Category: 15: PAIN
By Eduardo
Remember Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan?
I think that both fans and non-fans of Star Trek can mutually agree that this was an awesome movie. What other cinematic epic can boast of having spaceship duels, exotic planets, killer special effects, and Ricardo Montalban?
Anyway, if you saw it, you must surely remember how Khan and his buddies raised those horrible little sand worms that they stuck in those guys’ ears. In the words of the mighty Khan, they are described as such:
“You see, their young enter through the ears and wrap themselves around the cerebral cortex. This has the effect of rendering the victim extremely susceptible to suggestion. Later, as they grow, follows madness… and death.”
Why am I bringing this up, you ask?
Because I think that I may have one of those things in my ear.
My doctor says it’s a eustachian tube infection brought on by allergies, but I think it’s actually one of Khan’s pet worms.
Yeah, it’s not fun. There’s so much pressure in there that it feels like someone has jammed a golf ball inside my head. A few weeks ago, I had the same problem – although not quite as pronounced. My doctor prescribed me some nose spray, which he said “should clear the problem up in a few days”. As it turned out, the stuff was like a mixture of angel dust and horse tranquilizer. It rendered me absolutely wacked out for a couple of days, and made my allergies far worse than they had been. It was like a mean trick, possibly the diabolical work of you know who.
Anyway, I tried to make an appointment with a specialist today – but no luck there.
“The soonest the doctor will be able to see you is September 14th at 3:40 PM.”
Awesome… that’s only three weeks away. I’ll head right over and just sit in the waiting room.
By Paco
Well… I think I need training wheels for my mountain bike, because I managed to injure myself again.
On an assuming and fairly mild summer Saturday morning in Northern California, I decided to go for a mountain bike ride.
All was well for the first 1/2 of the ride, I rode a long uphill dirt road so I could come down this fun single track for a few miles back to my truck.
The problem was, right before I was about to start heading downhill, for some odd reason my hand slipped off the handlebar. I was going pretty fast, so I quickly lost control, and equally as quickly I crashed and landed square on my shoulder.
O U C H ! ! !
“#$@%!” I thought… something is broken.
I gathered myself and my bike and walked about 20 yards until I realized that I needed to sit. I couldn’t see, and was feeling like I was going to pass out.
At this point I was 99% sure I had broken my clavical. (a.k.a. collarbone)
So I waited a few minutes to gather myself, and eventually starting walking my bike until a nice woman and her daughter drove by. I flagged them down, and got a ride to my truck.
Down at my truck, I contacted my dad who came and took me to a local walk in clinic. And sure enough after examination by the doctor and confirming x-rays… broken collarbone.
While this certainly was painful, it was about half as bad as this one.
The good thing is I don’t have to have surgery. I just have to wear this stupid sling that looks like a bra for a few weeks, and then I will be fine.
The worst of all of this? During the fall I managed to crack and ruin the screen of my ipod. Dang… guess it’s time to upgrade.
By Jaimenacho
“My friend said it was the worst experience he’s ever had…”
“My nut swelled up like a rotten peach.”
“The anesthesia didn’t work…and it felt like someone shoved an ice-pick in my sack and out my eye.”
“It wasn’t one of my favorite experiences, I can say that.”
“It was no big deal.”
“My sack swelled up to the size of a softball.”
These are all different responses I got from people who have had vasectomies done. Which ones would YOU remember? It’s like the guy who said his was ‘no big deal’ doesn’t even exist. Granted, anytime a “procedure” no matter how minor, is being done to one’s testicles, there is going to be fear and apprehension involved, but add visions of rotten peaches, and softball sized scrotums and a whole new level of paranoia sets in.
…And so it was with me when I recently had a vasectomy.
Honestly, 8 years ago when a friend of mine had one where the anesthetic didn’t work, and he felt them CUT his tube…from that point on…I vowed that I was not going to get it done…no way…not ever.
They’re MY nuts, and honestly, the thought of intentionally inflicting trauma on them just seems stupid…and downright mean.
BUT…
Time passes, children are born, and life moves forward, and then there comes a time when that decision gets made for you in a sense. Two kids, and 8 years later, I found myself standing at the beginning of the bridge to child-free lovin’.
I was going to get ‘snipped’ as they say.
I still wasn’t happy about it. Call me a sissy, or whatever, I don’t care…but once I found out the “procedure” was imminent, I began asking people who had it done, to brace myself for what I was getting in to…and I got a lot of responses, most of which didn’t make me want to have it done at all. To think, most people PAY to have it done, out of their own pocket. Thankfully, my insurance covered the procedure, and would allow me to be unconscious for the entire thing.
SWEET.
The procedure went fine, and I woke up from a minor sleep with a jockstrap on and a bag of ice on my crotch.
That was last week, and while the bag of ice has disappeared, the jock strap remains. The aftermath of the surgery hasn’t been any fun. Pecos helped describe the feeling almost perfectly. Even though he still hasn’t had one done. Picture a time when you had to take a deuce so bad you almost soiled your pants…that gross feeling in your stomach where there’s a bit of pain, lots of discomfort, and some nausea…not to the point you’re immobile, and useless…but to the point you feel very uncomfortable…it’s kind of like that 24 hours a day. You have to keep the boys locked up in the jock, otherwise they flonder around and inevitably knock into something (not like a table or anything, but your leg, or each other) and send pain shooting through your body.
So wearing the jock keeps the twins in line so to speak.
Now, wearing the jock while you sleep sucks, because, it’s not real comfortable…so figuring you can minimize movement while asleep, you’ll leave it off at night. Getting up to take a leak, or get a glass of water, you’ll try to get up, sleepy-eyed, and forget to put the jock back on…and the boys go on a minor tear and knock each other, or your leg, and nearly drop you with the pain.
I’ve been going on for a week now like this. They’re getting better slightly every day, and according to the Dr. everything is going “par for the course” but still, it hasn’t been fun. The pain is minor when they’re cooped up in the jock all day, but at night when they’ve been set free, or in the shower…the pain is very uncomfortable.
My advice is when the Dr. says stay off the feet, and rest for 2-3 days afterwards…take 4 or 5 to be sure.
Then thank your lucky stars you only have it done once.
By Paco
CONTINUED FROM…
So as I started to come to the realization that my arm was broken, I tried to walk down the trail towards the river.
After a few steps, I started to go into shock from the pain. So I sat down on the trail and tried my best not to pass out.
My boss finally caught up to me, he had gone and stashed my bike up the hill in some brush.
“Don’t pass out!” he yelled.
“I’ll try not to, but I do need to sit for a minute.”
“Ok… but don’t pass out!”
So after sitting for a few minutes, the shock went away, and we started to walk down the trial. I figured out a way to hold my busted arm against my chest where it didn’t hurt too bad. It was crappy though, I had to walk at least a mile just to get to the river and on top of having a broken arm, I was wet all over from landing in the creek, and freezing cold.
Eventually my boss and I decided that it would be best if he took off down the trail to go see if he could get help from someone with a cell phone or something to that affect.
So he bolted down the trail, and I just kept walking thinking about how badly I messed up my arm, how long I was going to have a cast on… how much it was basically going to suck.
Eventually I got the trail, and after walking down the river for a mile or so, I saw a car driving up the trail.
“That must be for me.” I thought…
Sure enough, it was a friend of my Boss. She helped me into the car; I introduced myself, and asked to be taken to the local Catholic Hospital.
She was very nice, and took me there very quickly. Little did I know that the hospital was going to be a bad place for me to be.
I walked into the ER and checked myself in at the front counter. I was standing there shivering, and clutching my broken arm. I looked at the lady at the counter and told her my situation,
“I broke my arm pretty bad, and I am in quite a bit of pain.” I said.
“We will be with you in a minute, please have a seat.” She replied, in a very indifferent tone.
So I turned around and shuffled into the waiting room. It was PACKED! And packed full of a ton of white trash folks that had the flu. I couldn’t believe it… here I was wet, and in pain with an obviously broken arm. And I was waiting in the lobby of the ER with a bunch of sick white trash people. I was pissed.
After sitting for a couple of minutes, the lady that took me there made a suggestion…
“You know, we could go to a medical clinic? They could get you in faster, they’d probably do the same thing they are going to here to treat it, plus you wouldn’t be sitting in here with a bunch of sick people.”
“Sounds good to me.”
So we headed off to the clinic. Sure enough, I got right in and was treated as soon as I walked in the door. My parents were there as were my boss and his family.
They put a blanket on me, which was a major relief in and of itself. And proceeded to X-Ray my arm.
Sure enough, there was a pretty good looking break on the ulna bone. The doc put my arm in a sling, gave me some hard core pain killers, and referred me to a bone doc for the next morning.
So I went to my parents for the night, since I obviously wasn’t going to be able to drive myself anywhere, and went to bed. It was kinda funny, I had told my friend Andre earlier that day that he should come over and hang out at my place for the night. So while I was sitting in a clinic with a broken arm. He was knocking on my door, and wondering where the heck I was. Once I got settled in to my parents, I called him… needless to say, he understood why I wasn’t at my house when I said I would be.
The next day, I went to the doc. I was x-rayed again… and eventually when I met the doc, I received the bad news. Surgery was in my near future. I had succeeded in breaking not only my ulna, which was clearly visible, but I had also dislocated my elbow. Sweet.
So, I had to wait over the entire weekend, before the Doc was able to get me in for surgery.
My experience in the hospital was somewhat like Jaime’s. I remember the anesthesiologist visiting me first to explain my options.
“Ok Paco, you can have a local or a general anesthetic.” he stated.
“Can you explain them to me?” I replied.
“Sure, the general will just put you out for the entire surgery, and the local you would be awake during the surgery, we would just numb the arm.”
“Ok…”
“However… the local isn’t foolproof. In fact it only takes about 80% of the time.”
I quickly chimed back. “If it’s not 100%, I don’t want it… put me under.”
A few more nurses, and the doc paid me a visit to discuss the surgery. The strangest part was when one of the nurses asked me to mark on my cast with a big black marker where my surgery was going to be. Strange… I guess they have too many people suing the hospital.
Eventually after waiting for a while, I was wheeled into the surgery room. And Jaime is correct, they keep it SUPER cold in there. It had to be about 50 in there, which isn’t all that comfortable when all you have on is a stupid hospital smock.
The anesthesiologist then plugged me into the happy juice. I chatted with him for awhile about where he was from, etc…
Next thing I knew, I was waking up in the recovery room.
ADDENDUM
Here it is 9 months after the surgery. The recovery has been hit and miss. The initial recovery went really well, I had the cast off in 10 days, and my physical therapy was SUPER easy, and quick.
The only problem has been the bone healing. As of my last x-ray in August, it still showed a slight fracture in the bone. My doc says not to worry, and recently it has felt the best that it has since that fateful day… so hopefully it is almost all healed up!
By Eduardo
Late one afternoon a couple of years ago, I was riding my bike home from work. It’s about a ten mile stretch, and I was tired and eager to get back.
I zipped into a residential area near where I live, riding on the sidewalk due the the lack of a bike lane. As I turned the first corner, I was going too fast – and my turn was too wide. I tried to sharply correct myself, but by then my front wheel was off the curb. I half fell, half flew off my bike – directly onto the cold, hard sidewalk.
I’d instinctively raised my arms to try to break my fall, and my elbow consequently absorbed about 90% of the impact.
Much like my skateboarding incident fourteen years earlier, I lay there for a moment, possibly in shock. A lady who lived in the nearest house had seen the whole thing, and yelled,
“Oh my goodness – are you all right?!?”
I awoke from my daze, and managed to sit up. What seemed like half the skin on my upper forearm had been scraped off, and a bloody skid mark on the sidewalk clearly marked where I had landed. I couldn’t even feel my arm, but I mustered up the first aid knowledge I retained from Boy Scouts and raised it up, hoping to stop the bleeding.
“I’m fine.” I said back to the lady, trying to smile while wincing from the pain.
I got up, brushed myself off, and rode erratically home. My arm was now fully numb, which made it hard to steer – but it made the pain a little easier to deal with.
Once back at my pad, I took a shower and went about my evening. By the time I went to bed, it was pretty swollen. I didn’t think much of it, and took good care of the wound so as to help it heal. Fortunately, the swellling subsided after a couple of days. By the end of the week, I wasn’t experiencing much pain at all.
That Saturday, the Amigos and I held the first (and possibly last) ever Tan’s to Sands bike marathon from Rohnert Park to the ocean. Starting off at the legendary Tan’s Donuts, we made the 30-or-so mile ride through Sonoma county’s beautiful hills all the way to Bodega Bay. That was an epic story in itself, and I managed to complete the trek despite the fact that my arm hurt every time I put pressure on it.
To be continued…
By Jaimenacho
I have my own hornet story, while not as interesting or cool as Eduardo’s, it’s worth mentioning.
I was working at school and playing basketball with the kids in the gym. I had turned to take a jump shot from just outside the right baseline when I felt a sharp pain in my right hand. I quickly dropped the ball and looked at my hand. On the fleshy part of my hand between my thumb and first finger was a yellow jacket throbbing up and down. It was mildly funny looking at him, because he appeared to be making sweet love to my hand, and pumping it full of his juice. I flicked him off, and squished him into the gym floor. My hand hurt for the remainder of the day, and I went home and put some ice on it.
Sometime during the evening my wife looked at my wound, and noticed a red line headed up my arm.
“That’s not good.” She said, “If that gets to your heart, you’ll be in some trouble.”
Begrudgingly I went to the ER, to see what they recommended. By this point my hand was starting to swell a bit, although not to the same proportions as Eduardo’s, and it hurt a lot. The Doctor looked at it, and told me I was going to need a shot.
She left, and returned a few seconds later with a massive needle. I bent over, and took the needle in my left flank. Doctor’s aren’t particularly kind when they give you shots in the flank. The needle hurt far worse than the sting that the winged Barry White had left me with. I went home, with a sore butt cheek, and a sore hand. Within a day the swelling subsided, and the red line vanished.
Now, much like Eduardo, I too avoid hornets, wasps, and anything with a stinger.
By Eduardo
Sometime in 1991, my family and I were at the annual church picnic at the Civic Center. It was a fun-filled afternoon of hot dogs, soda, and wholesome family fun in the shady park near the river.
Some kids were rolling hula hoops down the hill, and trying to jump through them without knocking them over. They weren’t having much luck, and I devided to try. I ran and dove through one, successfully making it through without touching the hoop. The kids were excited to see that it could indeed be done, and begged me to do it again.
I got into position as one of them brought the hoop back up of the top of the incline. As he rolled it, I ran and dove – making it through again. The kids cheered behind me as I noticed a sharp stinging pain in my hand. I looked down, and realized that it had landed on top of someone’s recently-discarded sandwich. It was covered with yellowjackets, and I had disturbed their feast. The best part, though, was that one of them had its butt firmly implanted into the palm of my hand — and was doing its best to pump as much poison into me as possible.
I quickly got up and went back up the hill to where my parents were sitting.
“Hey, I just got stung by a yellowjacket.” I said.
“Is it bad?” My mom asked, somewhat less concerned than I thought she’d be.
“I dunno… it hurts pretty bad.”
My whole arm was throbbing with pain, which I thought was kind of weird. I’d been stung by bees before, but this felt a lot different.
“Well, put some ice on it or something.”
Fortunately, our ice chest was full of ice and soda. I dunked my arm in the frigid water and waited to get numb. After 45 minutes or so, I was numb – but even than didn’t completely kill the pain. I noticed that my hand had started swelling up, too.
Fortunately, it was time to leave. We went home, and I kept ice on my arm until it was time to go to bed. I was a little creeped out by the fact that my arm seemed to be gradually getting larger as the swelling increased.
+ + + + +
The next morning, I woke up with a forearm that looked like
Popeye’s. It looked like someone had inflated my arm as a practical joke or something. I asked my mom if I could stay home from school, and got the standard
“no” for an aswer. I went off to school, hoping that nobody would notice my freakishly disproportionate arm.
Once there, I got the expected amount of teasing from the other Amigos Locos about it, but overall it wasn’t too bad. I figured that I’d been through the worst of it, and that the swelling would surely start going down soon.
I was wrong.
When I awoke the next morning, my arm was twice as big as the day before. I now looked like someone who needed medical attention, which I pointed out to my parents. It was swollen so badly that I couldn’t even bend my arm, and I had to let it swing limply at my side. The grossest part was that I could feel the pus oozing up and down my arm whenever I raised and lowered it. Something had to be done, as I’d obviously had some kind of reaction to that sting.
After examining it more closely, my mom decided to call the doctor. My appointment was to be the next day, which meant that I had at least another day and a half of school to endure while dragging my giant arm around.
+ + + + +
The doctor said that he hadn’t seen too many cases of people who’d reacted to yellowjacket stings the way I apparently had. Some people swell up
really bad to the point of it being life-threatening, but it usually happens more rapidly. Those people usually have to keep special pills with them in case they’re stung. My reaction was allergic as well, but the result was different.
“It’s good that you saw me before it got much worse,” he said. “It could have spread and affected your lungs, which would have been really bad.”
He prescribed some antibiotics and steroids, and said that my arm should be fine in a few days. I was relieved that I didn’t need to have it amputated, which I had secretly feared before seeing him.
The drugs worked magnificently, and within three days my arm was back to normal. I have since made it a point to avoid yellowjackets (and bees & wasps in general) since this happened, because I definitely do not want to go through that again.
