Great Balls of Fire!

For the last three months or so, I have been dealing with some back issues. I initially suffered what's called a lumbo-sacral sprain in my lower back early in December, as a result of finally not getting away with something I had been foolishly doing for years, namely, snatching a bowling ball bag with two 15 pound balls in it off the floor and hoisting it up on my shoulder in one motion. Or in this case I should say attempt to snatch a bowling ball bag off the floor, since in this instance I succeeded in nothing but screwing my back up. Thus much of my holiday season was spent hobbling around like an 80 year old and chowing down on a combination of oxycodone, 600mg ibuprofen, and muscle relaxers.

Once I made it to 2013, however, I started feeling better, and gradually got back into bowling and working out. I have a track record of overdoing things when coming back (too soon) from assorted injuries (and I've had my share of them over the last decade) and then re-aggravating said injuries. This time, however, I was determined not to repeat this insanity, and I did for a while,  until my insanity - and INSANITY - did me in again...

If you haven't heard of Insanity, it's an extreme 60-day workout program from beachbody.com. It has the right name for sure - it is INSANE. I had started on it about a month prior to hurting my back, and was doing pretty well with it, so I was anxious to get back to it. But as I said, I took my time with it when my back felt better,  stuck to some of the easier routines, took every other day off. But then, the workouts started feeling a little too good to me, and I eventually couldn't resist pushing the envelope...

So now, here I found myself with a re-aggravated lower back after going from working out every other day with the easier routines to putting in about a week straight with increasingly harder workouts. Although this time around is nowhere near as painful or as limiting as with the original sprain, it's still cramping my style. On top of that, what pain and stiffness is more aggravating in the areas to which it radiates from the back, namely my butt and thighs (especially the left side) than it is to the lower back itself. Definitely not fun at all...

However, being the type of man you ladies all know and love at least one of, namely one who tends to avoid going to see a doctor except in an ambulance, and being that I had used up all the oxy and 600mg ibuprofen, and the muscle relaxants put me into an almost instant crackhead lean, I took to the Internet to find some possible over the counter treatment for my back. After a little searching I settled on trying some capsaicin for relief.

Capsaicin is the active ingredient in hot peppers that give them their heat. When used in an ointment, it is supposed to be effective in relieving pain, or so said the various Internet sources I checked out. So I went down to the corner CVS and bought me a tube of Capzasin HP (High Potency):

After getting back in the house, I immediately went to my room, locked the door, dropped my pants and drawers, and rubbed in the Capzasin HP over all the aching parts. I got myself dressed again, and kicked back to watch some TV and hopefully get some relief. But in a matter of minutes, I was feeling anything BUT relief. In fact I felt whatever the extreme opposite of relief was. I jumped out of my seat, and I felt like screaming the words of the immortal Jerry Lee Lewis: "Goodness Gracious, GREAT BALLS OF FIRE!"

Apparently, in my haste to massage this stuff into my aching muscles, I must have accidentally dropped a little into my shorts. Then after pulling my drawers back up, the capsaizin HP introduced itself to the family jewels:

And this is how I ended up with the aforementioned GREAT BALLS OF FIRE...

After spending a couple of minutes jumping around and pacing back and forth grabbing my junk like one of these saggy-pants wearing knuckleheads slouching around on Baltimore's streets, I sprinted down the hall to the bathroom, soaked my washcloth in cold water and held it up against my scrotum. No luck; if anything, this made things feel worse. Then it dawned on me than this stuff burning my balls is the same stuff that will burn people's mouths when they eat hot peppers, and that when that happens, you're supposed to drink milk, not water. So I pulled up my pants, ran downstairs and looked to see if my daughter had any milk.

YESSSS! She had a full gallon in the fridge. I poured myself and headed back to the room (I passed my daughter on the way back upstairs; given the fact that she has never actually seen me drink milk, I'm guessing she had to be a little curious, but if she was, she didn't let on). Somehow I managed to make it to the room without spilling anything (that would come soon enough), locked the door, set the glass of milk down, dropped my pants and drawers and...now what? How the hell am I supposed to do this???

So I grabbed the glass of milk, did like a bowlegged half squat, held the glass up under my crotch and lowered myself into it...succeeding primarily in splashing milk all over the place and almost losing my balance a couple of times. And since this glass was actually made of glass, I got this vision of falling on it and...

(sorry, I can't even complete the sentence without getting woozy; let's move on...)

So, while I actually felt some bit of relief while I was giving this glass of milk thing a try, clearly the execution of cooling things down was not very practical with the glass. Time to alter the plan a bit. I pulled my pants back up, ran back downstairs, and poured some more milk into a cereal bowl, thinking the dimensions of it would make for a safer soaking. Fortunately my daughter and grand kids were in the living room watching a movie, and thus not paying any attention to me, so I made it back upstairs without anyone wondering what the hell I was doing with a bowl of milk...

Back in my room, I dropped my pants and drawers once again, and - without having to crouch or otherwise get in any awkward position - brought the bowl up to my nether regions, and -- aaaaahhhhhhh, RELIEF! It wasn't immediate, 100% pain free, but this was definitely helping! So that is how, for the next 5 minutes or so, I ended up standing in the middle of my bedroom floor, watching "Scandal" while marinating my frank and beans in a bowl of cold milk...

...Emphasis on COLD. After those five minutes, I began to feel numb down there. Time to take a break. Only it didn't take long before the pain came right back; less than it was in the beginning, to be sure, but things were still pretty hot. so, back in the bowl I went for another few minutes, until things got too cold, then out again, until things started heating up. Each repeat made things feel slightly better, but DAMN, this was going to take all night at this rate. What to do, what to do, what to do? And then, an idea:

"Greek yogurt is yogurt which has been strained in a cloth or paper bag or filter to remove the whey, giving a consistency between that of yogurt and cheese, while preserving yogurt's distinctive sour taste. Like many yogurts, strained yogurt is often made from milk which has been enriched by boiling off some of the water content, or by adding extra butterfat and powdered milk. However most strained yogurt have no added fats and are made of real milk." (from Wikipedia)

I had gotten into the Greek yogurt craze a few months ago, having switched from whatever regular yogurt was on sale in the supermarket to trying Chobani brand, and it just so happened I had stocked up on the stuff that very day. Maybe if I smeared some yogurt down there, that would cool things off without me having to stand around tea bagging a bowl of milk (if you don't understand what "tea bagging" means in the context, well look it up, or think about it; I'm not explaining)...

So I pulled my pants and drawers back up, ran downstairs, and grabbed a container of strawberry Chobani and a spoon. When I got back to my room and opened up the yogurt, I reflexively stirred the fruit into the yogurt. Ah hell, why did I do that? So I started trying to eat the fruit and save the yogurt, because dammit, I wasn't about to be spreading fruit on my junk (yes, I know, I was about to spread yogurt on me, but that was for "medicinal purposes". I draw the line at putting fruit on my package - I mean, unless there's an attractive woman involved...)

Anyway, next thing I knew, I had eaten way too much of the yogurt along with the fruit. Shoot, gotta go get some more. Back up went the pants and downstairs I went for more yogurt...

(Now I'm sure some of you more astute readers are wondering, "Hey, Angry Nerd, WHY did you keep pulling the same pants and drawers up on your crotch that you dripped the Capzasin on in the first place? Weren't you just repeatedly roasting your chestnuts over an open fire?" This is a great question and a valid point, and the answer is, of course, YES I WAS. Looking back, it was certainly pretty stupid to not just change shorts while undergoing Operation Coolmyballs, but what can I say? Fellas, no matter how smart you think you are, or how good you are under pressure or how fast you think on your feet, all of those abilities are seriously compromised when it feels like someone is holding a blow torch to your genitals.)

So I returned to my room with more yogurt - and a towel - picked the fruit off the top of yogurt (pineapple this time, yummm), sat down on the towel, and went to work with the spoon. And before I knew it, I had a yogurt pop between my legs...

I made it through the 11:00 news and some late night TV  and finally felt almost back to normal. I showered , went to bed, and had the best sleep I had in weeks (hey, putting out a fire on your balls is hard work, it can wear you out!). I woke up the next morning, feeling refreshed, with a slight tingle down there, but nothing serious at all. What a relief!

(my room kinda smelled like sour milk, though...)