Candice: 5 going on 50

So me and my heating pad have been getting reacquainted. Perhaps like the Electric Blanket character from The Brave Little Toaster, my heating pad is happy to be cuddled again once more despite the shift in Texas towards spring. As for myself, I'd really rather I didn't need to desperately cling to it in order to stay in bed or get out of it.

Three weeks ago (that's three, as in almost a month) I was failing to master choctaws when my feet went out from under me and all 900 feet of me (approx.) hit the ice squarely on my tailbone. I got up again and skated for another 15 minutes in an effort to prove that I was tougher than skating. And maybe I did, but by that night I had a lovely purple bruise blooming like a flower in a crack of concrete (get it?) and a lot of soreness. Skating got the last laugh, but I thought with the fading of the bruise, so to might the pain fade.

Nope.

Nope times 100.

For a few days walking and sitting and sleeping and existing were all reason enough to be in pain. Walking, sitting, and existing did eventually became comfortable again, but sleeping (ALAS! My FAVORITE thing) did not. Even taking ibuprofen before bed was laughably ineffective. For the past three weeks no matter what I did, I would wake up roughly once every hour as the pain punched through my slumber and demanded that I roll over and try to find a more comfortable position. Once or twice there was nothing for it, even lying on my stomach hurt and I just had to wait for sleep to win out over the discomfort.

Thus, the most embarrassing Google search in a long time: "falling on ice butt injury." My butt, it was injured from falling on ice. Last time I posted I wrote about how I felt skating was, in some ways, an expensive and showy waste of time and money. Now I feel like skating is turning me into a hybrid baby old person, someone who falls constantly; someone who when they fall looks up at the ceiling in pure shock that such a thing could happen before clutching their hip and whining about not being able to get up; someone in need of some miracle cream to cure their butt woes.

Alas, there doesn't appear to be a miracle cream. Or even a miracle pill. According to WebMD I either have butt cancer, or I'll just have to be patient, stay active, avoid positions that hurt, and either ice it or using the heating pad until the pain disappeared. I was worried ice would trigger some sort of PTSD attack for my poor traumatized butt, so heating pad it was. It helps. I used it Sunday and, though I still woke up, slept much better than I had in a while. I used it last night, and woke up only in a little pain. Five extra minutes lying on top of the heating pad made me simultaneously more capable of getting out of bed and less willing.

And yet still I shall skate. Neither cold, nor lack of talent, nor lack of money, nor aching butt will keep my from the ice.

My butt isn't too happy about that, but oh well.