Never Help Anyone - My Leg Is On Fire

My leg is on fire.

Okay, not literally. Figuratively.

It's my right leg, and it's buzzing right now. It feels like someone has taken my leg muscle, from my hip downwards, and twisted it-- then put it back in my leg. The sensation is almost indescribable.

It doesn't hurt necessarily, but its really unpleasant.

It's nerve damage.

And it sucks, and it's still not 100% healed even three years later.  But it used to be worse. So a tightness in my leg is pretty fine now.

But a word of advice.

When your brother says to you; "hey can you help me wall-mount the dryer?" And you say "yeah sure!" but you're a puny chubby late twenties woman with little or no muscle mass in your lower back, well...

... Say no.

In fact, unless you are a super muscly dude like my brother is, and can bench press at least 40lbs easily, maybe don't go helping him lift a 100 pound dryer to put above your head and on the wall. Especially if you're also really fucking short, 5'5" -- and your favourite past-time is being on the internet and being a complete nerd.

Let me give you a play by play of that day.

My brother: "Okay, I'll hold the side, you hold the bottom and try and find the hooks."

Me: "Sure."

Us: "Ooof"

My lower back muscles: *groggy* HUH?"

Me: "I can't find the wall hooks"  *frowny face*

Him: "Okay, put it down, we'll try again."

Me: "Hey that was fun, lets try another three times!" (Okay I never actually said that. It was more like, 'hey I can't find them still,' until my brother got fed up with me.)

My lower back muscles: "WHAT'S HAPPENING!?" *dies*

It didn't actually hurt then. I don't know, it never felt like a strain, or anything. I never even noticed any kind of pain that day. I never noticed a twinge or any kind of sensation in my back that would indicate any kind of injury as I helped him. In fact, I felt fine.

At first.

Like a rotting corpse waiting to be found, it was about five days later when my body was like, "HEY NOTHING IS WORKING BACK HERE, FYI!"

... my body yells, a lot.

And that's when it started to hurt. Unfortunately, as my previous entry attests, I'm also clumsy, so I'd also banged my tailbone on the same day as the dryer incident, this time from sitting too hard -- yeah I'm an extreme sitter.

I'm so screwed, haha.

So between the dryer and the tailbone--all at once, my body was like; "FUCK THIS SHIT," and kinda left me to my own devices.

It started with aching in my thighs. Dull aching. Suddenly, it snaked its way up to my hips, my lower back. And then, every time I bent over, pain. I couldn't bend. I couldn't sit. I sat like an old person.  I couldn't understand it.

Two weeks, and nothing. I couldn't bend at the waist without pain. Aching, aching, constantly.

And suddenly, I couldn't do my extreme sitting any more. In fact -- I'm sitting cross legged on my tiny netbook writing this right now -- two and a half years ago I wouldn't have been able to bend and sit cross legged at all. To sit cross-legged it would have meant slow, residual build up of stiffness and pain until I would have gotten up, hunched over and quasimodo-like. I wouldn't have been able to sit here even 5 minutes.

So I went to the doctor. It's a strain. Take some ibuprofen.

It didn't stop the pain, at all.

And then, another week goes by. My whole entire abdomen started to swell. Starting from my tailbone. And then the next day, my thighs. Next day my hips, my stomach.

"It could be diabetes," the guy says, looking really disinterested.

"My ankles and feet aren't swollen," I say.

"Oh." He says, and looks. They aren't. I luckily do not have 'cankles' -- I have pretty slim ankles for a fat girl. They are fine.

"Allergic reaction to ibuprofen," he says, still looking disinterested.

"But I always use ibuprofen, it's never happened before. And why would it be localized to the fucking place I had pain, unless it was related?" I look at him skeptically.

He shrugs and gives me a diuretic. Great.

Fucking doctors.

... and then the muscle spasms begin.

I still get this, especially in my right leg, the one with the continued buzzing. But not as bad. Man, it was bad when it first started happening. It was like twitching all along both legs. Like all along, and seconds apart. Constantly. Like a ripple twitching effect. It was as if all my muscles in my legs had given up and had no strength.

So long story short, it took seven months, an ultrasound, two x-rays, about four hundred dollars, and they still didn't know what was up. They theorized nerve damage but that test needs an Electromyogram to be diagnosed and EMGs are not something I could afford to do.

Besides, it was starting to heal. Soon I could kinda bend again, sit down without wincing, go to the toilet without wincing... go to sleep without a weird buzzing sensation.

It actually took a year for the symptoms to slowly go away, and it's been three years now, and heh, I can still feel the muscle spasms in my right leg as I write this.

Nerve damage takes for-fucking-ever to heal.

I'm still not 100%, still can't sit cross legged for long periods, can't bend for long periods. I still get tightness, I only managed to start exercising again back in January. My whole weight loss was basically on hold two years, because I wasn't sure if dancing and weights was making it worse or not.

It doesn't sound like much but at the time it was brutal.

So, the moral of the story is:

Never help your fucking brother with anything, ever, and always be careful when you practice extreme sitting.