Pain in the You-Know-What

I woke in the morning and was greeted with a familiar deep-seated pain that streaked its way through my right hip and settled deep into my rump. An unwelcome houseguest, bursitis, had come for a visit, gearing up for a party in my right side, destined to cause a disturbance.

The unforgiving pain shot through my right buttock with each step; nothing seemed to relieve its brutal presence. The anti-inflammatory, that sometimes soothed the flares of arthritis, didn’t even come close to penetrating the impregnable wall of bursitis.

Bursitis entered my life a couple of years after I was hit by a car; I remember the metal force of it slamming into my right side The arthritis showed up years later; whether or not there is a connection remains and will remain a mystery. Was the bursitis a sign of something more to come? Was it the precursor to the old lady inhabiting my body?

The pain of bursitis is trickier to manage than the inflammation of the old lady. The old lady is a daily visitor, and I have become used to her steady stream of pain; some days she is worse than others, but mostly, I can tolerate her. Bursitis pain is altogether a different story. Set deep into the muscle, nothing can touch him, nothing can sway him from battering me; he is the relentless beast hammering away, determined to cause as much misery as possible. His visits are infrequent, but they can last a few days. He comes without warning, adding his own challenge to the ever-present characteristics of the old lady. The only thing that might conquer his spectre is a dose of cortisone…or the hope that he might just go on his merry way and leave my house in peace.

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  1. Irma on December 9, 2013 at 1:02 pm

    Bursitis pain is indeed a unique demon. I’ve had bursitis of the hip, I think twice, how easy we forget to tally up all our aches and pains! Anyway, steroids was the way out. Sigh. Hope you feel better soon.

    • J.G. Chayko on December 9, 2013 at 3:56 pm

      I find that bursitis pain a particularly hard demon to contend with. I’m hoping he’ll leave me alone in the very near future 🙂

  2. Janette on December 9, 2013 at 1:15 pm

    Hi I have RA and bursitis of the hips and shoulders 🙁 I have had a number of storoids injections but they don’t last long the pain sometimes is so bad I could scream lol

    • J.G. Chayko on December 9, 2013 at 3:54 pm

      Oh gosh, poor you. I get the bursitis occasionally in my right hip; I couldn’t imagine it in the shoulders also. Here’s hoping it shows up and less and less.
      Stay well.

  3. Kev on December 19, 2013 at 11:04 am

    Where are your poems? I don’t see a category for them. 🙂

    • J.G. Chayko on December 20, 2013 at 4:05 pm

      Hello Kev,
      I don’t have my poems on the arthritis blog; there’s a couple on my writing blog (http://corkboardsandcoffeehouses.com) incorporated into some posts. I don’t put a lot of my poems online unless I know I will not be sending them out for submissions. Many literary books and magazines won’t accept pieces that have already been published online 🙂

      • Kev on December 22, 2013 at 11:37 pm

        Thanks, I’ll check it out. 🙂

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About me

J.G. Chayko is a writer, actress, and international arthritis advocate who’s been involved in theatre for more than 30 years and has published poetry, fiction, and creative non-fiction.