Did something dumb yesterday...PAIN

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AngelRho
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27 May 2012, 8:20 am

I don't post very often in here, but every now and then even I need a hug...

Ok, so here's what happened:

There was a yellow-jacket (wasp) building a nest at the top of the main entrance to my house. Instead of doing the SMART thing and looking for some bug spray, I decide to take a closer look and see if I can't smash it with something. My family was walking out to the van on our way out to eat, and I wasn't looking forward to possibly getting stung on my way back in later last night.

As I walked up to the nest, the single wasp flew away, which caught me by surprise (ok, what did I EXPECT would happen?). Did I jump back a step or two to see if it was actually going to attack me? No. Did I run down the steps to try to get away from it? No.

No...being the extreme bug-o-phobe that I am, I do the Superman leap off my deck, thoroughly embarrassing myself in front of watching neighbors.

Now, if that was ALL that happened, I wouldn't be posting here. No, no...I forgot something VERY IMPORTANT: I'm 34 years old, roughly 50 pounds overweight, and not at all prone to exercise. So as soon as my feet touched the ground, I got this shooting pain all the way from just below my knees all the way up to my head. So instead of standing right back up, I put myself in a controlled fall--which made what actually happened look pretty drastic to the onlookers who were there. So I crawl up to the front of the van and just sit back until the pain in my knees subsides enough for me to walk.

Apparently nothing seems to be broken, but I wasn't 100% sure at the time. All I knew was that the pain was horrendous, I was having difficulty getting my breathing under control and hyperventilating--complete with tunnel vision. Part of me was thinking, "Am I gonna die?" I finally get up, and next thing I know I'm fighting waves of nausea. The neighbors have run over to me at this point and start going on about how pale I am. I'm like, "what?" so I look in a mirror and the color in my lips had completely drained. Yep, I'm gonna die.

I assure my family and neighbors that I'm FINE, damnit, and I fight off the nausea so we can go eat.

The pain in my knees eventually reduces to tolerable, so I'm thinking everything is going to be just fine. So I get out of the van when we get to the restaurant and pick up my 6-week-old. The knees are NOT working the way they used to. Nope. And eventually my oldest son (4 years) needs to "go potty." So I take him back to the bathroom, doing the "old man shuffle" the whole way there and back.

In front of perfect strangers...

And that's when it hit me:

I'M OLD!! !

Image

Eye n33d a hug!! ! =(



helles
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27 May 2012, 9:36 am

34 is not old. Old is what you think is in your head.

Besides, bugs are wery, wery interesting. Just hard to make a livning studying bugs.

Sorry about your knee.

Helle



lostonearth35
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27 May 2012, 9:51 am

I'm sorry you got hurt, but wow! If you feel old at 34, Imagine how I must feel! 8O My knees are not in very good shape now, they crackle and pop like Rice Crispies and walking up stairs can be difficult and sometimes painful. But I haven't been badly hurt...yet.

But one time when I was still in my twenties I wrenched my knee really bad. It was an icy winter, so most people thought I had slipped on the ice. But what really happened was much more embarrassing. I was in my bedroom, pacing back and forth which I did a lot back then. That's when I accidentally stuck my foot into the trash can, which caused me to lose my balance and fall, twisting my right leg in an unnatural position as I did. I'll never forget the gut-wrenching sound of what felt like bones cracking or ligaments tearing. And to top it off, I landed on my face and the friction of the carpet left a big red burn under my eye, and I also tore one of my fingernails right off (past the quick and bloody). I was disoriented and in a lot of pain, I started yelling for help (back then I lived in a Small Options home with two there residents and a staff member). I managed to get back up by the time the staff appeared but she didn't seem to think anything was really wrong. My knee had gotten swollen and puffy, but the staff wanted me to do my chores and everything else I normally did and thought I was "exaggerating" my pain since every step I took would make me moan. :x And it didn't get better after a few days so I went to my doctor (probably should have gone in the first place) and he said my knee was sprained and gave me some medicine to help the pain. But it was almost two weeks before I could walk properly again.

Of course that wasn't half as bad as you went through. It sounds like you were on the verge of passing out. Then you would have really needed to postpone your eating out that day...



CockneyRebel
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27 May 2012, 4:18 pm

Sweet Pea hugsImage


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AngelRho
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29 May 2012, 4:48 pm

lostonearth35 wrote:
I'm sorry you got hurt, but wow! If you feel old at 34, Imagine how I must feel! 8O My knees are not in very good shape now, they crackle and pop like Rice Crispies and walking up stairs can be difficult and sometimes painful. But I haven't been badly hurt...yet.

But one time when I was still in my twenties I wrenched my knee really bad. It was an icy winter, so most people thought I had slipped on the ice. But what really happened was much more embarrassing. I was in my bedroom, pacing back and forth which I did a lot back then. That's when I accidentally stuck my foot into the trash can, which caused me to lose my balance and fall, twisting my right leg in an unnatural position as I did. I'll never forget the gut-wrenching sound of what felt like bones cracking or ligaments tearing. And to top it off, I landed on my face and the friction of the carpet left a big red burn under my eye, and I also tore one of my fingernails right off (past the quick and bloody). I was disoriented and in a lot of pain, I started yelling for help (back then I lived in a Small Options home with two there residents and a staff member). I managed to get back up by the time the staff appeared but she didn't seem to think anything was really wrong. My knee had gotten swollen and puffy, but the staff wanted me to do my chores and everything else I normally did and thought I was "exaggerating" my pain since every step I took would make me moan. :x And it didn't get better after a few days so I went to my doctor (probably should have gone in the first place) and he said my knee was sprained and gave me some medicine to help the pain. But it was almost two weeks before I could walk properly again.

Of course that wasn't half as bad as you went through. It sounds like you were on the verge of passing out. Then you would have really needed to postpone your eating out that day...

That sounds a lot worse that what I experienced. I've been fortunate to have had a lot of sprains but never a fracture, and plenty of cuts and scrapes and bug bites and stings. I even survived two auto accidents, one severe with cuts and bruises, and one accident where my brakes went out, sending me down the side of a steep hill (a large concrete culvert stopped the car dead center. I was a lot more pissed off than I was hurt).

At one point in my life I was jumping out of barns. It didn't feel good then, I might have seen red for a few seconds, but I could otherwise walk it off at least. But jumping out of a hayloft would have put my feet somewhere around 5 or 6 feet off the ground when I let go of the ledge. My deck is probably not even 3 feet off the ground and I can almost jump that much straight up.

So I was completely surprised to find myself in that much intense pain. My neighbors really were about to call 911 because of how pale I was.

I'm actually feeling MUCH better today, though I still have trouble rotating my right knee in certain directions. I even went horseback riding with my family yesterday. I was mostly better then, but climbing out of the saddle gave me a not-so-subtle reminder that my knees have a little ways to go before they're completely better.

I think what I might start doing is getting serious about exercise and start jumping off the lower steps one at a time. Maybe that will get the old juices flowing in my joints again and hopefully toughen my knees back up. I don't ever want to be in that much pain again!

Getting old sucks, and age seems to be getting me early.

Thanks for the kind words and especially the Sweet Pea hugs from CockneyRebel! WP people are awesome.