PAINNNNNNNNNNN
So what has happened in the last week of my absence? Oh nothing much except that I BROKE MY BACK.
Well ok I didn’t break it because if I did I would be typing this with a thin stick attached to my forehead, but I still really bloody well injured it. I’d love to say that I injured my back doing something heroic like lifting a burning lorry off an entire class of schoolkids or bludgeoning the guy who created Atomic Kitten to death with a massive anvil, but sadly I managed to feck my back up in an altogether less cool way - by sneezing. It wasn’t even a particularly strong sneeze, but SOMETHING in my lower back just twisted/ripped/pulled horribly and I was immediately in severe pain. I quickly did an internet search (you know, instead of getting actual medical assistance) which only proved to worry me further as my search on “sneeze back pain” came up with results such as “WHAT IS A HERNIA”, “SLIPPED DISC TREATMENT” and “LIFE AS A PARAPLEGIC”. Walking around was impossible to achieve without going through horrible amounts of pain and necessary breaks to grimace and wipe the sweat from my brow every 10 meters or so. I soon found, however, that if I bent my legs slightly, walking was just about bearable.
As per my usual course of action when I get ill or injure myself, I decided that it will “just go away after a while” and attempted to carry on as usual. For some reason I am just incredibly averse to going to a hospital or doctor at times like this. I’m not sure what it is - it could be the innate fear that I will express my symptoms wrongly to the Japanese doctor and it will all result in a misdiagnosis and some kind of penile catheter, but I think it’s more a kind of blind optimism on my part that my body will eventually heal no matter what. Like Ra’s Al Ghul.
So I went to work, my evening classes etc. School was an instant problem seeing as how I had to go up STAIRS for which every step was like having a chainsaw limply thrown at my spine. To my students, my injury was met with a mix of concern and laughter. This was understandable when you contrast the pity-inducing image of me giving out a pathetic yelp as I pick up a piece of chalk to write on the blackboard with the fact that I was also walking round the room in a half-squat position as if I had a seven foot dildo up my backside.
Course, there would be the odd kid that didn’t know or simply was unable to decipher the audio visual clues of me walking like an asthmatic cripple and talking like this “Let’s talk about famous GAAHHH foods in GAAHHH England - this is a place called GAAHHH Yorkshire and there is a very GAAHHH famous- ” and would accidentally treat me in the usual rough and tumble manner that some of them do, like running up behind me and faux-rugby tackling me right in the fricking back with a cheerful “Jon-senseiiii!”. And to those kids I say this to you:
I’ll get you.
Anyway, my back is fine now after a week of taking self-prescribed placebos and repeated visits to the local onsen. Apparently though this kind of thing is reoccurring, the knowledge of which is likely going to prove detrimental when I crap in my pants from trying to suppress my sneezes from now on.
