Don't Speak

I had a moment today.

I think I mentioned the soreness in my left arm earlier this week or sometime before... now? Well. It's been ongoing. It's made sleeping and driving (two things I never do at the same time) particularly painful. Work has been OK but I've been walking around with some serious tension. On Wednesday I put in a request for an ergo study on my desk and workstation.

I know one thing for sure: I will soon be getting a chair with arms.

I had been figuring all this time I've been having this discomfort that it was stress-induced, and I kept telling myself that it would be away, because "I'm not that stressed." Then, on Wednesday, I went to my Weight Watchers meeting, and I talked about it to Leslie, the leader of my group, and she told me these horror stories about people she knows, my age, who had the same problem and ended up having strokes and heart attacks and stuff.

And don't think that that hadn't occurred to me. I was just ignoring the idea: alternately blowing it off as insane, and then once in awhile, thinking, well, who knows? I mean, maybe it wasn't very nice of Leslie to say all that stuff (because telling someone who is already stressed that she may be having a fucking heart attack doesn't seem like the best way to calm that person down), but it did get me thinking. Ah: thinking. Thoughts. Logic.

So that afternoon I called Kaiser and made myself an appointment for Thursday.

Obviously I am fine: I'm not having a heart attack or a stroke; my blood pressure was it's usual low number, and I didn't even have a fever. However, my arm continued to hurt, and now it was a little more advanced: my hand was tingly, and my leg (all on the left side) and foot, too. I was given a prescription for a muscle relaxer (which I will bet you a million dollars I will never take), advised to find a yoga class, and told to get an ergo study done on my workstation (hey! I did that already!).

Today I went to the chiropractor, and they had me lie (lay? I never use the right one, do I) on the water table. After setting me up, the girl left me in the darkened room with these words:

"Now I want you to relax."

Dammit, doesn't she know anything about me (uh, no)? Telling me to relax is about as useful as telling me to grow another head. I just can't do it on demand (now, when I'm not thinking about it, growing another head is like breathing...). And then, as much as I love my chiropractor's office, they play the absolute worst music. I don't know what station they were playing on the radio, but it was terrible. When I get a massage, Bruce plays his mellow didgeridoo "music to be massaged by" music (I don't really know what it is. It's like a higher class version of the music they sell at Target of rainstorms and babbling brooks). The combination of the not-very relaxing tempo of the water bed coupled with No Doubt's "Don't Speak" (I find Gwen Stefani to be rather high on my list of "most annoying female singers ever"), Hall & Oates' "She's Gone" (Hall & Oates are typically very relaxing but this particular song has a push and pull that just isn't soothing), followed by Elton John's "Daniel," a song guaranteed, every time, to make me cry.

Which it did.

So I'm lying (laying?) on this stupid water table, and my back is being pummeled by whatever the thing is that pummels you on a water table, in the dark, listening to Elton Fucking John, crying, when the water table stopped. Abruptly. To me, at that moment, it was like being hit by a car. I was afraid the doctor was going to walk in and I'd be all teary-eyed and freaking out, and I didn't want to to have to tell him what my problem was (my problem was, that I had envisioned myself telling him my problem, which is that I really don't have any problems, but that the ones I do have, I'm just not handling them very well at the moment, which, seemed to be, at the same time both incredibly pathetic and very profound to me for some reason). I knew I was being silly. But I was afraid of talking to this young doctor (my usual chiropractor wasn't available today; he has a very gentle way with me and isn't scary at all. The young doctor isn't scary, either, but he's young) with this soundtrack of sappy love songs. Anyway, the thing that always annoys me about the chiropractor is that they put you in this tiny dark room and then they seem to forget about you for what feels like forever (but is really only, I don't know, 20 minutes), but today, I was glad for the, what do you call it? Alone time. I had gotten a grip, mostly, by the time the doctor came in, and he proceeded to adjust me.

And then I paid, left, sat in the car with my sunglasses on and the sunshine from this beautiful day hitting me, and I felt a little better.

My fucking arm still hurts, though.