Trip to the ER

Not since I broke my left arm playing sandlot baseball in Poitiers, France (where we lived while my dad was assigned to a tour of duty by the Department of the Army), have I visited a hospital emergency room for treatment. Well, that was until last evening. I can’t stand visiting hospitals let alone having to make a trip there for treatment. So, you can imagine it must have taken a major issue for me to have Barbie take me to the Mountain Lakes Hospital emergency room in Clayton, GA, last evening. For what you say? I have never been in such immense pain for my back ever! I’ve strained muscles in my back numerous times in my adult life and I’ve hurt but again I say, NEVER, has it been so intense that I felt the need to go to the ER. The bad part of it is there was no one singular event that I can pinpoint as the cause for the incident. Sure, we packed and loaded our motorhome to leave Floida and I was a little sore. Once we arrived here in Dillard, we set up the motorhome for our extended stay. Yes, I was on the ladder stretching to clean the front windshield and installing window shades. And, we have done shopping and even went to Sapphire Valley yesterday morning for a great arts and crafts show. So I could have expected my old back to be sore but I was in excrutiating pain by last evening at 8:00pm. Whatever the trigger, my sciatica reached a new level of pain. Like I answered the ER Doctor when he asked me, on a scale of 1 to 10, how bad was the pain---I told him a 10+. At one moment during my struggles before we went to the ER, I thought perhaps I had a kidney stone because I’ve known folks that have had kidney stones and they had spoken of the pain worse than childbirth. Not only was there back pain but my legs “tingled” as well, and my right leg has been all but numb for the past 24 hours. Nevertheless, after seeing the doctor and him asking questions and checking me out, he said sciatica it was. He gave me an injection of demoral for pain and a muscle relaxant tablet. He observed me for about 45 minutes then sent us off with a prescription for lortab for pain and one for flexeril, a muscle relaxant. Of course, no pharmacy is open in this area after 9:00pm so Barbie couldn’t go out to fill them until this morning. It was a rough night with little or no sleep and this morning wasn’t much better.