I’ve always been told I’m a pain in the neck but on Wednesday morning last week, when I rolled over in bed, little did I know just how much of a pain I would be.
In bed, I’m a tosser. Get your minds out of the gutter – I toss and turn at least half a dozen times during my sleep/semi consciousness. As I rolled over a shooting pain ran from just behind my shoulder blade, up to behind my ear running parallel to my spine. It was stabbing. It was uncomfortable. I could. Not. Move.
My head was stuck in one position kind of facing to the right and every time I even flinched to the left the shooting stabbing pain would be back. The left hand side of my neck even felt swollen.
Throughout the day, instead of getting better as predicted, it got worse. To the point where there were tears in my eyes if I moved my head at all to the left.. I was feeling nauseous and by the time I left work to hot foot it to the chiropractor I also couldn’t focus my eyes and had broken out in a fever/sweat…….I was fearful that it could only have been one thing. Ebola.
The Chiropractor was brilliant, luckily for me it turns out that I did not have Ebola, although as she pressed the spots that needed to be fixed my eyes started weeping tears. I started to cry a pathetic little wimpy cry like the one where you just told your personal trainer to f*ck off and now she’s opened up a can of whoop ass on you.
If I have one thing in common with most mums it’s that when we’re down, the show must go on. I don’t have someone to just pop up to the chemist to get me elephant-tranquilliser-strength pain reliever, there’s no “hey can you please get me another ice pack” or “grab me the remote will ya?” There’s also no-one to say “oh poor you, you look terrible, how are you feeling?”
So i did the only thing that any self respecting invalid would do in a time of crisis…. I turned to Facebook.
Turns out baby peas make the best ice pack for your neck.
I totally turned into one of those people who put up all the gory details of their illnesses in the hopes that either a) people feel sorry for them (me) or b) try to ruin peoples perfectly good day with tales of their own personal sadness and woe (also me).
And i loved every second of it.
Even after I posted on Facebook, there were still tears. It is lucky i do live alone because they weren’t tears of sadness they were tears from deep down somewhere below my gut but above my private parts. They were guttural, they were ancient prehistoric tears that felt like they had been brewing, fermenting in there for a long time. I still don’t know why I was crying but geez afterward did it feel good.
The next morning I woke with one of those post crying headaches, but my neck amazingly felt better, not back to normal. That will take about a week, but better. And I’m pretty sure that release of tears and tension was the secret behind it. Oh and the Facebook sympathy…worked wonders.
When have you been in serious pain? What helped you? Did you turn to Facebook as well?
Among the three best cured for any ailment.
