emb3r.com

So I wake up Wednesday morning at 5am (a week ago) with the most severe
pain of my entire life in my left arm. I’m talking pulsing, throbbing,
stabbing, sharp, fiery pain from the shoulder blade down to my pinky.
Unable to go back to sleep I fitfully worked through the events of the
previous day.

Hmmmm, was I in a fight? No. Did I fall on my shoulder? No. Did a
million nanobots invade my body and decide I shouldn’t use my left arm?
Maybe.
This pain continued to a slightly lesser degree throughout the day. That
night after I walked Sarah out to her car and came back in, I started
feeling ill and feverish. I was nauseated, shaking uncontrollably,
severe stomach pain and the pain in my arm increased significantly.

That night I got about 2 hours of sleep probably. The next morning when
it was time to get up, I started thinking about the pain I was
experiencing and about the feverish fits I had had that night. The only
thing I could compare the pain to was the time I was stung by a sting
ray while surfing in San Onofre. The pain was almost identical in type
and severity. So that gets me thinking, what in or around my house has
venom. The only thing that came to mind was the month before when I was
cleaning off lawn furniture outside and found about half a dozen black
widows.

So I hit up the good old WebMD, also known as Doctors Bane for it’s role
in countless patients’ self-misdiagnosis. I had every symptom of black
widow bite, except abdominal stiffening and spinal pain. This was cause
for concern.

I hopped in my car and drove down to the ER, got there around 7 and
waited till about 8. Got into a gown and a room and saw a doctor about
15 minutes later. She said spider bite was a possibility but I didn’t
need any kind of anti-venom because of the fact that I was without those
two symptoms and that it had been 24 hours since I first experienced the
symptoms. She prescribed me extra strength Motrin 800mg (normal is
200mg) and a muscle-relaxer called Flexeril.

I spent Friday-Monday without really leaving my house. I can’t remember
a thing from Friday or Saturday when I was taking the drugs 3 times a
day as prescribed. Sunday was kind of a blur too. On Monday I decided to
take the drugs only twice, once in the morning and once in the evening.
I definitely noticed the pain in between but I also noticed another
strange sensation toward the afternoon- a numbness around the crown of
my head, like I was wearing a sweat band. After I took the medication
again in the evening, the sensation went away and I forgot about it.

Tuesday I got up and went to work as usual taking only normal strength
Advil. Try explaining all this too your manager. Then try explaining it
to your coworkers…10 times. About noon-ish, the strange sensation in
the crown of my head came back. It doesn’t hurt or anything and when I
touch my head it goes away where I touch it, but comes back within a
minute. The day continued that way.
When I got up this morning, one week after the incident I still have
muscle pain in my left arm, mostly in the forearm. If I try rotating
motions with resistance, I get an extremely painful muscle spasm in my
forearm, like the tendon did a rubber band snap that shoots up to my
triceps. I can stand all that, without any worries because it’s getting
better. But this stupid numbness in the skull came on about 8am this
morning. It’s worrying me a bit. I looked up the side-effects of
Flexeril and I have or had all of the common ones (dizziness,
drowsiness, etc) and I have or had about half of the rare ones.
Ready for the list? I removed the ones I didn’t have.

Less common or rare side effects may include:
Abnormal heartbeats, abnormal sensations, agitation, bloated feeling,
blurred vision, constipation, decreased appetite, depressed mood,
difficulty speaking, disorientation, fatigue, fluid retention,
heartburn, increased heart rate, indigestion, lack of coordination,
nausea, nervousness, ringing in the ears, stomach and intestinal pain,
swelling of the tongue, thirst, tingling in hands or feet, urinating
more or less than usual, vague feeling of bodily discomfort, weakness.

As of this morning, the abnormal sensation on my head and the “urinating
more or less than usual” (less, if you care to know) is all of the side
effects that remain. I’m making an appointment with my normal doctor to
make sure I’m okay.

Well, if you didn’t know any of that - this is probably extremely
shocking.
And I know you and I are all asking the same question: When do I get my
super spider powers?