WARNING to all my family, friends & acquaintances. You may end up in my sitcom OR What happens when you are laid up for a week with sciatic nerve pain.

Last Friday I ended up at the hospital with extreme pain in my right thigh emanating from my right hip and lower back. It had started the day before and the painkillers/muscle relaxant mix I took did nothing to abate this severe pain. After the first needle of pain relief at the hospital failed to touch my pain, the 2nd needle of morphine with a side of Gravol did the trick. It was determined that I was suffering from sciatic nerve pain and they sent me on my merry way with a drug cocktail of painkillers, anti-inflammatories and something to help me sleep. And how long would this last? Apparently this is a hard ailment to treat and R & R is the prescription.

A week later I am still in recovery mode and being a couch-potato is not what I thought I would be doing.

So what happens when you are laid up for a week left with only two physical positions that help relieve your pain?

Plenty!

For starters you conserve water as showering seems like just too much effort and after spending non-stop time with yourself you don't notice any of those body odours anyway.

You consider starting your own pyjama bottom line and wondering why they ever went out of fashion. What is there not to like? Comfortable, check! Practical, check! Time-saving, check! I mean really time-saving when you consider you only need one set of clothes for every occasion including bedtime. And as I never wear underwear underneath my pyjamas, I don't have to worry about having clean underwear on in case I have an accident lifting the remote control and the emergency personnel are called to the scene.

You get your own private nurse, maid, cook in the form of your ever-loving spouse. I couldn't get Pat to wear the cute little outfit to go with the various roles he was playing but I did get him wearing the long-suffering husband face. Not that I ever needed an excuse for my poor relationship behaviour in the past but I really do have a great excuse now. Being in constant pain is like passing Go on the Monopoly board and collecting your $200 in the behaviour department. Who can fault you when you are "out of sorts" and your "tone of voice" is whiny and demanding as you ask for your pillow to be plumped.

You consider yourself an expert in all current affairs now that you have the time to read the paper from front to back without skimming the articles and you deliver your "lectures" freely to your one-person audience, again, your ever-loving spouse. 

You start having conversations with your tv as you are watching endless episodes on Netflix for "The Mindy Project", "Orange is the New Black", "Suits" and after watching 4 episodes in a row your Apple TV pops up with "Do you wish to continue watching?" You scream obscenities saying "of course you want to continue watching - what else am I F*&^$ing going to do?"

And here is where the WARNING part of this post appears. Now that I have watched non-stop episodes of these tv shows where others are mining their life stories and making millions I have decided that my life is just as dysfunctionally dramatic and funny and I can start writing my own sitcom.

I have lots of characters (family, friends, acquaintances and co-workers) that could easily be developed into an award-winning show. I know the sitcom recipe now having watched so many episodes in one week. Really, how hard could it be? As I said to my nephew last year, I should be filming/recording you non-stop for a reality show that could go viral - S&*T my nephew says!

So just putting it out there. You may end up on my show (a version of you). The director of Napoleon Dynamite, Jared Hess, was reflecting on the 10th anniversary of his film this past June, a film he wrote based on inspiration from his teenage years. Here is what he said to the journalist interviewing him, "After the film screened for the first time at Sundance, my mom came up to me afterwards and said, 'Well, that was a lot of embarrassing family material.'" That is exactly what I am going for in my sitcom. 

You might want to contact me early and let me know which actor you want playing your character in my sitcom - I will take requests.

I know there will be a lot of people out there hoping I get better soon so I can go back to being completely absorbed with work and have no time for my "get-rich" schemes.

Happy couch surfing to all of you.