Please Make the Hurting Stop

I am a broken, broken person.

I mean it. Parts of me are about to fall off, or wither away. I feel like I have been tumble-dried, or hurled down a flight of stairs, or, gee, I don't know...in a CAR ACCIDENT.

It's been almost two weeks since Bethany and I were bounced about like rag dolls. She still has her hands bound up in gauze as her burns heal, but I have nothing visibly wrong with me anymore.

Nothing VISIBLY wrong.

My back is killing me. It isn't really my neck, but a spot between my shoulder blades. After a while, it grows and encompasses my right shoulder and neck. And that is when I want to curl up in bed with my heating pad. Except that is not always smart.

I had nestled into bed like that earlier this week when I discovered at bedtime that I was unable to move. I had frozen there, like a turtle, my arms and legs the only mobile parts of me. My back had resigned its position as body-mover, and I was trapped there, waving my arms and legs, wishing it weren't so late and that I could call my family for help.

At around that same time, it occurred to me that our ancient heating pad might not actually have an auto-shut off feature. And if that was the case, I would slowly bake to death and die like that king Paul told me about who slowly roasted to death waiting for his servant to come help him, because he was too lazy to move his chair further from the fire. That was it. Laziness. Except in my case, I couldn't so much as unplug my heating pad, because I could not reach the cord.

I was trapped.

Clearly, I lived. But I could have died, and that is why we need a new heating pad.

This morning I tried the heating pad again, because I woke up feeling as if my head was connected to the rest of my body by a single, rusty hinge. I have spent my day attempting to remain as still as possible, not an easy feat with four classes coming through the library for activities. Meanwhile, I have taken ibuprofen, and I have taken Tylenol, and it has been as if the pills stared at me with their blank faces, laughing silently at me as they refuse to help.

Does anyone have a full-body cast they aren't using?

I keep telling myself to tough it out, because I'm from the Midwest, and we tough things out, but MAN does this hurt. And I have a really high pain tolerance. I know this because three different doctors told me so. Otherwise, I would have thought the opposite because I've always found pain pretty painful, generally speaking.

I want to be the kind of pioneer woman who plows things and then says, "Huh. This tooth hurts," gets the pliers, and does her own dentistry before going back outside to plow even more things.

I am not that sort of girl.

Instead, I'm resigning myself to the fact that I'll have to go back to the doctor to have him check me over again, just in case, so that I can maybe get that back brace I've never wanted, like Deenie from that Judy Blume novel of the same name.

In the meantime, whatever you do, don't hand me anything or give me things to do, because I can't hold anything or do anything. I'm lucky I'm standing right now. Wait. I'm sitting. You get the idea.

Instead, remember that I really want to be a fun, happy person, but pain has made me bitter and sarcastic. More bitter and sarcastic than normal. Remember Old Laura, and hope as I do that she will come back, with her fully functioning spinal column intact.