Bonk House Weekly

The Fall of the Bonk House

Some things can only be learned through gruesome experience. For example, I learned that crippling pain that keeps you awake for approximately two months straight and slowly depletes your ability to move around your world comfortably can really sap your creative juices. As it turns out, there’s not much to report from the floor.

Over the course of the latter half of 2025, I was continually plagued by increasing pain in my low back. This led to a bevy of doctor visits, each proving just as useless as the last. Multiple rounds of steroids, anti-inflammatories, and muscle relaxers provided no relief, and between June and December, my world slowly shrank to just my living room floor.

By November, my daily routine consisted of approximately 1-2 hours of interrupted sleep between the hours of midnight and 4:00 AM, at which time I would carefully roll myself out of bed and stiffly lumber to the living room floor. I would lay there and attempt gentle stretches for the next two hours, trying to relieve some of the pain before I had to scrape myself off the floor and grit my teeth through 8 hours at the office. This was never successful, and my job attendance fell to a rate somewhere between 50% – 70%. I stopped going out. Donut’s walks were cut to the minimum. Whether I went to work or not, the remainder of my day was occupied by laying on the floor with a heating pad. This position became a new constant, and it didn’t so much relieve the pain, as it just didn’t make it worse. The pain never waned and instead began radiating from my back, down my legs, and I started to lose sensation in my feet.

My symptoms culminated in early December when, upon waking from fitful sleep and attempting to haul myself out of bed, I nearly came crashing to the floor as I discovered that my legs had gone entirely numb, and I could no longer stand or support myself. Thus began a morning of gentle panic, as I now crawled to the living room. After a not-so-brief bout of crying, I reluctantly accepted that I couldn’t do anything about this situation on my own. Early afternoon, my day-saver arrived, in spite of my protests that my current situation was not terribly urgent. This matter of urgency is still contested to this day, and I maintain that there was no need for her to interrupt her daily schedule. It’s not as if I could go anywhere, or even move my body in a way that could make anything worse. Upon her arrival, I was unable to let her into the building and was instead forced to crawl into the kitchen, haul myself up onto the counter, and throw my keys out the window at her from the second floor.

What followed was a harrowing journey to the emergency room that began with essentially a very slow and controlled fall down two flights of stairs, and ended with an attempt to flop myself out of the car and into a wheelchair. Now back in the emergency room for the second time that week, I sat uncomfortably in a wheelchair in the hallway, waiting to see if I would be sent home with something so ineffectual as a lidocaine patch again. Instead, the doctor that came did a reflex test with the knee hammer and was evidently alarmed by her findings, and I was quickly shuttled out of the hallway and into a room.

Shortly after, I was given sweet sweet drugs and taken for an MRI where I got 20 minutes of the best sleep I’d had in months. Unfortunately, the MRI results only further distressed my doctor: I had a herniated disc of a magnitude that necessitated emergency surgery and is described in medical records as “obliterating the spinal canal”. I indulged in another drug-induced nap while awaiting transfer across the river to the hospital where they would be able to operate. A short, or maybe medium time later, I took the most uncomfortable, and only, ambulance ride of my life, only to be once again parked in a hallway. My day-saver swapped out for my night-saver, and I got a beautiful night of heavily medicated sleep. I’m told that there were attempts to wake me for a blood draw which were entirely unsuccessful, and the blood was instead taken from my exhausted and fully asleep body.

Events after this point get a little hazy in my memory. There was a little more shuffling around of my hospital bed from room to room until I was taken to pre-op where my clothes and frog were taken from me. Thankfully, I was still coherent enough to request that my surgeon take a picture of whatever he ended up digging out of my spine, which he did oblige me.

I’m told surgery was uneventful, aside from my disc being one of the largest herniations that my surgeon had ever seen. The majority of my disc at L4-5 was removed, and I’ve learned upon review of my medical records just now that I was diagnosed with cauda equina syndrome. Despite the name, I don’t think this has anything to do with horses.

Post-surgery, I ended up in another hospital room, couldn’t tell you how I got there. The week that followed surgery was filled with physical therapy and many tears as I figured out how to walk without being able to feel my legs or feet. Despite the preceding months of worsening mobility, the sudden transition to being unable to stand up, balance, or walk without assistance was equal parts terrifying and depressing. My back pain had finally been alleviated, but I was still largely numb below the waist.

During this time, Miss Donut was very busy being fallen in love with by family that very graciously agreed to host her. I was told that she was a well-behaved woman for her babysitters, but I strongly suspect that any sass may have gone unmentioned out of polite pity for my sudden inability to independently take care of myself and my dependent.

After a week of being my nurses’ and physical therapists’ favorite patient, I was discharged from the hospital and allowed to return to my apartment to become my mother’s favorite patient. I remained housebound for the rest of December and under the care of a coterie of loved ones. The back pain had been fixed, but the nerve damage and loss of sensation that the herniation caused still persisted. I couldn’t walk across my apartment without the assistance of a walker. I couldn’t get up or down the stairs to my apartment independently.

January proved rather lonely, as Miss Donut spent the month with her beloved uncle, and I was weaned off of assisted living and made my return to work. Coming home to an empty house and living in a body that didn’t work like it should was a bummer that felt like it would never end.

In the intervening months, Miss Donut has returned home, my mobility and balance has slowly improved. The numbness has been receding at a glacial pace. I am still not back to normal. Maybe things will get better, maybe they won’t. Maybe this is as good as I’m going to get. Life goes on, regardless.

New News: Putting an End to the Literacy Crisis

Recently, there’s been much ado about the inability of adults in the United States to read and/or think critically. This development has been monumentally disheartening to a local resident of the Bonk House, who has now taken it upon herself to single-handedly remedy this crisis. Ms. Kriofsky has set the lofty goal of reading every single book on the planet, to ensure no knowledge or wisdom is lost to the rising tide of AI and brainrot.

Her journey to read every book began in June of 2026, when she read a record-breaking six (6) books. As of the date of this publication, she has completed another four (4) books, and aims to finish another one before the month is out. The subject matter of these books ranges from a travel book about the Middle East, to classic horror, to two books recounting the events that transpired on Mount Everest on the 10th and 11th of May, 1996. The latter consumed Ms. Kriofsky in an obsession that lasted no more than two weeks, but still leaves her occasionally Googling “Mount Everest” and scrolling through pictures. A complete list of the books that she has finished since June 1, 2026 can be found below.

Current estimates place the global book total at somewhere between 130 and 200 million unique books. At her current pace of approximately five books per month, Ms. Kriofsky looks forward to finishing every book sometime in the next 2,166,666 to 3,333,333 years.

• Baghdad Without a Map and Other Misadventures in Arabia – Tony Horwitz
• Slow Dance – Rainbow Rowell
• Three Bags Full – Leonie Swan
• The Shining – Stephen King
• Agnes Aubert’s Mystical Cat Shelter – Heather Fawcett
• Into Thin Air – Jon Krakauer
• The Climb – Anatoli Boukreev
• The River Has Roots – Amal El-Mohtar
• Cujo – Stephen King
• Live Bait – Fabio Genovesi