Fire drills. Pain. LOTS and LOTS of cops. My weekend in a nutshell.

Last Wednesday afternoon, we had a fire drill here at work.  I was finally able to get out of bed this morning without gasping in pain.  And I owe it all to some meds.

I am one of the fire wardens for my floor.  As soon as the alarms starting going off, my phone rang and it was the other fire warden for the other end of my floor telling me she was in our accounting department which is 6 floors below and so I had to clear the entire floor by myself.  Do y'all know what's fun?  Telling a bunch of attorneys they need to walk away from billable hours to evacuate the building for a drill.

Then I walked down what I think ended up being 37 flights of stairs because I'm on a high floor and then there are extra flights down into the loading dock and then another flight from the loading dock down to the ground.  We then had to walk through part of the parking deck and then up a big ramp and by the time they let us back in the building, my right foot and ankle were shimmying like a belly dancer and I was a little afraid I was going to fall down.  I expected that of my left foot because the plantar fascittis is worse in it, but no.  My right foot was shaking like my butt fat jiggles on a treadmill.  It was like the washing machine on the spin cycle.  A maraca making music.  The security guard told us if we didn't want to wait for the elevators they had the stairwells unlocked and we could walk up since there was, you know know, an entire 18 story building worth of people all trying to get on the elevators at the same time.

Walk back up?

Was he actually being serious?

Dude, I couldn't even stand up.

Now, we've had fire drills before.  We even had an actual bomb threat called in one time and we had to evacuate and walk a couple of blocks away and the entire area was cleared out, the police and bomb squads came in, etc.  And I always get sore after them for a couple of days but it just feels like I worked out a lot and I can stand up and sit down okay, it 's just a tad painful.

But this time it was way worse and I was almost in tears for 3 days.  Whenever I had to pee I wanted to cry because I knew I had to stand up, walk down the hall, sit down to pee, stand back up, walk back to my desk, and then sit back down.  The lady in the cube next to me was laughing because I would actually groan in pain every single time I got up or sat down.  When I did walk, approximately every 10 - 15 feet both of my legs would do this weird lurching type thing and almost collapse from under me.  Oh it was annoying.

I honestly think it's because I had these stupid inserts in my shoes.  They are hard plastic and when you go down that many stairs with feet that are screwed up and have hard plastic in your shoes, I think it's not good.

On Thursday after work, I had to go get a birthday gift for my cousin's son and he wanted something sports related so I went to Dick's Sporting Goods and while I was there I decided to pick up a new pair of Under Armour slides to wear around my house because my last pair was completely worn out.  And that's where I met Norm.

After I found my slides, I was looking at the shoe inserts they have to see if something caught my eye because I kind of hated the ones I have been using after that stupid fire drill and Norm, the salesman, walked up and struck up a conversation.  I told him I have PF and he made the icky face people make when they know how awful it is and he said, "Go downstairs and buy the socks."

"The socks?  What socks?"

"The plantar fasciitis socks.  People swear by them."

"Okay.  What exactly am I looking for?  What will it say?" I asked.

"Plantar Fascia socks," he replied as though I was an idiot.

"I've never heard of such a thing."

"We only have a couple of them left so go get them tonight.  Every person who has bought them and comes back says they have made their pain level go way down.  People love 'em!"

About that time a man and his young daughter walked by and Norm said hello to them.  The man said hello but the daughter didn't.

"I said hello!"

The daughter just looked at him.

"Hello," said Norm again.

"Hello," he said again.

"I said hello," he said again.

Finally the sweet girl said hi back to him.  And then she and her dad kept walking but I was stuck listening to how rude children are and they have no manners and no respect and Norm went on and on for a good 10 minutes while I'm standing there with PF and the most hurting thighs in all of America.  He then told me how he has whacked his nephew upside the back of his head for his entire life to teach him how to act and now he's working on the rest of his nieces and nephews and how they respect him more than they respect their own parents.

No, Norm.  They just don't want to get whacked upside the back of the head so they do what you say.

Anyway, I eventually got the heck away from Norm and went downstairs and found the PF socks (they're actually sleeves - your toes stick out of them) and this is what I bought:

Isn't that the sexiest thing you've ever seen?  They can even be worn while running.  So if something chases me when I have them on, I'll let you know how that works out.

They aren't super cheap ($24.99 a piece and I have PF in both feet so I had to buy two of them) but I decided to take Norm's word for it that people swear by them and give this a try.  I've already tried inserts, cupping, massage, frozen cans of vegetables, $120 shoes, etc.  What's another 50 bucks, right?

I got home that night and eventually crawled upstairs since I couldn't walk up the stairs and took a hot shower and rubbed and massaged my sore thighs under the hot water.  I could still barely get in and out of the shower.  I crawled to my bedroom and over to the bed and sat down and in screaming agony I pulled my foot up and put a sleeve on one foot.  And then I repeated on the other side.  Then I cried a little bit, took some Aleve and read until I fell asleep.

Because I'm 100-years-old, I normally get up at least once or twice to pee in the night.  I had to get up around 3:30 and when I stepped out of bed, someone could have dedicated the song, "Shake, Rattle and Roll" to my thighs but honest to goodness I didn't notice a lot of pain in my feet.  I still had a hard time getting up and down off the toilet (stupid fire drill) so I thought maybe my thighs were just taking my mind off of my PF.

I wore the sleeves to work on Friday and I just wasn't noticing foot pain so much.  They still hurt, but not nearly as bad as they have for the past 4 or 5 years.  On Friday night after my shower, I happened to open a drawer up in the bathroom.

Angels sang.

I forgot I had muscle relaxers from when I fell down the stairs and broke my wrist and got whiplash.  I took one when I went to bed and I slept like a log all night long.  So I got up Saturday morning and I could still barely walk or get down the stairs.  I ate breakfast, took another muscle relaxer, grabbed a blanket and pillow and got on the couch.  I slept until about 2:00 or 3:00 Saturday afternoon.  Oh, it was wonderful y'all!  But my thighs still hurt.

I eventually got up, went upstairs and took a shower, did some laundry, then went in the kitchen to cook my lunches and dinners for the week.  As I was standing at the kitchen sink around 10:00 p.m., I saw 3 cops go flying past my house.  I live in the 'hood and that's not abnormal to see.

Then 3 or 4 more went flying past.

Then a couple of more.

Then 3 or 4 more.  And that's when I knew, there were a lot of cops going by my house.

A couple of ambulances went by.  A couple of fire department SUV's sped past.

And the cops just kept coming.  At one point, they blocked the cross street right by my house so cops could just speed through the intersection without having to slow down.  I bet by the time they stopped I had seen 40 or 50 emergency vehicles go by.

That's when I heard the helicopter start flying over my house so I knew something bad had happened and they were searching for whoever did it.

Fake daughter was upstairs so I texted her and asked her to please not go out that night and told her what was going on.  Sometimes she leaves late and goes out around 10 or 11.  She told me she wasn't going anywhere, I made sure my front gate was closed, the alarm was on, security bars under all of the doors, etc.

Suddenly a cop came up and stopped right in front of my house with blue lights flashing and I may or may not have freaked out a little bit because I thought maybe they thought the bad guy was right by my house or something.  Turns out he was there because an ambulance being escorted by 6 police cars was coming through about 2 minutes later.

At some point I saw a news crew van go by so I started looking up stuff online and turned on the television and that's when I found out that ONLY A COUPLE OF BLOCKS FROM MY HOUSE a police officer had been ambushed by a guy with a shotgun and the officer had been shot in the face and leg and they had used rolling road blocks to get him to the hospital in a hurry.  They also confirmed they were searching for the suspect.

As of today, I don't think anyone has been caught. It happened at an apartment complex and there has been a history of altercations between police officers and the residents there.

So if I greet you at my door with a bat, don't be surprised at all.


I took more muscle relaxers on Saturday night and Sunday night and I've been wearing my PF sleeve.  I was on my feet a lot yesterday.

And guess what?

My thighs finally weren't hurting this morning after 4 days.  But more importantly?  My right foot has only minimal pain and my left foot is probably reduced by 80 - 90%.  From a sock!