The One With the “Twang”

This week I’ve been going to the gym on a semi-regular basis. I’ve done Body Combat. I’ve done Body Pump. I’ve done Blast Abs. I would’ve done Body Attack, but …. well, we all know what happened when I tried to go to Body Attack….

Anyway, I’ve been a busy girl, is what I’m saying. And even though I’ve done more exercise this week than I’ve done in the past couple of months, I’m pleased to report that I have managed not to harm myself in any way, which is no small achievement when you’re as clumsy as I am.

Then, last night? Last night I was lying in bed, drifting off to sleep, as you do, when I decided to roll from my back onto my side. You know, the kind of small, insignificant movement we all do hundreds of times in our lives, without even giving it a second though. I had almost completed this delicate manoeuvre when….

PING!

Something “went” in my back. There was a sensation not unlike someone trying to stab me, and then suddenly my entire torso was flooded with pain, which somehow managed to spread from my back to my chest in mere seconds. It was really quite alarming, and my piteous moaning was enough to wake Terry, who is luckily quite used to this sort of thing by now.

“Terry!” I said. “Terry, I think I’m having a heart attack! There’s a pain in my chest, and also in my back, and OMG, I am totally having a heart attack!”

Now, you might expect that this news would cause Terry to leap from the bed and call for an ambulance, but instead he simply opened one eye and regarded me in exasperation.

“You’re not having a heart attack,” he said. “Go back to sleep.”

Ha, like THAT was going to happen! I regaled him with the full story, about how I’d tried to turn over, and had felt something “go” in my back, and at this point, Terry interrupted me.

“Oh, right,” he said. “A twang. You’ve had a twang. Go back to sleep.”

“A TWANG?” I said, forgetting my ongoing heart attack for a moment. “Is that a medical term?”

Terry opened one eye. “It’s just a twang,” he said. “They’re painful, twangs, but it’s not a heart attack. It’ll be sore for a while. Go back to sleep.”

And with that, he rolled over and went back to sleep himself, leaving me and my TWANG to get on with it.

I was still alive this morning, so I’m assuming it was, indeed, a “twang” and not the heart-attack I’d suspected. The muscle that “twanged” though, is still really freaking sore, meaning that every time I try to do simple things, like reach for a cup of coffee or try to wrestle my tights out of Rubin’s mouth, it will “twang” again, and I will be forced to whine like a small child.

Needless to say, I did not go to the gym this morning. I did learn a new word, though…