Big Bulging Muscles. Of Doom.

My husband arrived home from work last evening and thwomped his way into the kitchen where I was desperately trying to finish dinner with a screaming baby attached to my leg. I turned toward him and saw that the thwomping was due to the fact that he kept sticking his right leg out from his hip at strange angles while he walked.

I must say that I didn’t see immediate cause for alarm when he came into the house gamboling about like a hunchback. The man tends to err on the dramatic side as related here and here. I believe that he does this so that when a real calamity comes along he is prepared to do his part of the wailing, moaning and general running around in circles.

He told me that a mysterious ailment had overcome him sometime during the day. For no apparent reason his right calf had begun to pain him. Upon inspection it was discovered to be tender to the touch and a portion of it was bulging out, like it had contracted a serious case of mutant bodybuilderitis.

This put me in a bit of a pickle. Any sort of disorder is a very tricky thing with this man: brush it off as a little matter and he gets understandably upset, but take a look at something and say, “Oh, honey, that doesn’t look so good,” and he’s liable to faint dead away. I settled for what I thought to be middle ground, and inquired if he had dropped something heavy on it or remembered walking into any walls (which he does often at home).

As I looked at the questionable swellage I momentarily lost hold of my senses and grimaced. This was met with a swift and alarmed query as to whether there was need of a trip to the emergency room, because, after all, he remembered a story from his OSHA training class where a man suffered a small cut on the job and then his arm swelled up to size of a nuclear submarine or something. And then he died.

My husband thankfully did not have a cut. When he woke up this morning not only was he still breathing, but there remained no sign of the Schwarzenegger-style swelling. The thwomping has been replaced by his normal stride, and he’s back to walking into walls, doorways, and other inanimate objects that do not yield to oncoming traffic.