Tabatha Deans

PAIN IN THE BUTT
After a delightful weekend with family and friends that included re-discovering adventures in Salt Lake City, I awoke one day with an excruciating pain in my lower back, actually it was more in my butt. I must have slept in the wrong position, because as soon as my foot hit the floor and I put my weight on it a pain shot through my butt cheek and down my leg. It was my sciatic nerve. It’s flared up on a few occasions in the past, usually due to sleeping wrong, but this particular flare-up I could tell was going to beat all other flare-ups. But I got up and limped my way through a morning walk, and spent the next two days trying to convince myself that I didn’t have bone cancer, that my hip joint was not rotting away with some kind of mystery disease, and that eventually it would feel better. I tried taking some ibuprofen, it didn’t touch the pain. I tried tylenol, it didn’t touch it. Three days into the ordeal, I broke down and decided to try something drastic.

After careful research which mainly involved explaining my symptoms to everyone I know and getting their opinion, I had confidently self-diagnosed myself with a sciatic nerve issue. So, I did what many webMD educated Americans do, I hit the medicine cabinet in search of self-medication. In Mrs. G’s medicine cabinet I found a bottle of prescription Tylenol with codeine pills, that apparently had been prescribed for Little Z when he had a bad toothache. Figuring they were a low dose specifically for children, I broke one in half and swallowed one half. I waited throughout the evening, and aside from a little bit of a funky stomach, felt no effect from it. The next day, after I mentioned to Mrs. G that it had had no effect on the pain, Little Z, a little exasperated at my stupidity, exclaimed that “of course it didn’t help your butt, it was from the dentist, it’s for your teeth!” No more self-medicating for me, I’ll just wait it out.

September 27, 2010 - Posted by Tabatha Stewart | Uncategorized