Problem #8756

Update on cockroach crisis -

After spending three days working in the conference room while making the office boy spray my entire office every half an hour with Raid, I am happy to announce the cockroaches are gone and I have resumed back to my normal routine of working from my office. However, I will not be here for long due to the fact that we are all shifting to one side of the office, not because of the cockroaches but because the CEO wants to ‘cut costs’ by jamming us all in a smaller area. Basically, the company I work for rented two large units for office space, it was great because we had lots of space and extra offices (which we turned into a ‘prayer room’, ‘eating room’ and ‘taking a nap’ room). Soon, those rooms will only be a vivid memory of better times in the office when employee comfort was taken into consideration.

Anyhow, back to the main topic of cockroaches – because this cockroach issue has affected the entire office psychologically, the past few days our main subject of discussion was cockroaches. Topics were ranging from how to get rid of cockroaches effectively if you have a cockroach problem at home to co-workers sharing cockroach experiences/encounters they’ve had in the past to the anatomy of a cockroach. An interesting fact I learned from one of my co-workers: when you kill/smash a cockroach, it lays approximately 20 eggs. I don’t know how true that statement is, I checked with Google and some people said it was a myth, some people said it was true, some people said they lay 40 eggs not 20, all the more frightening. Anyway, I shouldn’t have to worry about eggs (I got my keyboard replaced just in case).

Now that the cockroach problem has been solved, on to the next problem in my life (other than Gaddafi): 

Severe neck and shoulder pain. 

It seems life is catching up on me because I've been waking up with severe neck and shoulder pain. Hijama (cupping), has helped ease the pain before and I have made it a habit to get it done on a monthly basis. However, I usually get it done on the ‘white days’’ of the month, as the Prophet (saaw) encouraged but the pain was so agonizing that I got it done early this month and instead of the standard 3 circle, I had 8 done.

My back literally looks like this:

While the Hijama treatment did relieve some of the pain, the stiffness remained so I decided to schedule and appointment with my Ayurveda doctor.

 

At the beginning of the appointment, the doctor asked me where exactly my trouble spots were. I told him where I felt the stiffness and the type of pain I’ve been experiencing. He asked me how I sleep, so I told him that I sleep on my right side but I wake up in an entirely different position. He then asked me to explain the types of sleeping styles that I wake up in, so I tried my best. He seemed very interested (maybe a little too interested???) in what I was saying because his eyes were wide opened and he had this dazed look on his face. After I was done, he insisted that I was under stress even though I didn’t have any stress symptoms. He said he would show me some sleeping techniques to avoid neck pain, which I thought was strange considering I cannot even perform specialized techniques when I’m awake, let alone when I’m asleep but whatever, he is the professional.

He gets up from his desk, goes to the cupboard and pulls out a pillow to show me those sleeping techniques he was talking about. I immediately recognize that this situation is about to get awkward. He hands the pillow to me and while I’m sitting down on the chair, he asks me to place the pillow on the desk and put my head on it. I comply, because what am I going to do, say no? And while I put my head down, I kind of rise up outside myself and am suddenly looking down on this situation from above and I decide that it is not an OK situation. I decide whether to cry there or when I get home. (I opted for home.)

I stayed that way for five long, uncomfortable minutes, with the doctor describing the best way to rest my head on the pillow to avoid neck pain, and me constantly trying to prop up my head to have a more normal conversation while he insistently tells me to relax and put my head down. After I promise him I will rest my head properly and that I will buy a big fluffy pillow he pulls out his prescription book to scribble the name of a pain killer and lets me go.

I took the prescription from him, thanked him for his time and in my head labeled him the strangest doctor in the world.

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