Sunday, April 3, 2011

What a pain in the tush!

Bruised or broken?

So as you may recall from my previous posting, I had a little slip and fall incident earlier this week. I’m still hobbling around, in a lot of pain, and I feel as though I’ve been kicked in the rear by a herd of angry mules. Or something to that effect because, truth be told, I’ve never been kicked by a mule, much less an angry one. But it hurts like the dickens, and I’m afraid I may have cracked my tailbone, the medical term being coccyx. Once I suspected something more than just a bad bruising, I naturally did my over-the-top research on the subject. When you're a nurse, it's never just a simple bruise or a headache. Oh no, it's a fracture or a brain tumor. Well, after reading up on the subject, I discovered I could be living with this pain for years. Lovely.
Depending on what damage has been done to the poor little bone that lives at the base of the sacrum ,(i.e. dislocation, chipped, fracture, etc.) there’s relatively few options in terms of treatment.  I realized this the minute I saw the first treatment option: Seat cushions.  Seat cushions? That’s considered a treatment? More like an intervention to deal with the pain, but it certainly won’t eliminate it for good. Some of the other options are oral pain medications, local steroid injections directly into the coccyx area (ouch…I wonder if they give you a pain injection before that injection?) A last resort for patients suffering unrelenting pain in the you-know-where is surgical removal of the offending little bone.
I’m so glad I was a complete idiot, forgetting that water and tile floors make for very slippery conditions. I am now paying the price for my carelessness. Ah well, live and learn, as the saying goes. I know it could have been much worse.
Mall draws “interesting” people
Yesterday, my husband and our 13 year old son went to the mall for various shopping details, and it is a destination I always enjoy, even when walking is extremely uncomfortable, as was the case for me (I know, I know, I’m certainly getting a lot of whining mileage out of my injury).
What I enjoy the most about visiting the mall, besides spending obscene amounts of money that we don’t have (thank you VISA and MasterCard), is the people watching. I don’t know what it is about the mall, but it seems to draw folks from all walks of life, and when I say all walks of life, I mean lives I didn’t even know existed. I saw some young guys there yesterday with pants so baggy and low, I don’t know how they stayed up at all while they walked. I had to resist the urge to run up behind them and grab those pants at the waist and hike them up. I really don’t want to see their underwear, but thanks for the in-your-face display just the same. Of course, I didn't act on this crazy urge, as my son didn't want to see his mother get beat up by baggy panted teens.
Then, we ran into the mall crawlers. You’ve seen them. They’re everywhere. There’s no escaping their insidious presence. You’ll be walking at a respectable pace, when suddenly you’ll come up behind a group of people who are obviously together, and they are just as obviously competing for Quickest Snail Race. Since they are lined up as a very formidable wall of bodies, you’ve no choice but to back off until you spot a gap and can make your escape.
Let’s see, what else did I observe while mall crawling? Oh yes, how could I forget? The power walkers! They are there to get their exercise, and heaven help anyone who gets in their way. Actually, the regular walkers are usually very adept at avoiding the crowds, and become quite skilled at darting in and around unsuspecting shoppers. What I find fascinating are the Power Shoppers. The ones walking at breakneck pace, determined to make it to 20 stores in 20 minutes. Now there’s a particular human being that strikes fear in my heart. 
All told, the mall made for some pretty interesting people watching, and also served the purpose of distracting me from my constant pain.
But as I watched, I always kept one eye out for angry mules...just in case. 

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