By Rachel Sauer
Special to The Daily Sentinel
*sigh* It’s finally happened. I’ve reached the age when I mysteriously injure myself in my sleep.
Yes, the other day I woke up and could do nothing but lie there like Batman – you know how that rubber suit limits his movement? So, if he wants to look at something on the ground he has to pivot forward from the hips? Or if he wants to peer at the sky he has to do so with his entire head, torso and pelvis angling back at approximately 45 degrees?
Anyway, I woke up and there was something happening southeast of the back of my neck, due west of my shoulder. I spent several contemplative minutes lying board-stiff, as any life coach would advise beginning the day, then inched my way over the side of the bed, timberrrrrrrrr-style.
Aaaaand… then I was on the floor. I don’t know why I thought that would be better.
Thus began a multi-day odyssey of Tylenol, poking at the back of my shoulder with stiff fingers and magical thinking.
While I grudgingly acknowledge that stuff like this is bound to happen – the process of aging, I’m finding, is weird and sometimes accompanied by single black hairs growing from places where they didn’t before – it felt like a real betrayal that this happened when I wasn’t even doing anything. At least, not anything dumb.
I’ll be the first to admit that I previously have injured myself in ways both ridiculous and, sometimes, semi-deserved. I once broke the big toe on my right foot by dropping a 23-pound frozen turkey on it. Then, many years later, I broke two different toes on the same foot by accidentally kicking my teammate’s heel during a game of beach volleyball, and inexplicably kept playing until I noticed my toes jutting sideways like they were trying to escape my foot.
One time I tripped on a hike because I wasn’t paying attention and fell on a yucca, and another time I tripped over my own feet in a parking lot and broke the head of my right radius. Which I didn’t get looked at for five days and in the meantime I dropped and broke a bunch of dishes.
The point being, injuries like that I get. They make sense. But this? Waking up and suddenly being unable to look left or right? Two of our main directions?
No, the only thing to do was cure myself with a multi-step method I’m having to employ more and more often with each passing year:
- Make a high-pitched whining sound like a balloon with a slow leak.
- Assume a mien of wounded, much-affronted dignity and walk somewhere stiffly. It doesn’t matter where – in my case, it was to the kitchen for a glass of milk that took approximately 23 minutes to pour because ouch – it just matters that it’s done while gazing bleakly into the middle distance.
- Conduct vague Google searches: “below neck” + “back of shoulder” + “stabbing pain” + causes. That little gem yielded one hit that suggested I had, in fact, been stabbed.
- Frantically knead at the area that hurts; do this throughout the day until I can’t tell whether I hurts from the original pain or from over-kneading.
- Say “huUuNuNuuuHhHggPh” every time I stand up and sit down.
- Spend several minutes trying to remember whether I have a heating pad; eventually remember I don’t.
- Spend several more minutes wondering about doing the opposite of putting a bag of frozen peas on an injury; that is, heating it up in the microwave and then… putting it on my shoulder, I guess?
- Remember I don’t like frozen peas and thus don’t have any.
- Repeat this process for two or three days, until whatever hurts stops hurting.
And it’s not that I’m opposed to accessing our many fine healthcare services – and I’m very grateful that is, in fact, an option – it’s just that these weird injuries, which I presume are the result of getting older, exist in a gray area: not great, but not so bad that I can’t still magical think them away.
Any injury I can solve with whining, speculation about microwaved vegetables and several days of doing the Robot doesn’t seem worth the effort of inching into jeans and leaving the house.
I guess I’ve just learned to live with being stabbed in the back.