointments with an orthopedist, physical therapist, and with my primary doctor’s office. I finally felt like I was going somewhere! The MRI revealed a bulging disk and, as a side note, I didn’t have cancer,

I am still nursing myself at home hoping and praying I can be back to normal (normal for me, anyway) soon. I am lying on my side in bed typing this in by iPhone and it’s a pain too.