My turn as a patient.

Ouch. I hurt my back. At work. I just turned a little, twisted a little, bent a little and then, something snapped and I saw stars. Now remember that I work for a neurosurgeon and for years, actually decades, I have tended to people who have bad backs. (And brain tumors, but that's a different story that I hope to never have to tell...) So I hobbled over to the docs and said "I have to go home" and they kinda laughed and said here's some work to take your mind off and I said, "I can't work when I'm crying" and then I cried. Twenty-nine years I've worked there and never one tear. OK, sometimes I've cried when I gotten to know and love a patient who doesn't make it. And then, after my mom died, I admit I was prone to sudden bouts of weeping. But never a tear for myself. 'Cause I'm tough!!! Well, maybe not so tough. I did finish some work, saying "ow" everytime I moved an inch and then decided to go home. I guess men can't take tears so easily 'cause the docs really got serious when they saw them falling down my face. So, I go home, take some Vicodin and Soma, a lovely cocktail of meds, and lie on my bed and can't. I feel like Goldilocks and the three bears. "This bed is toooo soft...this bed is toooo hard...this bed is just right." My waterbed was out of the question, the couch was impossible, and my grandbaby Quinn's bed was "just right!" About then, the drugs kicked in and I couldn't care less where I put my body and then the room went blank and I was out. Ah, now I know why people take drugs. It still hurts, but ya just don't care.

That was yesterday and today I'm better. Or just drugged, I can't tell. Just to be sure, I went to my Chiropractor the "magician" and just like that, I can move without pain! He touches my neck and says "here it is" and makes it crack so loud that probably you all could hear it and then I get up and I can stand up straight for the first time in twenty-four hours! My neck fixed my back?!? And then I went back to work, took some more drugs, and hopefully didn't do anything to harm anyone. I was a little goofy, kinda silly I think, but I did try to restrain myself in front of my patients. Ah, drugs.

What's the moral here? I don't know. Maybe it's good to go through such suffering to remind myself of my good health. Maybe the adjustment saved me from greater injury later. Maybe it's a way to avoid thinking about men and my lack of them. I do know that sometimes I want one and then, maybe hours later, I don't. Gotta figure that out. But I think I'd better wait to do that until I'm off the drugs.....and I'm me again.