On Sunday I decided to do some volunteer work to ensure good karma or whatever they say that does for you. I went to the local Improv theater where I am often sighted and helped them hang posters, cooked food for the other volunteers, and priced items for a “garage sale” they are going to have. As I was stepping off the curb, I’m pretty sure I destroyed whatever remains of my back. This was evidenced by the fact that I heard a snap/crunch kind of noise, and a pink cloud burst from under my shirt at the site of my last two operations, spraying the wall behind me with pieces of lumbar disc. INTENSE. PAIN. So I took a knee, because that’s what I always did when I played soccer and used to get kicked in the eye or something. Down on one knee, stare at the ground, hope no one sees the tears streaming down your face.

“Hey Dusty. You alright?”

“Sppppeeeeeee…ee….”

“Seriously, dude, are you okay?”

“Yeah…just …ahh…found a penny. You know what they say about that.”

“Yeah. So why are you crying and sweating, and why is blood squirting out of that scar on your back?”

“Well, you don’t just find a penny every day. This is a very special moment for me.”

So I go do something marginally nice, and good karma paralyzes my left leg. Hey, thanks karma! Next week I think I’ll go build a house for the homeless in hopes that I get a gangrenous hangnail and lose a fucking arm or something. Karma can bite my taint.

Seriously karma. Suck it. I remember the last time I stopped to help someone whose car had broken down on the side of the road. I was on the way to work, and this Korean family was all busted down. I looked at their truck, and noticed the throttle cable had snapped. I used my shoelace to re-attach it and they bowed for like five minutes and tried to give me their daughter or something. I couldn’t understand their shitty English. That was the day of the Christmas raffle at my old job. I got in about fifteen minutes late, and found that I had won a Sony 5 disc DVD player. Could have claimed it, too, if I hadn’t been out there being a good person. I didn’t come to the front to claim it, so they drew another ticket. Lots of people in my department got a huge laugh that day at my expense. I had one really loose shoe on. I guess it’s okay, because not six months later I donated a really awesome painting to my girlfriend’s school auction, and then lost my job and caught my girlfriend making out with some guy (who clearly was not me) in the span of three days. So it all evens out. In retrospect, both the job and the girlfriend were horrible, but I think there could have been a better way to make the transition. So karma, you can toss my salad like a prisoner.

In the past two days I have logged about five hours of sleep, since I have this new hobby of lying in bed sweating and trying in vain to find a position that doesn’t make me wish I was passing a kidney stone the size of a walnut. Then there’s all of the shooting pain, tingling of the foot, and my personal favorite, the steel tube inside the bone below your knee that is filled with liquid nitrogen. Humans cannot sleep through that. I think that sometime tonight I’ll probably collapse out of exhaustion and maybe get a few hours of sleep, but I’m not holding my breath. I’m leaving to go to the doctor in an hour. Typing this on my “lunch break”, but I have been at work since 4 am, (woke up at two, eventually got tired of pacing around the kitchen and came to work) so I guess it’s technically dinnertime. I don’t think I’ve eaten anything since yesterday morning. Let’s call it the Sciatica diet plan. You lose weight by all of the sweating and crying, and your appetite is for shit, so it’s sort of like being addicted to coke, except cheaper. Hopefully the doctor will have an answer for me that doesn’t involve another operation, but at this point, I’m down with whatever. I’d be very surprised if I don’t have to go under the knife again. Even if he says, “Well, it looks like we’re going to have to put you to sleep”, I’m pretty okay with that. I’ll donate my body to science. Whoever ends up with my back is going to be pissed, though.

Oh, wait. Donating my body to science would be charitable. If I do that, I run the risk of having my corpse stuffed with scorpions and sodomized by zombies. Karma can eat my ass.

Here’s a preview of what the doc is going to do- move my leg around until I threaten to punch him, finally be convinced that I’m not just a raging pansy, and send me off with a recommendation to the MRI place and a prescription for Ibuprofen. I’ll wait another week in pain for my MRI appointment because Ibuprofen for a fragmented disc is like putting a band-aid on a shark bite. If I’m really lucky, he’ll sign me up for some epidural anti-inflammatory shots, which actually help by shrinking the swollen tissue and taking the pressure off of the nerve. Do you have any idea how much shit has to hurt before you look forward to having a five-inch needle the diameter of a pencil stuck into your spine? Pain can get so bad you can actually taste it. Swear to god. It tastes like a metallic sort of citrus flavor. Not bad…not good either…

Finally, I’ll go get my images taken. Another couple of days and then I’ll get to see the doc, who will gasp in horror when he looks at the MRI films and sees that my nerve root is being crushed and pierced by shards of bone and chewed on by the carnivorous larvae of the cave spider who laid eggs in my back. He’ll then schedule me for surgery in another two weeks or so. After surgery things are better for a while because the pain is actually in your back, and not your leg. It’s a welcome change, believe me. Eight weeks of physical therapy later, I’ll be good for another year or two until I decide to go help out at a charity auction. Then karma will rear her ugly head.

Lucky me.

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