July 23, 2007

1:25am

This update should've been mailed days ago, but as we know life rarely goes as planned. On the 17th I was warming up to play a pick up game of basketball and hurt my back, a simple turn to get a rebound and I strained a muscle in my lower back. This has happened over the years so I knew that it would not get worse by playing, no matter what I do the healing process has a mind of its own. After maybe an hour of basketball and running some laps around the yard I was ready to shower and get some sleep.

The officer in my dorm refused to anyone shower, even the workers that are approved to shower after work. At lunch time I went to another dorm to shower and went to sleep before noon without going to eat. When I awoke at 2:00 to use the bathroom I could barely walk, it took me fifteen minutes to get out of bed, walk to the urinal and back to bed. Whatever happened in my back was more severe than I thought.

I talked to the officer in the dorm about the situation and after calling the clinic twice they sent a wheelchair to get me. Once in the clinic the nurse took my blood pressure, weight, temperature and asked me to get up and walk about six feet. That was a very slow and painful walk as I was bent at the waist and crooked to the right. She gave me three ibuprofen and told me, “You can’t take that wheelchair back when you leave”.

You’d think that with my crippled walk and complaints of pain the nurse would have looked at my back. There were two doctors in clinic at the time and neither were called to see me. On the way out the door I was complaining to the nurse about how she was treating me and told her, “You didn’t even look at my back”. Her response was, “Turn around. You just want me to see your back”. As if her looking at my back was a turn-on! I’ll be the first to admit that almost 18 years with only “self-satisfying sex” keeps me horny for the slightest sight, smell and touch from a woman, but I never cry wolf with my health and her simpleton thoughts only pissed me off.

Pleading with her to let me send the chair back once I reached my bed fell upon deaf ears. I was forced to walk out of there and it took me about ten minutes to reach the dining hall, where I ate a sandwich because the other food was all gone. I’m dreading the long walk down the hall to my bed and after searching my brain for a solution it comes to me. I had an officer call another dorm to ask a guy can I borrow his wheelchair for a few minutes. When the chair arrived I was pushed to my bed where I stayed unless I had to use the bathroom.

The next morning I managed to make it to pill call and breakfast still walking like a bent up “Z”. More ibuprofen.

After another day without much improvement I signed up to see the medical staff and Nurse Simpleton is the one to review me again. She takes my vitals and asked what’s wrong. I tell her that my back hasn’t improved and they haven’t done anything to help, but she informs me that some muscle relaxers were ordered for me. Things here are ass backwards as ever, I’m hurting and must wait on the pills to arrive in a few days! No muscle rub! No brace or wraps!

On the 20th I felt good enough to walk for 30 minutes around the exercise yard, it was painful but I needed to stimulate the muscles somehow. A friend attempted to play chiropractor before I reached my dorm and another guy attempted to massage the knotted muscle later that night. By the 21st I was walking straight with less pain. My other therapies included some borrowed muscle rub and stretching.