Pop Goes the Disc

Last Wednesday while at work, I stood up to go meet a faculty member for a session on familiarizing him with the new technology in our new building. That’s when it happened. My back started hurting tremendously. To the point where I laid down in the gurney that just happened to be in the classroom I was in.

For the rest of that day, it was just intense back pain. Of course it couldn’t stop there though. The next day, I began having intense pains in my left thigh whenever I would bear weight on both legs. This then proceeded to move to my hip.

Upon this movement, I reached out to my primary care physician and asked to get an appointment as soon as possible. They called me quite swiftly, and I was able to get an appointment the next Monday.

Meanwhile, I just laid around. Moving from bed to couch and vice versa. No OTC pain medications would help, so I did my best to keep from receiving the pain at all.

At my appointment, my doctor said the left side of my back was “very tight” when compared to the right. My blood pressure was through the roof too, at 150/110. She had me do bends, moving to the back or left resulted in levels of pain that I could not bear. She provided me with a prescription for steroids, and told me to call her if I was not better within a week.

Under this amount of pain, it has been impossible for me to physically go to work, I have done my best to do as many things remotely as possible. Working at a medical school, those I work for are understandable.

Here it is, late Thursday and the pain has subsided substantially. It is still there, but I no longer let out moans of pain uncontrollably when taking steps. I’m going to give it a go tomorrow and see how it goes. Right now is crunch time for me, taking a day off in August when you work in higher education is a bad thing.

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