Ow, Ow, Ow!
Sometimes I get these weird muscle cramps in my leg. The muscle behind my shin tenses up, or something, and seems to (or at least feels like it) locks. It hurts. A lot. When it happens, it usually seems to occur when I'm asleep, which means I immediately roll out of bed and hop around the apartment, cursing and moaning, and scaring the cats out of their sleep.
Today it happened while I was talking on the phone. I'm sure people are always glad to hear the person at the other end of the line suddenly yell GYAAAHHH!!! in the middle of a conversation. In some parts of the world they'd probably think my apartment had just been firebombed.
It usually subsides after about 10-to-20 seconds. Since it feels like my muscle has locked, my second thought (after GYAAAHHH!!!) is always a cold fear that it will not unlock and I'll be in mortal agony for ten or twenty minutes before I can actually focus my will to summon help to get me to a hospital. But it's never happened yet.
After it subsides, the first thing I learn is that the leg hurts terribly to walk on; I can put hardly any weight on it at all without flinching. But I've also learned that the best thing to do is to in fact put weight on it and walk around a while. Once it feels more normal, it's good to go out and go up and down stairs a couple of times. I guess climbing stairs stretches out the muscle or something; it at least helps dampen the pain even further. When I get these cramps at night I of course am first tempted to roll back into bed and try to forget about the whole thing, but four or six hours of sleep does not help fix whatever's broken down there, and I am limping as soon as I get out of bed. So again I try to walk around my apartment for ten or twenty minutes before going back to bed.
Today I felt the muscle freak out, and in the second-or-so before my brain was flooded with pain I could see the whole muscle on the back of the calf tensed up. It was very strange.
I have no idea what the hell causes this. It doesn't seem to be fatal or even permanently damaging, but it is incredibly annoying.
Sometimes I feel like I'm doomed to experience a string of painful, annoying, frustrating, but ultimately not-very-serious physical ailments. Which I guess is better than having a stroke or something. But it seems like life is annoying and frustrating enough without my body spazzing out on me every so often.
Oh, well. At least I don't have knee problems or back problems.
Yet.
|
|
|
|
