Yeah. You thought blowing a hole in your eye was all gore and gross?

You are SO RIGHT.

I mean, think about it. The whole point of going for that bike ride on January 2 was to stretch out my back. I have back problems; this isn’t new. It’s a something like nine months older than my oldest. Go figure! If you ever wondered what would happen if Gumby had kids, I invite you to meet my back.

Yesterday, I woke up at three — in the morning — with some pretty excruciating back pain. At first, I thought the nausea was from the medicine, but as the morning progressed, I realized that nope, it’s the back. How’d I figure this out?

Easy. Since the second surgery, I have been instructed to lay either on my stomach (see note about bad back) or left side only. Absolutely, under no circumstances, am I allowed on my back. So… all night long, I’m on my left side. I wake up like six and seven times and have to get up and stretch because I can’t roll over. And all day, I sit canted off to the left, which is the normal way I have of sitting on the couch. I brought a bed pillow down and get all good and comfy and usually fall asleep.

It’s not nearly as luxurious as it sounds. And falling asleep in front of Jeopardy every night? Sexy, baby. Sexy.

So. How’d I figure out this is my back and not the nausea-inducing medicine? Easy. I laid on my back on the cold bathroom floor and felt the spasm ease. As the spasm eased, so did the nausea.

Why the bathroom floor? Dude, this is the sexy edition.

I’m still feeling pretty crummy as I write this, and I’m waiting for word from the doctor as to whether or not I can spend some time on my back and hopefully ease the situation — which is that I’ve got a pretty major dislocation going, between the lack of exercise and the lack of support as I lay on my left side. It seemed like the perfect time to share with you some of the other truly sexy moments of recovery.

There’s the plastic eye shield they want me to wear at night, although I’m not sure why. It’s not like I can move at all, stuck on my left side as I create an orthopedic nightmare (and remember: I was on my bike to AVOID this particular nightmare. How’s that for karma?). But… wear the eye shield.

Let me tell you about it. It’s clear plastic. It has holes in it so air can presumably flow, but I continue to wake up with my lashes crusted shut. Sexy, baby. Sexy.

The shield itself, as I’ve said to many of my real-life friends, looks like a cross between the drain in the bottom of a urinal and the plastic part of a jock strap.

(At this revelation, most of my friends pause, either to try to envision this or to figure out how it is that I know what those two things look like.)

I have never been more glad to be single in my life.

But we’re not done yet! Nope. I have the singular privilege of wearing a lime-green plastic band around my right wrist that announces to the world that my eye is full of laughing gas and in the unlikely event that something happens to me, this needs to be a known fact so that in potentially saving my life, no one makes me go blind along the way.

Yes, it’s a lime green, plastic, sexy-as-hell MedicAlert bracelet. I’m grateful it’s only temporary.

And then there’s my sexy swollen eyelid, my sexy closed eye, the sexy concept of having a blind spot that people can sit in and take advantage of…

I’m not sure that any injury is ever sexy, but at least the boob job gave me a sexier outcome than this will. And the recovery was a heck of a lot shorter. We still have weeks to go, my friends. Weeks and weeks and weeks… if my poor back doesn’t eat me alive first.