When Worry Met Dally

It started about two weeks before Christmas as a feeling of tightness, cramping, and pain in my buttocks and hips.

I work primarily as a telepsychiatrist, which means that I can be sitting down for most of a sixteen hour shift seeing patients and typing notes into an electronic medical record. I thought, smart man that I am, that I was simply not getting up and stretching enough between consults, or that I was sitting in such as way that the chair was doing a number on my sciatic nerves, causing the pain and discomfort. I tried to sit in another chair for a week or two, I put a pillow underneath my bad self, then two or three pillows. I got up and tried to stretch at every opportunity, even taking to doing laps around the hallways to limber up a bit. I told myself that this would pass, that it was nothing, that I could handle it, and that I was being foolish to even worry about it. I soldiered on.

Then one morning I could barely get out of bed. The morning stiffness in my hips, legs, and knees was so bad that I had to barrel roll myself out from under the covers and onto the floor. It then took what seemed like an hour for me to stand upright and get myself into a hot shower, which was like manna from heaven on my body, which was already tired at six AM. Sitting down and putting on my socks was absolutely exhausting. I felt like a ninety year old man. It finally hit me. You are a fifty three year old man who just trained for and walked a half marathon on your birthday in October. Something is wrong with you, my friend. Something is really wrong. You need to see a doctor.

This realization, being a doctor and now knowing in my head and heart and hips that I needed to see a doctor myself, that I was about to become a patient, was disconcerting if not downright frightening. I have never really been sick. Oh, yes, I've had appendicitis and I've broken my leg sliding into second base (yeah, that was really stupid-another story for another day), but I've never had anything stop me in my tracks and keep me from putting on my socks and getting into and out of my car without outright yelps of pain. Something is wrong with you. NO! Yes. You need to see a doctor. NO! Yes, you idiot.

This was when Worry met Dally. Worry won.

I was so afraid that I might have something that would maim me for life or disable me so that someone would have to put my socks on for me or drive me around or that it would (gasp) KILL me, for God's sake, that I finally decided to make the call. I'm glad I did. I was diagnosed with a condition that, it turns out, my father also had, called polymyalgia rheumatica. It's serious enough, but it won't kill me. It's treatable, and my pain and discomfort are much better than they were three months ago. I know what this is, I know how to treat it, and I will be able to live with it. I know what to watch for in the future. If things get worse, I can deal with it. I now joke with my wife and kids that with my growing collection of medical ailments that I will get myself a silver Bat Masterson cane to walk with (and bop people on the head with when they annoy me), a nice blue handicapped sign to hang on my mirror when I can no longer walk from my car to my office, and a nice chocolate Lab to be my traveling companion when I go blind. (My black Lab Holly is much too old and set in her ways to help me out there, so I won't even ask her).

I can kid myself about this now that I can move again, but the moral of this tale is very serious. You know your body better than anyone else, including your doctor. If you develop symptoms that are serious, that last longer than a few days, that cause you discomfort or disability or impair your ability to function, please do not do what I, the wise and wonderful wizard of a doctor, did. Do not dally. Get checked out.

Thankfully, I did not have anything that would kill me if not diagnosed and treated right away.

You might not be so lucky.