It’s the first Saturday of April and as expected on a month in summer, it was bright, sunny and cheerful. Heck, there is even karaoke at our neighbors and the off-tune singing dude did not destroy any morning. The sunny atmosphere encompassed all that.
As with any Saturday morning, I got up to start with the usual weekend house chores. By weekend house chores, it does not describe the usual simple sweeping of the floor, throwing out the garbage, or even feed-the-dogs only kind of stuff. These are the usual nitty-gritty, down-on-four-knees-scrub-dirt-from-floor kind of chores. And these are not easy. Good thing my sister is still having their semestral break and I had a helper to share the load with.
But lo and behold, I got up cringing in pain because of a stiff neck. That was the least expected pain issue to occur to me since I don’t remember when was the last time I had a stiff neck. It was tolerable at first and I prided myself with my pain tolerance. I continued the day and raked the gardens of dead leaves, took out the garbage, cleaned the toilets, etc. As the morning progressed and I focused on the last task at hand, which was to clean and scrub the floor of the bedroom I share with my sister, the pain on my neck grew to be so unbearable I had to stop and cry on the spot. It hampered my move and slowed my movements. Yet, I had to finish the task since I already got most of our stuff outside of the room and I already had the mattress’ turned. Of course, the room will not clean by itself. I could have hollered to my sister to finish the job but I already had tasks for her at hand downstairs so I resolved to finish things on my own.
You would think why I should go to such great lengths cleaning the room when I could have done it tomorrow or any other day. I thought of that too but you see, my sister has noticed something these past few days in our room. When we are relaxing at night before turning to bed, she would notice little insects crawling on the floor. At first we didn’t mind it as we were not the type to be easily scared of little critters. My sister even had the time to squish them one by one. A few days later, she told me it seemed they were growing in numbers and she was seeing more. I, on the other hand, am getting insect bites on my legs.
So the next course of action was obvious, clean the room.
Which I did earlier. In extreme pain. I cried many times because every time I turned my neck, I felt my soul leaving my body and my energy depleted from trying to breath through it. You would think I was giving birth from the extensive breathing I was doing to keep myself collected. It was THAT excruciating.
So when I was finally done, I lay down to rest my body before taking a shower. I then received usual greetings on my cellphone from a friend in Canada. One time, when my cellphone sounded and I reached over my body stiffened all over from the pain. I cried out, wanting release. Hot tears fell from my eyes and I prayed to be killed if only to be spared from the dilemma. I knew it was an exaggeration but who could ever think straight in pain.
Every time I lay down I have trouble getting up. Even gulping is giving me issues. Whenever my neck muscle twist, stiffen or move from any head to shoulder movement, I’m nearer to hell. I have to keep my neck at a certain angle always to avoid the pain but by now I am feeling some back issues as well.
I had scheduled myself to work on some online tasks after cleaning but all of that went to the backseat when after showering, I lay down on my bed again, borrowed some pain killer ointment from my sister and massaged my neck away. If only I have someone to do that for me all day long, I will consider that heaven.
At the moment, I feel as if a big lump in inside my neck. There isn’t one but I would imagine there is. When I try to stretch my neck to give it a bit of exercise, I could imagine my skin hitting some hard lump beneath it, causing pressure to push the button of pain. Heaven forbid, when will this end?!
