It started with a twinge in my neck, as I was adjusting my turquoise shirt collar over my white jacket, Miami Vice-style. The twangs continued as I finished getting ready – as if my neck were a guitar, and someone was dragging a rusty garden rake over it. "WTF? Aneurysm? Brain tumor," I wondered out loud.
The twinges got worse, so I drove to work, figuring in my less-than-reasonable state that it was the most logical course of action. It was bigwig meeting day for the Creative Loafing brass, so there were these lovely platters of breakfast foods leftover from their meetings. Lovely, lovely grapes, and bagels and tubs of cream cheese; all these temptations for us mere staffers. I started to microwave my heating pad, when down I went, clutching my neck in agony, right in front of the astonished yet polite Management Team.
It's hard to describe the pain. Mostly it was a dull ache, but then these horrible spasms would come, and I couldn't stand, or sit, or say anything that wasn't "Jesus Fucking Christ!! I am never having children!"
Clutching the side of my neck, I was unable to stand up for fear of permanently injuring myself. But there were a few grapes in my reach. Breakfast.
I managed to get to the chiropractor. By this time, the spasms had gotten so bad that I was bent double; I couldn't see anything but the floor – the slightly dirty, mottled blue-green carpet.
One of those annoying parenting magazines was flipped open to a picture and recipe for a Kraft grilled cheese. "What? A recipe for grilled cheese," I thought bitterly, in between the spasms.
Then: paperwork. WTF, America? Why on earth do I have to fill out paperwork before you help me!
My chiropractor was a less-pudgy Chris Farley. He poked my neck, which hurt; took some X-rays, which also, strangely, hurt; and then rubbed some Icy-Hot-style stuff on my neck, which was surprisingly pleasant. [OK, it's hurting again; I'm popping a Butalbital.] Faux-Farley told me that he couldn't do anything more for me, but that if I came back later, he could hook me up to some electrodes. I quickly made my escape.
At this point, I was cursing my life, my neck, and my propensity to get ailments that absolutely no one respects. Bum back? Sympathy. Bum neck? Laughter.
Scott Z. drove me back to the office, where I started Googling things like "doctors" and "Oxycontin." But clearly, all the Googling in the world wouldn't bring what I desired most: a healthy dose of barbiturates. Leilani bravely shirked her duties to drive me to the walk-in clinic. My health insurance had been valid for all of three days, and I busted out that card like it was a Platinum Visa.
Fifty bucks later, I got a shot in the ass and three prescriptions, glory be: Flexeril, Ketrolac and Butalbital.
I woke up at around 5 at home, starving, delirious, and looking for a fix. I had left my computer at the office, and was forced to order Gourmet Pizza Company from memory. That just ain't right! So I called a friend who lives out of state, and asked them to read me the menu from the website. I may have been desperately hungry and looped off my ass, but that certainly didn't mean I'd eat just anything!
Forty-some minutes later, the pizza arrived: glorious Southwestern, with oozy Monterrey Jack cheese, sweet kernels of corn, plump black beans, somewhat dessicated chicken and some chunks of pinkish, out-of-season tomatoes. I chowed down, thankful that the operator had taken seriously my entreaties for a straw. (Straight up, when you fuck up your neck, you really, really can't tilt your head to drink out of a cup.)
The next few days were a blur. I remember slipping in and out of consciousness, at times on my couch, at times in my bed. At one point, I got hungry. Really, really hungry. [Man, to be honest, things are really fuzzy right now. Painkillers + typing = bad.]
Everything I owned was still at the Planet, right? So I got a cab and picked up my car, which was probably a bad decision since I couldn't think straight, let alone drive. I was in the Kash n' Karry parking lot, and by the time I finally stumbled out of the 'rolla (as in Co-rolla) to purchase ingredients for my standby turkey sandwich, things were bad. Locked-my-keys-in-the-car bad.
AAA, come to the rescue, puh-lease. It is cold, and Laura feels sad and homeless sitting outside of the grocery store. She goes inside to sit down, but there are no benches there! So she has to sit on this dumb little motorized wheelchair thingy for an hour and … she feels like a big loser.
Finally, the AAA dude came, and I got home, and as I was walking in, my neighbors made some sort of small talk. I mentioned straining ligaments in my neck. "You strained the ligaments in your neck?
"HA HA HAH HAH," my neighbor cackled.
Fuckers.
This article appears in Feb 16-22, 2005.