You guys! I am falling apart. Have you ever had that thing where you jerk yourself awake in a huge twitch, like in response to a crazy dream or something? Or that thing where you turn your head too quickly and get a shooting pain in your neck? Well this morning I had a weird confluence of events whereby both of things happened simultaneously, and fast-forward three hours later to me…in a neck collar.

Basically, I woke up this morning with a start, and jerked my head to the right and immediately felt/heard a horrible crunching sound, like what people describe they hear when they broke a bone. Immediately I had all this pain on my right side, and felt like I might throw up. I wiggled all my limbs to make sure I was not paralyzed, and that all worked fine, but my head was a different story and I could barely move it at all.

E was sleeping next to me and he awoke to see me twitching around on the edge of the bed, holding my queasy stomach and rubbing my neck and testing the motion in my feet all at once. He was confused. I ran to the bathroom and fell on to the toilet. My neck hurt, and I thought I would throw up, and it was at that moment I realized that my back and stomach hurt as well, as I had just gotten my stupid period AS WELL, like, thank you body. I hate you.

I could not even reach under the sink for the tampons with my right arm. I could turn my head a little to the left, but not to the right at all, and raising my right arm hurt just as much. Finally I made my way back out ot the bedroom and collapsed onto the floor, trying to rest for a minute. E was leaning over me and he wanted to do something, but I didn’t know what I needed. I was sweating and burning up, and my stomach had cramps and my neck still hurt. The worst part was when I felt well enough to get up, because I went to lift my head from the floor, and literally could not. My neck was too weak to hoist my massive Sputnik-like cranium from the floor. I grabbed my hair in both hands and LIFTED my hair from the floor, while E held onto my torso.

It was then that I realized I might be dying/paralyzing/breaking all my vertebrae without even trying, and I finally said out loud what I’d been afraid to say for the last twenty minutes – that I wanted to go to an emergency clinic.

So finally, after the waiting room and a call to my dad, which didn’t seem to worry him in the SLIGHTEST (his exact words being, “Hmm! Well now, that’s too bad. I’m sure you’ll be fine though"), I was seen by the doctor. It turns out I am not paralyzed or dying, and my bones are not melting away (another fear). It’s something called Torticollis, and apparently it’s fine, not major or permanent, just a big inconvenience. It’s basically a big ole neck spasm.

But I have a styrofoam neck collar and am not to go to school or work for two days, like duh – I wasn’t going to leave the house with this thing anyway! I mean, hello.

And E has been so great all day, driving me there and then getting my prescriptions plus a surprise gift of a huge sack full of pudding! Puddings puddings everywhere, every flavor! And I’ve got a new netflix dvd of Cheers episodes, to boot. It’s like a mini-spring break all over again.