********************************** On Saturday, I took a hard fall and hit my buttocks. When I went to the emergency room, no bone abnormalities were found, but they said the internal bleeding was severe. So I spent Sunday resting quietly at home. I thought I could return to almost normal activity from Monday, but things didn’t go as planned.
In the middle of Sunday night, I woke up to go to the bathroom and noticed the injured area was swollen again and hot to the touch. The pain had worsened so much that even walking to the toilet was difficult. I wrapped an ice pack in a towel and applied it to the area before going back to bed, but I only managed to doze lightly until morning. I wondered if the internal bleeding, which I thought had stopped, had worsened again, or if there was actually a bone injury I had missed.
After breakfast, I took Loxonin (a painkiller) again and headed to work. Come to think of it, I hadn’t taken any painkillers the previous night because I thought I was fine. Maybe the relatively good condition on Sunday was just because the pain was suppressed by the medication.
Then, while on the Den-en-toshi train line, I felt faint and worried I might collapse and delay the train. The walk from Jimbocho station to my office, less than 10 minutes, felt incredibly tough. Especially the stairs at the station — I had to hold onto the railing to climb them.
Even at work, just sitting at my desk was painful, making it hard to focus on anything. This reminded me of when I broke my collarbone a few years ago: the emergency doctor initially said it was nothing serious, but the orthopedic specialist the next day found a fracture at the edge of the bone. This memory made me even more anxious.
So I searched for an orthopedic clinic near Jimbocho station and decided to visit “Jimbocho Orthopedic Clinic.” Since it was a weekday morning just after the weekend, the clinic was crowded. Being reservation-priority, I waited about 30 minutes for the first consultation and nearly an hour for an X-ray, but the clinic was clean, the staff operated well, and I was impressed overall.
The diagnosis was:
It’s a bruise, not a fracture. The bones are fine — which was a relief.
There might be continuous bleeding from a blood vessel in the large muscle of the buttocks. However, it’s not bad enough to require draining, so for now, I just need to rest and take painkillers.
When I asked whether I should press on the painful area while sitting, the doctor said since of the location, compression isn’t really possible; just rest without putting pressure or irritation on the area.
Should I apply cold or heat? The advice was to keep the area cold as much as possible at this stage.
Full recovery will take quite a long time. Take painkillers to get through when it hurts.
Please come back for another checkup in 1–2 weeks.
It was unlucky to have such a serious injury from just sitting down heavily, but I was grateful it wasn’t a fracture. The examination took until the afternoon, and after lunch, I returned to the office around 2 pm. I did some light paperwork until early evening before leaving early for home.
After dinner, I took Loxonin and was asleep by around 11 pm. Whether it was the injury or the medication, I had restless sleep, tossing and turning through unpleasant nightmares until morning.
Tuesday didn’t bring much improvement. Pain in my lower back and thighs worsened, and simple actions like climbing stairs or bending over to put on socks became very difficult. The left pocket area of my pants was bulging, which I thought might be something inside, but it was actually swelling visibly worse on the left thigh’s side compared to the day before.
My wife took photos of the injury area, and I saw that almost my entire left buttock and thigh, plus the lower part of the right buttock, were badly bruised and blackened with internal bleeding (too graphic to share here).
That day I sometimes felt dizzy and fainted briefly, which might be related to taking painkillers continuously more than usual.
Now it’s Wednesday, the fourth day since the injury, and I’m writing this during my lunch break. The overall fatigue is slowly easing, but the pain from bruising and internal bleeding in my lower back and buttocks remains, and even walking normally is painful. Going up and down stairs is pure torture.
This experience reminds me of how basic activities like walking, which I normally take for granted, can be so difficult when injured. It makes me appreciate health more than ever (I recall writing similar thoughts every time I’ve broken a bone before). 今日も早々に定時で帰宅して、早めに寝てしまおうと思う。明日の夜は渋谷で英会話の予定があるが、出席できるか微妙なところだ。