Needles and Bags

I had a conference call with my Chinese co-workers last night. (For those of you who read our blog faithfully, I was recently introduced to two new guys -- Kingball and Big Tree. I wonder if they share an office.)

Anyway, the call lasted until midnight and featured any number of discouraging things, so I had trouble falling asleep afterward. After sleeping only a couple of hours, I got up this morning and came to work exhausted. In an effort to catch up on some sleep and take in the 72 degree temperatures, I escaped to the cozy comfines of my Hyundai Sonata for a snooze over lunch. I rolled the windows down, laid the seat back and started to drift off when I heard bagpipes.

I had the radio on, so my initial thought was, "Hmm...it's St. Patrick's Day. They must be playing bagpipes on the radio. I'll turn that racket off." As I turned the radio off, I quickly realized that it had no effect on the bagpipes. They were still playing. As I considered that bagpipes are generally a Scottish phenomenon, not Irish, I look out the window of my car to see an engineer from another company in our building standing across the street playing freaking bagpipes.

It was at this very moment that I wondered to myself whether other people encounter the same amount of bizarre crap in their lives that I seem to, or whether I'm just hypersensitive to seeing surreal things like a 350 pound adult man in worn out loafers and polyester pants huffing on a set of damn bagpipes in the middle of a tech complex parking lot during his lunch hour.

In other news of the weird, I had my first round of steroid injections in my back yesterday. As I lay on the operating table with my rear end exposed for all the world to see, I listened to the doctor and nurse discussing their NCAA tournament pics and what they had accomplished over the weekend. Eventually, the doctor said "This is going to be a little cold."

What I discovered during this whole episode is that if a doctor talks a lot about how the upcoming procedure is going to feel, it probably isn't going to hurt. Doctors will feed you all kinds of "This won't hurt a bit" and "You won't feel a thing." But if it's going to hurt like hell, they only say terse things like, "This might be cold." Plus my doctor is German which makes everything he says sound slightly more sinister. "You von't feel a zing as I push this needle into your spine."

After he rubbed the cold stuff on my back, he informed me that I'd feel a small pinch. This was the "small" needle that provided the anesthetic. This felt like a normal shot. I could then only feel pressure from the "larger" needle being inserted, and it really was no big deal. Then he pushed the plunger.

I let out an audible "Zikes" which induced a small amount of laughter from the nurse and doctor. "Did you feel that?" No, I just felt like screaming for the heck of it. As they pushed the steroid into my back, it felt like a small fire raced instantly from my back to the little toe on my left leg. It only lasted about 2 seconds, but I definitely knew I was on fire.

From that point on, the doctor kindly warned me before he hit me with each injection. Some I barely felt, others burned in various places on my rear end and thigh. Afterward, I sat up. He asked how I felt, and my response was "I haven't felt this good in years," and I wasn't kidding. I felt no pain in my back. He informed me that unfortunately, this was due to the anesthetic. But it was still a good sign because it gave some indication of how I might feel if they got my nerve pain under control. Unfortunately this initial high wore off after about three hours.

The doctor said that the injections went very well and that it will take several days for them to have their full effect. I'm still sore today, but I'm not hobbling around as much as I have been. I may have to do several rounds of injections before we move on to other options. I'm cautiously optimistic that the injections will at least get me back some mobility.

Now if I could just get some sleep without hearing Amazing Grace at 200 dBs on the bagpipes...