Tag Archives: relax

Live-blogging a leg cramp

Ow. Ow, ow, ow. My leg is cramping up. Holy shit this hurts. It’s like right underneath my quad. Is that right, my quad? I don’t really know too much about anatomy. But the part of my leg above the knee. You know, the femur is the bone, only I’m not talking about the bone, I’m talking about the muscle underneath. It just started contracting, and it won’t stop. This really hurts. Maybe I’ll just give it a second, maybe I can wait it out and hope that it starts to relax.

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No, nope, it’s not relaxing. I think it’s getting even tighter. Yeah, it’s definitely tighter. Jeez, I didn’t even know that I could clench my leg muscles this hard. It’s like, when I’m riding my bike to work, and I’m fifteen minutes late, I’m always thinking, come on legs, if there were only some way that I could get you to push harder, maybe I could be in a little closer to on time.

Why can’t my legs spasm like this when I need them to? Not when I’m sitting here at my computer desk. Man, and it’s just getting worse. I can totally understand now how mothers in distress can lift cars up over their heads when their babies are trapped inside. It’s like, my leg, the way it is right now, if every muscle in my body were similarly clenched, I can’t think of anything that I wouldn’t be able to lift over my head.

But this is just painful. I can’t extend it outward. Again, if I were doing anything other than sitting down, maybe this could be of some use. Like maybe if I happened to be standing downstairs while this happened, I could at least try to position my unexpected extra strength to kick the base of the toilet back into place. I should really just go to the Home Depot and buy some caulk, but I don’t even know if caulk is what I need in this case. Chances are I’d wind up just throwing a bunch of money at a whole mess of supplies that I don’t even really know how to use.

And, I know I said this already, but it really is getting much worse. I can’t imagine that there’s any blood getting past the leg muscle. The quad? Or the thigh? Is that the same thing? The part of your leg that hits the chair when you’re sitting down? If the pain weren’t so blinding, maybe I’d be able to look it up on the Internet. But I don’t think I can feel my toes anymore. Everything below the halfway point on the upper part of my leg, it’s like I can’t explain the fire, it’s like …

Wait, it’s stopping. Just a little bit, but it’s definitely relaxing somewhat. OK, maybe it’s over. Maybe I can just move my leg a little bit and help speed along the relaxation process here and …

No, shit, that didn’t work. It was too soon. Things were finally starting to look good and I had to go ahead and try to wrest control of my body’s natural cramp-fighting abilities. Oh man, I can’t tell if it’s worse now than it was before, or if it’s just feeling worse, seeing as how things were getting better before I went ahead and ruined it. Am I going to be OK? How much longer can my muscle stay tight like this before there’s serious permanent damage? Am I going to have to go to a leg doctor?

Wait. OK, this is it. It’s going away this time for real. I’m just going to ride it out here and not get impatient and … yes, it’s gone. Yikes. I can still feel it, I mean, it definitely feels like my leg was totally unnaturally clenched for a really long period of time, but I can move it and, yeah, I just put a little weight on it and everything seems like it’s OK.

Wow, that was crazy. You know, I was initially upset at the timing and location of the leg cramp, but now that it’s solidly behind me, I’m actually pretty grateful that I happened to be here at this computer. Because look, I got to live-blog the whole thing. That’s something, right? This is definitely something. And my leg’s feeling a lot better. I mean, it’s a little sore still, but I think I’ll be fine in like an hour. I think I’m already basically fine, but I’ll just give it an hour and maybe post like an update or something.

Update: Yeah, absolutely fine. I’m flexing as hard as I can and there’s no trace of pain from the cramp. #Blessed.