So just to bring everybody up to speed in case you haven't been paying attention (and I know you have not been paying attention, you bad little puss,) I have scoliosis which has resulted in chronic back pain for more than 40 years. Just as a side note, no one noticed I was developing into a hunchback in highschool even though looking at back photographs, it is glaringly obvious I was a teenage Quasimodo.
My latest foray into trying to deal with a backache that will just not shut up was getting trigger point injections. I'd go to my orthopedist and he would shoot me up with long lasting lidocaine and some steroid. It worked great, life-changing, better than any other treatment I have suffered through since Jimmy Carter was president.
I went in last Friday for my latest shot and the muscley little bitch (all the technicians in this practice look like they have to squeeze in their medical duties in between photo shoots as fitness models) announces that this shot is the last one I can get. I said "No." And then I said, "Nonononono." Nurse Muscle Bitch seemed unimpressed with my argument and just claimed patients are limited to four shots because of the steroids which can lead to osteoporosis, malpractice suits, blah blah blah. I replied to all of his reasoning with my own brilliant point, "I don't care."
And I don't. I am trying to balance a concern that I might develop osteoporosis at some speculative point in the future against living with an achy back all day, every day right now and I come down on the side of Future Mrpeenee is just going to have to deal with soft bones. And that's if I live long enough for them to crumble. Does that seem likely? No, no it does not.
But Nurse Muscle Bitch was not buying it. He got the look on his face I'm all too familiar with from having tried to explain my ideas to other medical professionals, a look similar to someone trying teach multiplication to a not very bright child.
Admitting defeat, I asked what I was supposed to do next. He looked sort of baffled that I would expect him to offer any possible option and then suggested I get a Botox shot. Maybe he thought the squinty, annoyed look I had developed needed some work. Botox, got it, let's get on that train. But no, his practice does not have that on their menu. So where does he suggest I go? "A pain specialist?" he offers in a very tentative manner. He seemed concerned that I might continue to up the ante with even more difficult questions. Did I mention he was really muscley?
So now I'm back to my old friend, the pain specialist with my old friend, the back ache. My creaky old back and I, handed off from one doctor's waiting room to another like an old issue of Readers Digest.
More muscley bitches:
