Muscle Killers and Pain Relaxants

Debilitating muscle spasms are the lemons, my acerbic wit is the sugar and water. Let's whip up another pitcher of... The Little Details.

Now with 75 MORE milligrams of diclofenac sodium!!

• You have a busy week ahead of you, one that's made all the more complicated by the fact that you're on call for jury duty.
• You wouldn't be on call for jury duty if you hadn't registered to vote. I BLAME BARACK OBAMA.
• Actually, I blame my buddy who wants me to help him stop factory farming in the state of California. If the presidential race comes down to one vote in the middle of Los Angeles, California something has gone horribly, horribly awry.
• Monday: NO JURY DUTY! Dodged a bullet.
• Unfortunately, the court chamber holds five bullets and the one stamped "TUESDAY" has your name on it.
• You have a rehearsal, two auditions, and a bunch of work you need to get done on Tuesday. Still, it is your civic duty to show up and possibly decide the guilt or innocence of Phil Spector! (Who, let's be honest, probably murdered that woman. At least the trial will be short. Right?)
• Despite waking up with shooting pains and severe muscle spasms in your neck, you are determined to drive to downtown LA and explain in person that you might need a deferment and could they possibly find a replacement? I mean, it doesn't take a genius to figure out what happened when a dude stumbles out of his house in a bloody shirt and mutters to his driver "I think I just killed someone..."
• Your plans will suddenly change when you realize that, in order to drive on the 101, you will probably need to turn your head more than 10 degrees to the left. Particularly since your car's blindspot is located a good 60 to 80 degrees to the left.
• On the other hand, I always drive LA's freeways under the assumption that no one ELSE is looking in THEIR blindspot. Why not just BE that guy?
• Right, cause it's stupid. Then I might as well be driving down Highway 169 in Golden Valley.
• Minnesota joke!
• Sorry, I'm trying to use humor to alleviate the pain. Speaking of...
• You're pretty sure California instituted that bogus "hands-free" cell phone law just so it would be easier on your neck when you have to make three different phone calls in order to find out the location of the nearest in-network Urgent Care.
• It turns out the nearest in-network Urgent Care is four miles away in Burbank. The next closest is thirteen miles away in Glendale.
• It is at this point that you make a note to re-evaluate your health insurance.
• Since your neck spasms when you look to the left, you might think it's smart to plan a route to the clinic that only involves right-hand turns.
• The unforeseen flaw to that plan: all right-hand turns inherently involve checking for traffic. Traffic that is coming... from the left. In fact, as far left as traffic can possibly come from.
• You end up sitting at a lot of red lights for a really long time.
• It's only been open for 15 minutes, but there are already five people ahead of you at Urgent Care. None of them are happy to be there.
• The one person who IS happy to be there? The four-year-old boy who comes in to have the bandage on his arm changed. He expresses his enthusiasm for the clinic by periodically shrieking at a pitch which should, theoretically, set off the sprinkler system.
• The boy's father tries to distract him by explaining how keys work. The boy, along with everyone else in the waiting room, doesn't fall for it for very long.
• You call into the automated juror hotline (also known as the Select-A-Juror-Life-Ruiner-Lotto-Matic 5000) and navigate the phone tree until you find the branch with a live human and/or phone monkey on it. As you wait on hold, you fervently hope they are not triangulating your cell phone signal and sending the coordinates to the LA SWAT division's special Juror Enforcement wing.
• You no more than get out the words "Urgent Care" and the surprisingly-chipper woman on the other end of the phone says "We'll reschedule you for November."
• You're a little disappointed you're not important enough to send helicopters after. I guess Phil Spector is in no hurry to go to jail.
• It's just a stiff neck, they're not going to make you wear a gown or take down your pants. You don't even have to open your mouth any more, they just stick a little thing in your ear and BOOM! -instant temperature!
• Dr. Ronica is very attentive and caring and figures that just by sleeping on your neck funny you probably triggered the spasms. And then she tells you to take down your pants, because Walter the assistant is going to have to give you a shot.
• Walter the assistant comes in shortly thereafter and starts telling you about his workout routine at the gym, which is not really anything you want to hear about while you're bent over a table half-naked and another man is swabbing your buttocks.
• Well, I suppose I shouldn't speak for everybody. I mean, if that's your thing, that's cool -y'know, I'm sure I have a number of readers who, well... ANYWAY.
• Really, I just wanted to write a post that included the word "buttocks."
• Now I've done it twice!
• Before you leave, you ask Dr. Ronica about the little white flecks that appear on your hands when you rest them on your legs. It seems like a circulation issue. She says "Yeah, I've seen that in people who've lost the use of a limb for a really long time. You might want to have that looked at."
• Much to your disappointment, according to the debriefing by the pharmacist, none of your medications have hallucinogenic side effects.
• Instead you note with some concern the overly-deliberate way she says "And don't drink any alcohol because these really suppress your nervous system." That's not the way it works! According to every ad I've seen in magazines or on TV, drugs are helpful and fun! All the really bad side effects happen fast, right at the end, in a very clipped tone of voice.
• These drugs may be helpful, but they are not fun. Unless taking a three-hour nap is your idea of fun.
• If you're forced to submit to a pharmaceutically-induced three-hour nap, you might as well put in a movie you've already seen.
• A safe choice would be something light and fluffy, like 16 Candles or The Breakfast Club. Instead, you chose Pulp Fiction.
• In all honesty, it doesn't really matter since you can't even make it all the way through the first scene.
• Although there is something unnervingly-fitting about the fact that the last thing you remember is Samuel L. Jackson saying "Ezekiel 25:17..."