Indignation of January: What is your emergency?

Have you ever been afraid of sneezing? I have

Welcome to the January 2024 edition of Indignation of the Month! This is a series where I explore the minor affronts to my existence; the tears to my daily dignation if you will.

Last month, I found myself with some minor writer’s block. Let’s see what happened to me this month.

Carson Kressley - A Dogs World. A parody of Christina’s World by Andrew Wyeth that you can buy on Amazon. Also accurate representation of me crawling to my ibuprofen bottle.

You know I’m about to tell you I got sick. Everyone was sick this January. But you see, I’ve had this urge since I was a kid to excel in everything I do. So I wasn’t just going to get sick this month with some flu-like illness, no… I was going to one up that: I was going to get sick, twice¹.

The illnesses themselves were nothing major: malaise, tiredness, snot, chills. Mostly taken care of by NyQuil and Real Housewives re-runs. But the second go-around there was a cough. That cough. That just wouldn’t relent, wouldn’t go away. A sentinel that warned me my immunity wall had been breached for a second time. The cough would outlive the invasion itself. After the fever was gone, the headaches subsided, and my energy levels rose, and yet the relentless cough remained.

The cough wasn’t the end of the pain. There was still room for me to excel. To go above and beyond and exceed expectations.

These things are funny when they start unceremoniously. Not as the result of a terrible accident like falling from a helicopter or some incredible activity like climbing up a wall of granite. Nah, these things are hilarious when they start so pathetically. When they happen to you just by existing. “It happened when I bent down”. “When I reached for the back of the fridge”. “When I turned around too quickly”.

“When I coughed.”

I coughed and my lower back cracked. Something had torn inside me.

I couldn’t hold back the tears.

But I also couldn’t stop coughing.

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Have you ever been afraid of sneezing?

I have never been more afraid of anything.

My nose tingles and sparkles. Oh boy, here it comes. I need to find a comfortable position in the next 0.5seconds. If I lie on my back the pain will be insurmountable; the pressure of contracting my entire body to force out these particles will force my spine to hurt me. It will stab me from the inside. On my side may be a better option. Fuck maybe the sneeze will go away. Can I fakeout a sneeze by breathing out quickly through my nose? Toolatehereitis.

“Achooo”.

It sounds so innocent and it feels so sinister.

I compress my entire body against my will. In response, pain erupts from my lower back. It’s hot and electric. It radiates from proximal to distal, from my sacrum to my hips. There it gets on the rails of my nerves and travels down my legs. The pain tenses every muscle it finds on its way to my toes, where it is released accompanied by a pathetic sounding yelp.

Every time I sneeze something inside me burns up and dies.

“I was crawling to the ibuprofen bottle before I called you” I told the online doctor. I’m sitting on the floor staring at my laptop that I put on a chair. There is nothing natural or ergonomic about this set up. But that makes sense because there’s nothing ergonomic or aligned about my internal set up. I’m unable to sit still. I can’t tell if I need to lie or sit, on softness or hardness. I’m in pain but I’m restless. I’m using my upper body to move the rest of me around like a gremlin. Every position I iterate through radiates discomfort, so I never stop moving.

“Yeah getting back pain sucks” they reply in their virtual zoom office space, the edges of the fake room glitching when they nod their head. I can’t tell if this is genuine empathy or they’re just going down a checklist of “good bedside manners”. I’m going to blame that inability to read the virtual room on Zoom.

What I can be sure of is this talking head is not getting the severity of the pain I’m experiencing. This isn’t “that sucks” kind of back pain. This is something else.

I know I don’t have a ton of time to make my case for extraordinary pain, so I work on a communication strategy.

I have to reason with them that I have had “that sucks” back pain before. I know what it can feel like to have a “sucky” back. I need to emphasize that this feels different. Also, I’m different now. I know my body. Gone are the days of hypochondria, where my warped logic would make every twitch equal the beginnings of a motor neuron disease.  I need to let the doctor know I am a reliable narrator of my own bodily experience. I exercise this body consistently and with care. I have learned through hard work of mind and matter to understand what it tries to tell me. Today, it is telling me something is not right now and if I don’t deal with it now it will get worse.

The pain radiating from my sacrum is consuming all my neuronal metabolism. My jaw is clenched too tight from gritting through the discomfort. I can’t be as eloquent with my words as I am with my thoughts. There is only so much strategy I can imbue this communication with.

“I think I need imaging, this doesn’t feel like normal back pain” is what comes out of my mouth after all that analysis.

“Back pain can be painful, but it usually doesn’t mean something is terribly wrong. Are you experiencing any other neurological symptoms? Like incontinence?” They reply floating in the fake office.

“Not yet” I answer with a smile, disappointed at my powers of persuasion.

I take it that my pain isn’t a sufficient enough reason to move anything quickly. This pain is not deemed emergent or urgent, just a part of being alive. Life is pain, right? I just need to trust the process of being referred to a specialist. However long that takes.  I’ve had to lie down because sitting is no longer on the menu for this conversation. “Maybe by the time you see the specialist your symptoms will be resolved” the talking head tells a seemingly empty room.

“Well… if you do you get symptoms like inability to move your legs or incontinence, you should go to the emergency room” they tell me at the end of our call. I can’t tell if they think they’re being helpful or just going along with my annoyance of feeling dismissed.

“Yes, if I shit myself I will go to the emergency room.” I reply starting at the ceiling. Defeated.

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The numbness I started to feel percolating and bubbling down my left leg after a couple of days felt emergent. My lack of recovery after a week of pain felt emergent. My inability to stand up straight without tearing up felt emergent.

In society though, emergency is a relative term. I’m in pain and that is an emergency for me. But with resources being limited, someone has to rank order emergencies.

“I think I’m having a heart attack and I have cancer”. “My mother is 80 and she is having trouble breathing”. “We found them collapsed on the side of the road.”

Who ranks the cardinal order of these emergencies?  Is there a right answer?

What makes any of these situations emergent vs. urgent? Why does one of those options require pre-authorization from insurance? How does someone authorize that indeed a situation is urgent and you can go to a place for that urgent care?

I wonder if the insurance person knows that I cried trying to take a shower because I couldn’t stand up.

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I coughed the wrong way and herniated a disc in my lower back. It was not fun.

I am on the mend. I am lucky. I have a great support system that can take care of me when I can’t take care of myself for now. I am taking steroids that have gotten the numbness and pain to retreat some. They are magical and I love them, thank you steroids. Because of them I can walk again. I have an emotional support heat pad that follows me wherever I go. It’s blue and it keeps me warm.

Now, I have to do the hard work of resting. Of being ok not knowing when I will get back to the body work. Of taking it easy.

I’m sure lots of mulling over will occur during my days of taking it easy. I hope those thoughts produce entertaining reads².

Any recommendations for TV series or books are welcome, I have watched all of the Real Housewives of Salt Lake City and am a couple of episodes into the Playboy Murders. I’m sorry.

1. None of them testing positive for COVID, so my options are still open!

2. Like and subscribe for more of this!