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A grown woman hobbling
up and down the hall, sobbing like a crybaby is not a pretty picture. Even
the fact that my manuscript for “How To Keep Up With The Joneses” on a dead
line didn't mean anything to me. “That line can't be anymore dead than I
am,” was my thinking at the time. Finally after three days of these
carrying on's my family hauled me off to the emergency room. I couldn't
blame them. I'm sure I must have been a sorry sight.
The doctor put his
fingers at a place on my hip and asked, “It hurts here?”
“Oh no.” I'm
thinking. I always faint like this when someone touches me.
“Injury to your
sciatic.” The doctor diagnoses the problem in seconds and adds, “Follow up
with your own doctor. Sometimes this could be a warning for a heart
attack.”
“Oh wonderful!” Now
not only am I in pain, I'm traumatized,” I'm thinking again.
“Here's a prescription
for “Loratab.” He is scribbling on his pad.
“What's that?” I in
my blase', density, babble.
“It's Tylenol and
Codeine.” He is unconcerned.
“Oh wonderful! Is
that what those pretty little Poppy's growing in the Middle East produce?”
I keep silent and do not ask this aloud.
“Follow up with your
own doctor, stay off it, maybe six to eight days you should be better.” The
doctor is off and gone to another cubicle where someone else is waiting for
him.
At home with the
Loratab in hand I am beginning to realize they help for one hour, then I
wait three more hours while I'm in pain, walking up and down the hall again.
Two more days go by.
“I think I'll go to
the clinic,” I confide in my cousin.
“Be prepared to sit
all day before you see the doctor,” she informs me.
It is early but
already the clinic is filled with people waiting in chairs. If they were
tall, short, green or even asleep, it wouldn't have mattered. The pain was
so with her she felt she had tunnel vision locked onto the person waiting at
her desk to the end of the hallway.
“I don't have a
chart for you.” The woman seemed to be enjoying the telling of it.
“Why not?” I'm
Ponca. The Pawnees have my chart from 1937 the year I was born. The Osages
have it, too.
“Well, we don't.”
I stand with an
awareness of sudden pangs up my back and leg. “Okay, I'll go there.”
“That's fine.” The
snippy reply makes me know no relief would come from this avenue.
“You are back all too
soon.” My cousin observes as I flounder through the front door trying to
avoid the slamming of the screen door on my back side.
“I can't deal with
waiting, sitting, paper work and snippy receptionists, not today. I have a
bunch of health books from my daughter's therapy. I'll just read those.”
From this reading I
learn the pain will come in spasms.
“Well, yes.” I'm
aware of that.
“When the spasms hit,
stretch your muscles and even though it will be painful as soon as you
stretch the spastic muscle, the pain will subside.”
“And so it does.”
“Don't take
Tylenol,” the book says. “Aspirin has an analgesic healing property.”
“Okay. Whatever that
means.”
“It is necessary to
keep a good mineral maintenance in the body. A need for minerals can cause
muscles to become rigid and easily injured. There is an imbalance of an acid
and base condition.”
“Okay! Whatever,
anything.”
So, here I am with
dead line met and “How To Keep Up With The Joneses” off to the presses.
“I'm on top of the world again, bring on all your cats,” so said the little
mouse who fell into the wine barrel. |
