Benched.

Well, I'm injured and on the bench for a bit, hopefully only another day.. Now you may assume from this that my knee or ankle ended up being really hurt after pushing it on the bridges on Thursday. This would be the logical assumption, which is why it couldn't possibly be true for me. No, I have.... a reading injury.

Yep, that's right. Saturday morning, I had really been looking forward to sleeping in until an absurd hour. And while I did sleep in a few hours, until almost 8am, I didn't quite feel lazy enough. So I crawled back in bed with "Seven Up," the seventh of Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum series. I had just received Twilight in the mail from my best friend back at home, so I was eager to finish Seven Up and start on Twilight. Well, I lay in bed for two full hours, more horizontal than I usually sit while reading in bed (typically I just sit up against the headboard), as I couldn't find a comfortable spot any other way.

Saturday evening, I got up from the couch (I was about 100 pages into Twilight by this point) and went to fill up my glass of water or something equally trivial. Well, I made it about 3 steps before I had to stop and grab onto the back of the couch for dear life. It truly felt like someone was beating me with a 2x4 in a perfect, throbbing, rhythm. I had to close my eyes and bite my lip, and I half thought I was having a stroke. The pain subsided in probably 30-60sec, but it would return with any change in elevation (sitting to standing, or vice versa) or any fairly quick turn of my head. I was in total agony.

Running Sunday was completely out of the question, as the pain had gotten worse. I spent nearly the entire day sitting with perfect posture on the couch reading Twilight. Monday morning I went to the doctor, because I was actually worried that I had a herniated disc or a pinched nerve or something more serious than a crick-in-the-neck. The doc was concerned, but not enough to send me for a battery of tests. They gave me a pretty intense Rx for a muscle-specific pain reliever (typically used for arthritis maintenance) and told me to come back if it began to get difficult to breathe.... Oh. Well then. That night I also went out and got a heating pad. Between a few hours of heating pad and the medication, yesterday was not nearly as unbearable. I still had pain when I stood up, but it was more like a regular throbbing headache, not a 2x4 assault.

So far today I actually feel like I have a neck ache, which I didn't really notice before. It's too early to be sure about the pain when standing up, but I think it's all but gone. I do still have this bizarre pain in my abdomen that gets quite tight and painful when I walk quickly, so I still don't think I'll be able to run tonight. I'm really hoping that I will be able to run a bit tomorrow and maybe an easy run on Friday as well. Saturday I'm meeting the lovely Devon to commiserate on, I mean, ENJOY, our 5 mile run. This will be my first 5 miler, since I skipped this Sunday. Let's hope I'm not in pain and that I remember how to run. :)