Last week I experienced the most recent in a series of terribly painful neck episodes, whereby I could not sleep without narcotics, drive a car safely, get up from a lying position without cradling my head, or carry on a civil conversation for the better part of a week. When I get like this, I have an almost constant need to talk about my pain. See?
I was popping Darvocet whenever I didn't have to operate an automobile, alternately chuckling like a monkey and weeping during inferior television shows, living with either an ice pack or heat pack on my neck at all times, and wishing my children would go away and ask somebody else the infinity + n number of questions they ask during the course of a day. If I could have moved fast enough, I may have even been led to kick the dog.
Darvocet is not my drug of choice. My drug of choice is a fat bout of exercise, but you can't really exercise when simply waking up makes you want to cry. Due to biopsies taken from an endoscopy and colonoscopy the previous week that left vague parts of my guts a little bit raw and bloody, I was only allowed to non-aspirin products, so it was Darvocet or nothing. (*I know -- it sounds like I am falling apart, but it's actually a long story and I have promised people who know me to never mention "gluten" in my blog, so I won't mention my own Adventures in Endoscopic Theater. Also, no one can ever write about getting scoped better than Dave Barry.)
But, back to the Darvocet. Darvocet reveals to me the house gnomes that live in the darker corners of our home, and also lets me see music even better than I used to see it as a child. Plus I dream about famous people when I take Darvocet, and the whole next day after one of those chalky little suckers, I feel like I am floating about an inch off of the floor. It also provides the added insight of letting me understand how the English language sounds to someone who does not speak it.
I must not take Darvocet unless someone else is home to help with the children.
So, for the first time in several years of putting up with it, I addressed the Neck Thing, partly because I don't at all like Darvocet, and partly because the pain was so intense that I was starting to think about whacking my own head and neck with an aluminum baseball bat, just to stop it from hurting. That made no sense and scared me into finally seeing to a doctor.
She walked into the exam room while I was sitting carefully in a chair with my head resting back on the counter. I made eye contact with her by grabbing my own hair and lifting my head into an erect position.
"Were you in an accident?"
"No. It just does this about four times a year."
"How many?"
"Four or so. Maybe more. Sometimes less. " I shrugged. "I did a lot of Aikido, running, and jumping off of really big hills on my mountain bike. I'm figuring this is my penance for having fun in my youth."
"You're still in your youth. This is not normal, you know. Did you drive yourself here?"
Then came a muscle relaxer which made Darvocet feel like Necco Wafers, the X-Rays and the adventure of a lifetime -- an event more exciting than 10th grade Band Camp, more adrenal-draining than an Immelmann loop, more claustrophobic than being buried alive in an avalanche, only colder -- getting stuck in a malfunctioning MRI machine. Stay tuned for Trapped! One Woman's Journey to Hell and Back.
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