Complacent, Lazy or....??

Warning: I am writing this post while wearing a rather itchy and uncomfortable pair of grumpy pants. No, I don't know why that is, and no, I can't just take them off.

I am one of those people whose lives is really very wonderfully full. Boredome for me leads to all sorts of terrible behaviour, so I love that I am busy and occupied a lot of the time. The downside to this is that a bunch of little things just never get done (or get outright ignored) because it's easy to do that when you have a busy life. You know, things like calling up to get stuff fixed, or buying a new rubbish bin, or whatever - just life's myriad of detritous which falls into the "when I get a chance" bucket.

This week I learned the hard way how leaving things to get done "whenever" can actually mean you are living with a bad situation for far longer than you should.  The story (which I'll eventually get to...) also reminded me of how much us humans (more specifically us females) will put up with, in terms of pain and discomfort.

Yesterday I went to the physiotherapist because I've had a really painful hip for quite a while now. Painful of the losing sleep, crying out in pain, cursing a lot variety.  The crazy thing about this hip pain is, it only ever occurs at night, about 5-10 minutes after I have laid down to sleep. Once I eventually get to sleep, I'm kinda okay and when I wake up in the morning, the pain has miraculously disappeared. I feel NO pain all day. I also feel no pain while walking, none while exercising - only when I'm in bed does this thing rear it's ugly head. You can see how this situation easily falls into the "yeah, whatever" category because I only really remember about it when I'm in bed, and by then it's too late to do anything about it. I wake up and pretty much forget about it all day.  Plus I am not a fan of doctors, prescriptions, or medical stuff anyway so sometimes it takes me a while to work up the effort to make appointments in the first place.

Eventually (thanks to a physio who happened to drop into the shop to buy some Valentine cupcakes, but that's another story altogether) I made an appointment to get it seen to. She asks me how long I've been dealing with this painful situation...and after thinking about it, I say, "Oh about six months I guess." Then in talking about it more, I remembered going to the GP about it some time ago and getting hip x-rays done. "And when was that done?" "Oh, I don't know, maybe 8-9 months ago?"  The physio asked me to bring those films in, so last night I went hunting for them.

The only reason I found them is because DH is a hoarder. Which I hate, but on this ONE AND ONLY occassion I was grateful. Anyway - I find the envelope with the films and it says "emzeegee- R HIP Xray - 5/11/2008"

2008?

Wait. What? 2008?! I've been dealing with this dodgy bloody hip for almost THREE AND A HALF YEARS?

I'm pretty sure that it took me a while to work up to THAT appointment as well, so for argument's sake let's say I've had this going on for four years. FOUR years. Meaning my hip hurt before my Dad died, before I lost the weight, shortly after I moved the business into it's first ever premises, and when my kids were only 7 years old.

ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?

I'm also pretty sure that for a long while in the middle there, this whole hip thing did not bother me, hence why I probably didn't do anything about it for a while. And the GP at the time told me it was probably early onset arthritis, and there was not much which could be done about it. It kinda, sorta makes sense that no real action got taken to correct this, but...four years?

Like I said, it's pretty amazing to think about not only how time goes by so quickly, but how we are so able to just live with a certain level of pain and discomfort. You know the saying, "you don't know how much you miss something until it's gone," I suspect this is a "you don't know how bad you had it until it's gone," situation. Now that the physio has a plan for how to deal with this (and I have every intention of being her star pupil, of course), I'm finally going to be on the road to recovery. I might even get a decent night's sleep once in a while, too.

Now, I just need to recover from the mental beating I gave myself for letting it go on as long as it has.  I wonder how long that will take. Here's hoping it's a little less than four years.