One week ago, I started walking like Quasimodo. I couldn\u2019t stand up straight, couldn\u2019t bend over properly and couldn\u2019t lift my right leg. I had a massive muscle spasm where my leg attaches to the hip. Here’s what I learned during this long, long week\u2026.<\/p>\n
1. Some injuries just sound\u2026stupid.<\/strong> I\u2019d wrecked myself while cleaning under the beds. That\u2019s right\u2014I\u2019d developed an SDI (a Severe Dusting Injury). It\u2019s virtually impossible to get sympathy when you have to admit that you should have stretched before Swiffering.<\/p>\n 2. Kids are jerks.<\/strong> Okay, some<\/em> of them are. Since I could no longer bend down or lift my leg up, getting dressed morphed from a one-minute mindless task into a 20-minute pain-fest. And putting on socks became impossible. Yes, my kids helped\u2014but here\u2019s what I found on one of their Facebook pages: \u201cHelped my aging mother this morning because she couldn’t bend over to put on her socks \ud83d\ude22 they grow up so fast.\u201d Enough said.<\/p>\n 3. Pain messes with your head.\u00a0<\/strong> Apparently, being in pain all day\u2014and all night\u2014turns my brain into a highly-focused misery detector. Do you know what I realized this week? Harry Potter<\/em> opens with an attempted infanticide\u2014and Red Riding Hood<\/em> ends with identity theft and a double homicide.<\/p>\n 4. Manufacturers are obsessed with lawsuits.<\/strong> I had a muscle spasm so enormous I could actually see it bulging out of my thigh. I needed a heating pad like the one I had as a teen\u2014a heating pad hot enough to melt steel. They don\u2019t make real heating pads anymore\u2014now they make warming<\/em> pads (useless little things with a peak temperature of \u201ctepid\u201d and a patronizing safety feature that shuts them off every few minutes).<\/p>\n Today, I\u2019m feeling much better. I was able to get dressed\u2014socks included\u2014in under two minutes. I can stand up straight and walk without too much of a limp. This weekend\u2019s goal? Search eBay for a 1970s-style skin-searing heating pad, just in case this ever happens again\u2014and hide the Swiffers so I’m not tempted to clean anything.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" One week ago, I started walking like Quasimodo. I couldn\u2019t stand up straight, couldn\u2019t bend over properly and couldn\u2019t lift my right leg. I had a massive muscle spasm where my leg attaches to the hip. Here’s what I learned during this long, long week\u2026. 1. Some injuries just sound\u2026stupid. I\u2019d wrecked myself while cleaning […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-486","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-funny-bits"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/brendakearns.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/486","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/brendakearns.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/brendakearns.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/brendakearns.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/brendakearns.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=486"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/brendakearns.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/486\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":489,"href":"http:\/\/brendakearns.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/486\/revisions\/489"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/brendakearns.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=486"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/brendakearns.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=486"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/brendakearns.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=486"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}