Recently, I’ve been waking up in the middle of the night with tremendous pain in my legs. The pain then turned into a horrible cramping in my calves. The pain was excruciating. I had to pull my toes back with my hands and was screaming in pain- which didn’t do my wives sleeping any good. She was very sympathetic as she’d ask me if I could walk. As I planted my feet on the floor I told her the pain was terrible, but I could walk.
She said “Good. Now walk into another bedroom so I can get some sleep.”
Such caring touched me and I wanted to touch her back but I’ve never hit a woman. Anyway, I realized then that this is why people drown while swimming after eating. If you ever get a pain like this while in the water you’re going to die no doubt.
A friend of mine told me this could be an electrolyte imbalance. If you don’t have enough potassium you could get muscle cramps. I was hoping that this was the case as the other alternative could be “I don’t want to say it” blood clots!
I decided to believe that it was lack of potassium as the other cause could be not only painful, but fatal.
After consuming more bananas (high in potassium) then all of the primates in the Bronx Zoo monkey house I was still having these agonizing muscle cramps.
I finally made an appointment with my primary care physician. I know he’s the primary because all of my co-pay checks are made to him even though I am usually shuttled off to one of his physician assistants.
I told his physician’s assistant about my terrible cramping and that I was pretty sure I had a life-threatening clot. He was hardly sympathetic. He told me there were many things that could be causing this and that it was not necessarily a clot. What a schmuck, I thought to myself. Of course it’s probably a clot. And, I believed that the safest course of action was to test for it.
“I want a Doppler sonogram test on the veins in my legs,” I demanded. I kind of looked at myself as the real primary doctor and believed these guys were my consulting physicians.
So the next morning I went to a radiology center for the test. I was led into the testing room by an extremely beautiful technician.
“I’ll need you to take off your pants for the test” she said.
“Yes, certainly” I replied in a hypnotic-like state. This woman was not only attractive but had the body of a Sports Illustrated swim suit model. I took my pants off in a trance and lay on the table.
“I’m going to put some lubrication on this wand and I’ll rub it up and down your legs. I’ll have to start up at your groin.”
“Yes certainly!” I think I said in a fog. She worked the wand from my groin down my leg to my calf.
“This leg is good, no clots. I’m going to test the other one. Okay?”
“Yes certainly” I mumbled. She worked the wand down my other leg better than before. I fell into a dream. In the dream I was getting ready for the happy ending.
“Well, I’m happy to tell you there are no clots”, she said.
“Are you sure” I asked. “Don’t you think you should repeat the exam just to be thorough?”
“No”, she responded. “You are fine. You can put on your pants now.”
I left feeling a sense of relief but unsatisfied.