How quickly things can change!
I went to bed last night all excited about picking up our trees at the nursery early in the morning and spending the day getting them into the ground…
But just a few hours later, it became painfully obvious that was not going to happen!
I woke up to go to the bathroom. There is nothing new or unusual about that. Lots of men my age have to go to the bathroom in the night. Except, in my case, IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH MY AGE!
Did I say that loud enough?
I have been getting up multiple times throughout the night since I was a young boy. In fact, when I was about 10 or 11 years old, my mother thought “something must be wrong” with me. So she had the doctor check me out.
I don’t remember all of the different things that he checked but I do remember that he shoved a 4” long needle with an 8” long, 1.5” diameter syringe full of some modified form of kryptonite into my buttocks!
His diagnosis after harpooning me: “There is nothing wrong with him. Everything is normal.”
It seems that I have been blessed with a highly efficient bladder. Anyway, back to last night…
I went to get out of bed…AND COULD NOT MOVE!!!
And I am not exaggerating for effect. I literally could-not-move. The slightest move of my legs caused excruciating pain!
Unbelievable! My mind desperately tried to remember when this happened…
“I felt nothing when I went to bed…I was all bent over when I was sealing the floor of our back deck…and felt nothing. Now my back is frozen stiff! MAN THIS HURTS!”
It was like a bad dream, except I wasn’t dreaming! I definitely still had to go to the bathroom…
Since our mattress is only about 12” off of the floor, I literally rolled out of bed like a log.
“At least I making some progress.”
Once on the floor, I rolled onto my back and tried to move my legs. Even the smallest move felt like an invisible knife was jabbing into my back, wrenching my breath away.
After several minutes, I realized that I was in a real pickle…
If I just laid still on the carpet I was fine. And I was so tired…I began to drift back to sleep…
until I was reminded that I woke up for a reason! And that reason was not going to go away!
So back to trying to move…
I started praying…because I needed help!
After about 5 minutes, with much pain, I could move my legs a little. I rolled over onto my belly and slowly pushed my torso up until I was on my hands and knees.
I then began to try to slowly and ever so slightly stretch my back.
“Wow, this really hurts!”
I tried to stand up…“Oh, God!!!”
Back to the carpet…
“Well, that is NOT going to work!”
The pain was so intense that sweat started to form on my brow.
And then my bladder sent another reminder, this one a little more urgent, as to the reason why I was putting myself through such agony…
“What am I going to do?…I can’t tell my wife that her beautiful white carpet is now a few shades off because I couldn’t make it to the bathroom!”
I had no other choice but to start crawling…
“I CAN NOT wake my wife up!”
Move… wince…
“I DO NOT want to make a scene.”
Move… wince…
I tried to ease the pain by breathing deeper.
Move… wince…
“This is such an unmanly position.”
I eventually made it over to the doorway to our master bath. While that was definitely progress, I was still in a jamb (no pun intended!). I mean, I couldn’t figure out how I would relieve myself from that position! I need more height…
I grabbed onto the door jamb and pulled myself up like you would climb a rope. Each pull elicited some combination of a whimper, cry, squeal, snort or whine.
I never quite made it to the full upright and locked position, but I did accomplish my immediate goal! And then I waddled back to bed, one slow step at a time, bent over at the waist with my hands on my knees to bear the weight of my upper body and fell back asleep.
An hour and a half later, I tried to turn onto my side and ended up waking both me and my wife up because I winced so loud! My wife massaged me with some ointment and we fell back asleep.
When I woke up in the morning, it took me 45 solid minutes (no exaggeration!) to get out of bed and be able to slowly and tenuously walk out of our bedroom door.
Needless to say, the trees are not getting planted today!
