Aaarrr, Jim Lad, and other pirate noises

Over the weekend, I developed some pain in my lower back. I was rather mystified, as I hadn’t done anything to injure it that I knew of, and it seemed to go away on Monday.

Tuesday saw it come back and be quite painful, and yesterday I was off work all day. It wasn’t a constant pain, but it would twinge and be excruciating, and it seemed to have extended into my right hip, as well. I managed to get up and get dressed, but I couldn’t make it even to the end of the street before it got too bad for me to handle, and so I spent the day at home, saying “Ow…” every so often and feeling self-pitying.

Luckily as it happens, on Tuesday I’d made an appointment with the doctor for today, and I managed to hobble up there this morning to see him.

Apparently the problem is in the Sacroiliac joint, and it is called Sacroiliac joint dysfunction. Basically, it’s a problem of movement where the spine joins the pelvis; it’s very common, usually remedies itself through movement and often comes from simply sleeping in a funny position.

There’s not much to be done about it in the short term except to swallow painkillers and attempt to maintain a normal range of movement. If it remains a persistent problem, I can visit a chiropractor (I would only ever visit a McTimoney’s practitioner, of which there is a school locally). For now, I just have to wait and hope it’ll work itself out.

He also gave me a huge prescription for cocodamol; while I can usually buy it over the counter, it’s also relatively expensive to do so. This way, I get my 200(!) pills for just the cost of a prescription charge, which is cool.

So, nothing to worry too hard about. On the negative side, I did forget to ask about getting a refill on my sleeping pills, even though I don’t use them that often. Oh, well. I can manage without. I have a few left.

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In other news, today is the last day for you to nominate douchebags and arseholes for the anti-carnival; I have a large number, which I will be whittling down to a small core of evil shitheadery for Friday.

Please feel free to nominate anyone who’s annoyed you lately.

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On the opposite end of the spectrum, here are your weekly recommendations in honour of Thor.
Cosmodaddy has an interesting and well thought-out piece on his blog at the moment regarding the intersection of various conflicting rights and freedoms under the Human Rights Act 1998 and the Equality Act (Sexual Orientation Regulations) Regulations 2007. Well worth a read.

Despite being a massive jerk most of the time, Robert over at Expat Yank has a legitimate criticism piece up about the rise of sensationalist public service messages by the UK government.

The ever-clever Greg Laden has a guest blogger doing a statistical experiment about the levels of science present in science blogs.

Lottie has A Question of Ethics, in which she discusses the ethics of blogging about personal issues and problems in a truthful manner while using a pseudonym.

Gary talks about Hollywood woo and stupidity, illustrating exactly why Sharon Stone’s opinion on anything besides acting should not be taken seriously.

Helen at Bird of Paradox wrote a little while ago about gender neutral pronouns and the attempt to bring in artificial GNPs.

That’s all for now, folks.

Edit: Ampersand has a good post about the minimum wage over at Alas, A Blog, relating to Krueger and Card’s well-known studies. Definitely worth reading.

Just back from the dentist.

Horrible. Painful. Yuck.

More later.

Update:

The tooth snapped while being extracted, and it stunk, literally. Embarrassingly. I think it was the pus from the abcess. The dentist got one root out no problem, but the other one was so firmly embedded it took him ages to get it out. He was pulling hard on it, but it wouldn’t come out for ages and ages. He kept having to go at it with the drill, and then pull. I was being janked all over the chair until it finally popped out. There were little bits of tooth everywhere.

The numbness seems to have gone mostly, but I still have the packing in. I’m a little afraid to look, to be honest. It’s not a pretty sight when a tooth comes out cleanly, let alone when it’s that kind of Gladiator-style bloodbath. Speaking of, I had to wipe blood off my face when it was done. Nice.

On the plus side, it cost £27.70 instead of the £43.60 I was expecting. On the negative, I need four more fillings, which will probably run to about £150 in total, apparently. He did drill out some other rotted stuff from other teeth while I was strapped in, so it wasn’t a total nightmare.

I don’t know if I’ll go to work tomorrow. He said it would be very sore, which is dentist speak for “Ahahaha! An eternity of pain upon you, mere mortal!” Maybe I’ll go in in the afternoon. Interestingly, my dentist is Middle Eastern (possibly Iranian), and he was telling me that I had to tell him the truth about how well the novocaine was working, or I would suffer. I don’t think he meant it as a threat (although we are talking about a dentist here), just that he had an interesting way of phrasing it.

I bought lots of codeine on the way home. That should help.