Co-codamol contentment

I am, quite frankly, off my tits on painkillers. 
I hardly slept last night because my shoulder was so bad. Like a good soldier, I struggled into work this morning but it was getting worse and worse, and stiffer and stiffer. Just after eleven, I bent down to pick up a purse that some old woman had dropped in the soup aisle, and when I stood up again a horrible pain shot up through my neck and the back of my head, and my vision went blurry. When I tried to hand the purse over to the customer I couldn’t move my arm properly. The stupid old woman shouted “Oh my God he’s having a stroke!” and then all Hell broke loose. They swept me into the managers office and wanted to call paramedics, but I talked them out of it. I asked to be sent home so I could lay down for a while but they refused to let me drive myself home, and they refused to let me leave the supermarket without seeking medical help. My GP surgery is closed at the weekend, so I ended up getting carted off to the walk-in centre in Norwich for an emergency appointment.
The doctor pulled me about and prodded me, then said ’you need to have an X-ray.’
I said ’Ok. How long will that take?’
He said ’Oh, we don’t do them here. You’ll have to go to A+E at the hospital.”
I said ’How long will that take?‘
He said ‘I can’t be sure, but it’s Saturday afternoon so the radiology department will be packed. Rough guess, I’d say six to eight hours’
I said ‘Can’t I just go home?’
He said ‘Well you can, but you’ll need to be seen as soon as possible, and I advise you to stay off work until you know what the problem is’
Music to my ears, I thought, music to my ears!
He said “See your GP on Monday and get referred to the hospital. I’ll write you a prescription for some pain relief. You can collect it from the pharmacy downstairs”
He said it’s some kind of acute mechanical dysfunction causing secondary physical symptoms. It could be a trapped nerve, or a problematic disc, or something else that I can’t remember because I’m as high as an alien’s kite. Whoever first decided to mix paracetamol with codeine deserves my thanks and an award of some kind.  
The doctor said I can take ibuprofen as well ‘without any nasty side-effects’ but I’m not sure that’s correct. I took two of each an hour ago and now I can only see orange.
I’m going to spend the rest of the day dreamily scouring the internet and indulging in impulse purchases. If I end up bankrupt, I shall blame the NHS.

RC 18-5-13