Whether my butt is deliberately out to get me is up for debate, but it has certainly proven to be a willing colluder with the dread illness Fibromyalgia. Oh, the ample opportunities my ample derrier has now been afforded to torment me with. Numbness in the left cheek. Muscle strain. Pins and needles. And the pain - oh the pain! It's like sitting on an evil genius (something which I had hoped would only ever be reserved for Jason Isaacs' Lucious Malfoy).Today the butt has been trying my patience again. When I woke up this morning, after a particularly bad few days, I felt pretty good. A bit of pain in the old left leg which meant I'd have to use old faithful, Sticky the walking stick (whilst I am quite happy to christen my inanimate possessions I draw the line at going through the efforts of creativity when naming them) I knew that I'd be able to get through the day with only a moderate limp. As I have a little work on at the moment I would have to grin and bear it, but the long (2 hour) commute into work would swiftly be rewarded with a four-hour sit down, broken up by three 5-minute-long breaks when I could stretch my legs if needs be. Sitting down - a bit of an effort when in full Fibro flare-up but once you're down you're down and only the process of standing will draw attention to you as a huffing and puffing cripple. In short, the resting of the body is welcome and not the worst discomfort (unless you're sitting on a giant spike, in which case you should probably reconsider a life as a circus freak until after the flare-up has passed).
Feeling very much under scrutiny after having had to take a few random days off work over the last fortnight, I did my best to be breezy, wanting to give off signals that shouted: 'I'm doing fine today, nothing I can't handle; look, see - I'm not a malingering git!' Then I sit down with my first student. Comfy. Ahhhh, bliss - take the weight off my dead leg. The hour passes - shit, I can't stand up.
I stoically waved my student away and heaved my carcasse up of the chair using the table as a ballast. Emboldened by the table not collapsing, I lunged for Sticky and experimentally staggered a few paces until I could straighten my back. My boss stuck her head round to smile and say "Oh good, your leg's looking better!"
'We'll see," thinks my bum.
By the end on the morning my left arse seems to have calcified. I cannot move my leg as a should. The muscle around my hip has frozen so tightly that I have to remind myself of old biology lessons and diagrams of hip joints. Ball and socket. My leg should be moving, even with pain. But no - the pain is there, so excruciating that I can barely lift my foot a centimetre from the ground. I have to stand at an angle even to do that. I now shuffle a lot slower than I did this morning and by God, if I move a fraction too far my pain receptors know about it. I drag my sorry ass to the tube station, get a seat on the tube, nearly miss my stop when I (almost) fail to haul myself back up again in time then have to rest in Paternoster square for 20 minutes. I get up and this time I sat right. I'm cured!
For about an hour, until I've been home for 20 mins. Now I have to be levered in and out of bed by my beloved.
