The Original Pain in the Ass

"Turns out this lady was freaky-deaky and hurt her back on a sex swing," says the 5'6", 32-year old, short brown-haired dude who pulled my pants down and was jabbing his thumbs into my butt.

Let's back this up a bit.

I went to physical therapy every day before Christmas with one goal in mind: to fix the pain in my ass.

My left butt started hurting November 6th. By mid-December it still hurt, and stopped me from running the California International Marathon. I was not pleased. The pain in my ass was becoming a true pain in the ass. Something had to be done.

And so for four days straight, I walked over to PT to have my pants pulled down by a brown-haired, lawyer-wannabe-turned physical therapist/bar mitzvah DJ, then have my left bum manipulated, stretched, stimulated with tingly pads, and iced.

Merry Christmas to my butt.

In order to decrease the awkwardness of the situation that broken butt syndrome (aka piriformis syndrome) creates, I tried to chat up Dr. DJ. Maybe it would keep his eyes off of the, um, prize.

"What's the most common injury that you see here?" I asked.
"Oh, usually a lot of lower back pain."
"Do you get a lot of older people with that problem?" It seemed like a logical question. One that would conjure up images of his grandma and keep his eyes off of my left butt cheek.
"Well, this one woman came in when I was an intern."
"Uh huh." Good. Grandma stories. It's working.
"And she told me she was having intense back pain."
"Uh huh." Maybe she hurt it picking up the dog or something.
"So I had to ask her how she did it to get an idea of what I'd do to treat it."

"That makes sense."

"Then she blushed and got all embarrassed."

"Oh God!" I scream.

"You don't even know what happens next!"

"No! Freaking-A! That hurts!" He found the evil spot.

"Oh. Well, it's supposed to hurt."

"OK, continue."

"She tells me she did it having sex."

Holy Lord this is awkward.

"So I go to tell my attending, since I have to ask permission before doing anything since I'm just an intern. He says I have to get more detail so we know how to treat her."

He squeezes out more lotion and jabs his thumbs into my butt. Coachubby is gonna love this story.

"Uh huh."

"So I have her write it down on the treatment form. Turns out this lady was freaky-deaky and hurt her back on a sex swing."

"No way!" I start fiddling with my wedding ring.

"So after she left, we took her name off of the form, and framed it and put it up on the wall."

"Ha. That's...funny," I say.

Dr. DJ pulls my my pants back up over my left butt and begins to stretch my hamstring. That innocent stretch never seemed so awkward. It was a relief when he had his young, blond sidekick take me to the "stim machine", where he wiped my bum down with alcohol and stuck pads onto it.

Maybe it was all done in that order to make "bum stimulation" not seem as embarassing.

Either way, lesson learned: Do not injure your bum. Fixing it is awkward. And a pain in the ass.