It's Monday morning. Outside the bent slats of my office blinds (they came with the apartment), I have a ground floor view of S-- Street—cars parked curbside, a wrought iron fence capped with pointy iron maple leafs that stakes off the small rectangle area at the front of the house, blue and green emptied garbage cans at the curb, and the brownstones across the street—not the fancy kind, but the flat-fronted ones with concrete steps and average-sized windows. The gray one across the street has a white gate and a statue of a Catholic saint wearing orange robes in the corner of the front yard. A typical, working class street in Brooklyn, except this morning it's a little whiter. The hood and windshield of the Jeep parked out front has a sheen of frost, and the sidewalks are white, at least on my side of the street, which is still in shade. A dusting of snow that stayed, and it feels so normal to look out on a wintery scene in January, for my feet to feel a little cold as I write, to consider soup for lunch, and keep my sweater on indoors. It's about time.

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?

Still on the hunt for a miracle cure for my back pain, one that will have me leaping off the examination table rather than rolling, pushing and gnashing my teeth off of it, I decided to give the one thing I had yet to try a shot--acupuncture. One look at my crooked hips and Frankenstein hobble and people were eager to share the names of all the acupuncturists they worshipped throughout the city. I was grateful for all the advice, but having already spent a good amount of time and money on this problem without relief--a moist heating pad, a back brace, three visits to the doctor, prescriptions, and countless cab rides--I decided to go with the cheapest acupuncturist who also worked on Saturday and did not require an appointment. I went deep into Chinatown to Linsister.

Before going to get my first MRI this morning, I got a lot of advice. Most commonly: "Whatever you do, do not open your eyes." Why, I wondered. Was it because the gargantuan magnet used in MRIs would cause instant and irreperable damage to my corneas? Would I be able to resist opening my eyes after having been warned so vehemently by so many? The do not open your eyes advice was not about damage to the corneas, but a way to stave off the extreme claustrophobia laying in a tube only a few centimeters wider than your own diameter might provoke. We're talking eyelash-touching closeness type of claustrophobia. My chiropractor's advice, a man who does not believe in prescription meds: "Pop a muscle relaxant right before you go in." The other thing I was told was that it's loud. Bang bang bangety bang. Really, really loud. What was I getting myself into and did I need to carry a shot of cyanide in case things went really badly?

Lying on the floor with my head resting on two bedpillows smashed against the legs of the couch, my feet up on a dining room chair and the moist heat of a heating pad (very important for it to be moist) toasting my lower back, it's easy to forget that I can't simply sit up when I need to go to the bathroom or answer the phone or measure the exact width of my living room. Instead, when the urget to move occurs, I need to begin ever so gently, bring both legs to the chest, roll my entire body to my left side and try hard to remember which moves will get me on my feet and which ones will send a brief, arresting shot of pain through my lower back. Do I put my hands down and push up? Is it easier to roll up from the left or right? When can I put weight on my feet? Never, ever move the neck out of line or let it drop when attempting to get up.

I've discovered my threshold for pain and it is about three days, three hours and forty-eight minutes. On the morning of New Year's Eve, after stepping out of the shower, the muscles in my lower back contracted into a tight spastic knot. In seconds, I went from being able to towel off, get dressed and walk upright to requiring assistance to make it the ten feet back to bed, and when I got there, I fell flat on my face and wept. This was not my threshold for pain. This was only the beginning.