Abdominal Surgery equals permanent damage

Over the weekend it was World Inflammatory Bowel Disease day, I don't believe it was a big thing here in Australia but I know in the US and Canada is was well celebrated. The lights of Toronto were changed to purple to celebrate this shitty disease.

But anyway, that's more of a coincidence to this story as it happened on the same day and stemmed from the same issue.

On Saturday I went into work to fix up a problem that I created on Thursday, the tools I needed were at home, and I thought it only right to go in on my own time to fix it up.

So I fixed the threads on this expensive shaft that I mashed up, and started putting the pump back together. but as I went to put the last piece on I started sneezing. The problem was I was holding this 30kg thing 3inches off the ground at the time.

Now for those of you that have never had surgery cutting through the abdominal wall, a sneeze Effing Hurts when the surgery is recent. A sneeze builds up so much pressure in your stomach muscles that it can cause enough pain to make you black out.

But I had my surgery 5 years ago, so this was just another not so gentle reminder that no matter how good I may feel, my stomach muscles are permanently destroyed.

So anyway, I'm holding this big lump of steel, and on comes the sneezes. My entire stomach cramps, then spasms. It feels as if the muscles are going to tear themselves apart 1 fiber at a time. I managed to put the piece down then stumbled back against a bench, trying to push on the muscles to make them relax. The cold sweats of terror came over me, I was thinking that a hernia was about to pops it head out, or some kind of crippling damage was going to be done.

After a couple of minutes of deep breathing and relaxing myself the pains went away. I promptly turned off the lights and got the hell out of there. After that there was no residual pain or twinges, but I was a good boy and took it kinda easy the rest of the weekend.