The tale of a boy and his zaps

One of the most difficult and seemingly narcissistic things I can do is explain how I feel or react to events in the world. Nearly all the time, the way I feel isn't very different than countless millions of folks, which means it is a good thing for me and my seven readers to not share.

There are times when my experience is outside of the norm. The reason for this is my malfunctioning body.

I'm approaching the ten-year anniversary of a major event in my life. By coincidence, so is everyone else in the world. This is my story, so let me get to it.
Ten years ago, I nearly died. The major event was surgery on my spine to empty and remove an abscess that contained staph. Either the abscess or the surgery did significant damage to my nervous system. I didn't notice it immediately, but one morning I asked a doctor why my left foot felt asleep and didn't wake up. It was nerve damage. The long-term prognosis was that I wasn't likely to get feeling back in the part of my body that runs from the waist down on my left side from my backside to the bottom of my foot. It's not 100% without feeling. It's a strange feeling but anything strange becomes its own kind of normal if you have to live with it.

One side effect of the numbness was that the nerves weren't completely dead. I would get what I call zaps or shocks. It would feel like an electrical shock, pretty high on the pain scale. While it might repeat, the zaps usually were short lived.
Fast forward to last Wednesday night. On the way home I felt the zaps. They were regular and unceasing in my back left thigh. About once a minute I would get one and I'd grit my teeth and my entire body got tense. When I got home I thought a little self-medication in the form of beer and some Ibuprofen would do the trick. They went away for a couple of hours. Right before bed, they returned and I knew I wouldn't sleep if this kept up. I went for the big guns. I have some pain meds from my three Mays in a row of having surgery. I went for half a Vicadin. I'm not sure what it did with the pain, but it put me straight to sleep.

In my dreams I felt the zapping, and pretty soon after that I woke up. It was 2:30 in the morning. For the next two and a half hours I turned over to one side and the other and my back and my stomach and nothing changed. I would wait for the shock of pain to hit me. Finally I got up and went online. Man, a lot of my Twitter followers are up at 5 in the morning. Sitting up did no good. Eventually I tried three Ibuprofen which put the beast to sleep temporarily.

It was Friday morning and I had two hours of sleep. I was clearly up for some work. Neither my regular doctor nor a neurologist I've met before had time in the schedule for me. The zaps have quieted but not completely gone away. I worry because this isn't going to be a good thing to live with long term. My wife worries because there's a huge bulging vein near the site of the zaps.

It's quiet now. I'll enjoy the numbness while I can.