You wanna know something?

Okay. I just came from the doctor’s office, and I’m about to give you some extremely personal, medical news about myself. Since it is a matter of a somewhat delicate nature, I’ll be as polite and professional reporting it as possible.

My ass hurts.

That’s right, I said it; my ass hurts!

Seriously. The good part is, it isn’t the whole ass (or the other way around.)

Just one side hurts. The left cheek, if you want to be technical and particular about it.

Even though it has hurt like crazy for a good week and a half, I didn’t think that much about it until today.

And, trust me, it hurts! Every time I stand up. Every time I walk. Every time I sit down for any length of time.

It wakes me up out of a sound sleep some nights.

But I didn’t worry about it. I figured it was just a pulled muscle or something. So I kept right on exercising and running and jogging.

Until today.

I overheard one of the secretaries in the office talking about her friend who has sciatica, and how debilitating the it is.

She said that it started off with her friend as a constant pain in her buttocks that periodically shot down her leg like a jolt of electricity.

Well, being the hypochondriac that I aspire to be, I checked it out on the internet.

Sure enough. There was sciatica…and I had it! The symptoms were all there.

The cause – a pinching of the Sciatic Nerve at the base of the spine. (The Sciatic Nerve is huge, about the diameter of your little finger.)

Symptoms – 1. lower back pain,

2. pain in one buttock, sometimes radiating down the leg.

3. numbness in the leg, sometimes extending to the toes.

4. pain increases when sitting.

Son of a bitch!!!!! That’s me!!! No back pain or numbness, but everything else!

Treatment?

1. Bed rest

2. Absence of strenuous physical activity (like running and jogging)

3. Back surgery

Prognosis? Poor. Although sciatica is not fatal, it could be progressive, and there is no absolute and surefire cure for the condition.

My mind began racing. Now, because I have sciatica, the pain will never go away. It will increase in intensity, I will never be able to run, jog, ride horses, or, eventually WALK again!

(The internet is a really bad place for hypochondriacs to hang out!)

My mouth went dry and my hands began to tremble as I thought about all of this!

Then, I read the following. The icing on the cake. The bit of information that REALLY SENT ME OVER THE EDGE!

What causes the pinching of the nerve that causes the pain?

It could be a number things, like:

1. Inflammation of tissue around the nerve where it exits the spinal cord.

2. Spinal disks that are out of alignment

3. or….a TUMOR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!



That was all I needed to read! Suddenly, I had incurable, progressive sciatica that was leading me straight to a wheelchair and an early grave! All of this was brought on by an inoperable, malignant tumor in the spinal cord that was the size of grapefruit and had metastasized to the lymph system, liver and pancreas.

So, of course, I called the doctor and got an immediate appointment!

In the doctor’s examining room, she put me up on the table and had me lay flat on my back. After having me move my legs around for a few moments and applying pressure to different points in my lower back, she declared that my problem was not sciatica.

My problem was either a torn or a pulled muscle somewhere in the area of my gluteus maximus. (Wasn’t he a Roman Gladiator played in the movies by Russell Crowe?)

She told me that she knew I did strength-resistance training and that I jogged, and she asked me what I did for stretching warm-up exercises.

In response to that, I curled my imaginary mustache, adjusted my bandelero across my shoulder, and sneered, “Stretching exercises? We don’t need no stinking stretching exercises!”

Well, apparently, I do.

And now, I need physical therapy too and 400 milligrams of Aleve a day. Also, no more jogging for at least three weeks.

Instead of having death-threatening sciatica, I pulled a muscle in my ass.

That was a close one, huh?