My Two-Year War with Chronic Piriformis Syndrome
I’ll take humiliating spanking over steroid shots any day.
My mother was a homeopathic doctor. Instead of Tums, we got Nux Vomica. Instead of DayQuil, we took heaping swigs of belladonna-infused tinctures. So when I developed piriformis syndrome while living in Korea, I decided to seek out alternative ways to cure my condition. It was a bad idea.
The clinic was Edenic and modern. It looked like the type of sinister health spa from the future where you might pay to have your sadness removed. I was there with a woman I’d gone on two dates with, who’d learned about my hip problem and offered to chaperone me. Her name was Yuni. They gave her a clipboard with boxes to fill out. The receptionist kept glancing over at us as I stood and rubbed my butt in front of Yuni’s face to indicate where the pain was. She gave the clipboard back. We sat and surveyed the coffee table of reading material. There were a variety of books and a few standing signs with pictures of golden eggs on them.
“What are those?” I asked.
She squinted at the text below the picture of the golden eggs.
“It looks like medicine?”
“Egg medicine?”
“They aren’t eggs.”
