I Punched Myself in The Stomach

That headline is not an analogy. I’ll get to that in a bit. I have been having back pain off and on for almost a month. The last week I felt it become more constant and intense. It has always felt like a muscle issue but no at home remedies seemed to fix it so off to urgent care I went on Monday at 2pm. The first urgent care had about a 4 hour wait to see someone so I quickly left and went to another.

Lucky for me I got right in. Unlucky for me, given my medical history the doctor wanted to rule out blood clots and sent me to the ER and phoned ahead for me. “Good,” I thought, “I won’t have to wait to long and I’ll be in and out.”

The ER was packed. I don’t mean packed as in I would have to sit next to someone, I mean packed as in wheelchairs being used as extra seating packed. I witnessed multiple people leaving after waiting for hours including multiple kids, an elderly woman, and a shoeless man who seemed to be having a heart attack. I was accompanied by my mom luckily who came from work to be with me in case something was really wrong. Little did we know that we would wait about 7.5 hours to be seen just after midnight.

Were we frustrated? Yes. Were we tired? Yes. Was it painful to sit there for that long? Yes. It was exhausting and insane but in reflecting on it now I’m lucky. I say that because the hospital we were at just a week before was treating gunshot victims from a holiday parade turned tragedy. In the moment I was annoyed but looking back those doctors, nurses, and staff had seen some pretty fucked up stuff and my back pain wasn’t so bad in comparison now. I can go on a tangent about guns, mental health and all that is involved but I’ll say this: as someone who deals with mental health issues on a smaller scale, no regular citizen needs an assault weapon at any time. Also support Everytown (LINK).

So if it has been a long week, long month, or long life at this point I am sure you can use some levity. So yeah, I punched myself in the stomach. I was putting away laundry and had a shirt draped over my shoulder ready to hang up in my closet. Right before I go to grab it the shirt slides down off my shoulder to the ground. My reflexes kicked in and without thinking I tried bringing my arm to my stomach to pin the shirt before dropping. Well shirt fell and my fist swung right into my gut- dead center on where my scars intersect.

Above is what it felt like. After letting out some weird moans and cries of pain all was well. I took a physical inventory of myself and didn’t feel like I caused any damage luckily- just some embarrassment.

Fun fact- this is Rebecca from Ted Lasso.

Hopefully this lightened your week a little. Also I should note that there were no blood clots or anything serious that at home morphine and lidocaine patches can’t fix (hopefully).

Sincerely,

Old Man Joe