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What IS the world coming to?

Psoas Major (Pain In My Ass)

The latest:
This is where I got trigger point injections yesterday. The Psoas Major, up near the twelfth rib, on the right side. I was scheduled to get it done on the left, but then the doc watched me laying there convulsing on the table while waiting and realized perhaps a more in depth looky see was warranted. And whaddya know? Right side, not left. Despite having "massive hypermobility". Meh.

I remember at one point the doctor saying something to the nurse about how I came out unfinished. Something about me being put together with rubber bands and paper clips or something. I don't know, I was trying to listen, but I was also trying to sob as quietly as possible into the table they had me on. That was before the procedure.

She had to numb me first, she said. Uh, ok. I don't know how badly the shot itself could have hurt compared to the eight times she jabbed next to my spine to numb me, but freaking shit popsicles, that wasn't a good time. She kept asking me if I was all right, and telling me to concentrate on breathing. I finally told her to pick one, answering her questions or breathing. She laughed, and picked breathing. So I did.

When it was over she told me she was sorry it was so rough. I just said, "I've had worse." She laughed until she realized I wasn't joking. When I managed to sit up she said, "How are you feeling?"

That was one of those moments that I really appreciate having picked up my father's incredibly dry wit. I was thinking, "I've been laying jacked up on this table while you look at my spine with some X ray shit to make sure you don't accidentally paralyze me, I've been desperately trying to not spasm, 'cause I want my spine intact, too, but at the same time not tense up, which is clearly impossible, and to sob as silently and without movement as possible, while concentrating on breathing and trying to answer your barrage of questions about how I am and where do I feel that, and I'm sitting here looking like someone who wandered into the emergency room after getting kicked in the back by an ornery mule..."

So I said, "Shaken..." and sniffled, not having a tissue handy, and added, "bit not particularly stirred." She actually stopped moving as her busy doctor brain registered that I was making a joke, and looked momentarily stunned before laughing and repeating my joke. "I'm gonna have to remember that one," she mused while putting her medieval devices away, none of which I remotely wanted to look at, and didn't.

I got up, tested my ability to balance (check), tested my muscle strength (right leg gone to tropics, will send postcard), and limped out to the recovery area. I kicked back in the recliner for a few and just wept, probably scaring the crap out of the two ladies waiting to go in, but I tried to reassure them by saying, "Don't mind me, I'm just a big crybaby." I moved my feet around, my legs, slowly, fascinated. My right leg didn't hurt. As a matter of fact, it was WARM. It was warm all the way down into my FOOT. Halfway up my back. I asked the PA if that was the numbing shit or the trigger point injection, and she looked at me sadly and said, "That's your circulation returning. You probably haven't felt that in a while." I just stared at her, dumbfounded, realizing she was right.

As I progress, slowly but insanely slowly (ha), it's easier to differentiate between what is fucked up from falling down the stairs, and what has been there since I tried to come barreling out of my petite mother at full speed in a full breech position (ass first, feet up next to my head). Sometimes I get worked on and it feels better. Sometimes I get worked on and it feels like something I've never even felt before. This was one of those times.

Today, I'm sore. Weak. Wobbly. But that stabbing pain that ran through half my right side is gone, replaced by a throbbing ache. Which, to be clear, is better. I am optimistic this will change into a non throbbing non ache. (rolls eyes) First it might hurt a whole hell of a lot more as muscles that don't know how to be used properly try to decipher what they're supposed to do. I'm no help; I don't know either.

So I walk, and rest, and feel incredible gratitude towards the people who invented heating pads and dishwashers, whatever makes my life easier and more comfortable in the healing times. I try to research this stuff a bit, but take breaks, long ones at that, to put myself in a state of gentle traction on the bed while blazing through the collection of "Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy" books my son got out at the library.

What's next? Don't know. Right now, I don't care. Lunch. A Red Bull. More heating pad. Sending out Mother's Day cards and hope they make it there in time. It's given me a lot of time to think, pain has, and observe the people in my life. I am a thoughtful girl.

I lied to that doctor. I am stirred, too.