Two weeks and two days ago, I stepped out of the shower to find I couldn't put any weight on my right foot without a searing pain that started in my lower back on the right side and radiated down to my toe and up to my shoulder blade and out through my abdomen. I also could not stand straight or move very much without the same pain. Since then, an MRI revealed that I have a herniated disk that's pressing on a nerve, as well as disk dessication (dryness), bulging and degeneration, which all sounds pretty bad. Except save for the herniation, these maladies are not all too uncommon for people over 30. So is the herniated disk what's causing all the pain that refuses to respond to acupuncture, muscle relaxants, massage and every other technique I throw at it, and makes it difficult to stand straight and walk all this time later?
It's hard to say. My sister claims she walks around daily with two herniated disks and a whole host of other things wrong with her back and feels muscle cramping, but relatively no pain. Another woman who had an MRI with almost the same results as mine felt only pain in her leg. And today, the first day I was able to shift from side to side in bed and walk without an arresting pain at the top of my right butt cheek, I am still not normal. My back muscles seem to make it impossible to stand erect. Rather, I walk with a slight forward lean, as if to make my ass more visible to the world, or to let everyone know I might vomit at any moment.
And so I wonder, as I impatiently and with much frustration wait to wake up one morning with the ability to walk upright, what are the lessons from all this? And what are the chances that I'll actually learn them?
One lesson is that I don't mask pain well and lose about 95 percent of my conversation skills when in pain. The muscle relaxants take care of the other five percent. Another lesson is that a forward lean does nothing for the look of your abs, and neither do regular meals and ice cream when you spend your days in stasis. But mostly the lesson I suspect I should be learning is one of patience, and another of understanding and listening to your body.
When I visited my chiropractor yesterday and gently lowered myself face down on his table for my regular treatment of muscle stimulation, I began sputtering off my usual complaints of not getting better fast enough, not being able to feel any improvement, poor me, woe is me, etc. He listened, advised me to keep doing my prescribed exercises--knee to chest, butt to ceiling, back to wall--and told me that I'm getting better way faster than most of his herniated disk patients. Which is another way of saying I should be grateful that I'm able to go to work and walk to his office. And all I can think is, people live with the pain I felt last week for weeks on end? I would have gotten a horse tranquilizer by now if that were my case. And then I woke up today to have relatively little pain, but muscles still too tight to allow me to stand straight. But less pain. And the look on my overly genial chiropractor's face yesterday as I left his often made me think I was really starting to make too much of this.
Another lesson is that I should listen to my body. The week before my back went out completely, I was having mild back pain, which was most likely caused by all the extra time I was spending in my extremely un-ergonomical desk chair during my week off from work. I couldn't touch my toes or stretch, and sitting more than twenty minutes made my lower back cry. Instead of gently stretching, I pushed myself into a position where I could touch my toes and forced myself into positions to show I still had normal flexibility. Next day, jackpot.
And then there's the lesson of how to say no to plans when you're in excruciating pain; how to graciously accept advice from well-meaning family members who insist you buy a back brace (Dad, thirty bucks, does nothing) or demand a prescription of Valium from you doctor (Sister, claims it's the only thing that's worked for her); and how much more time you have to write when you block out everything else from your world and let your bathtub grow moldy. Is this the state my apartment and social life has to be in in order for me to write? Is back pain interesting to anyone but the person experiencing it? And then there's this week's cover story in The New York Times Magazine, which almost had me sobbing on the F train, and makes me feel like I don't know the beginning of pain, suffering and extreme trauma. And are you as excited as me that Obama's in the race?
