I haven't really felt like discussing it here because it depresses me and I spend most of my waking hours either discussing it with myself in my head or tormenting my sister, NU, or my mom with my latest fears and obsessions about it, but it's feeling slightly ok today, so I'm going to spend some time discussing my lower back. More specifically, I'm going to discuss the crap that hovers around the disc at L5/S1 in my spine which is herniated and currently pressing on my sciatic nerve. This (imagine that your disc is a jelly donut and that the jelly is made of fire and your vertabrae are crushing the donut and forcing the fire-jelly to harden and constantly burn your nerve, which is like...a nerve) causes me horrific pain in my back and leg on good days and horrific pain, numbness, and muscle spasms on bad days. I won't mention the terrible days.
Needless to say, I can't walk. I mean I have to walk sometimes, but when I do I look like I'm about 80 years old. People look at me strangely on the street--like they pity me or want to stay away from me. At one point NU described my pain gait as my "pimp limp" which often helps me as I'm stumbling around trying to pick up my dog's poop without screaming too loudly. I think about her saying this and I think about me being a pimp, and sometimes this makes me laugh out loud. Lately though, I've been too depressed to try to make myself laugh. All I can think about is getting back inside where I can lie on the floor and feel horribly alone. Pain sucks. It is one of the loneliest things in the world because you can't really describe it to anyone in a way that makes sense. You're just alone with it, in the way that you're just alone with yourself.
More than anything, this lack of walking sucks. I am a walker. I walk fast and I walk everywhere. I think nothing of the 20 minute walk to the subway station, I walk my dog all over the neighborhood, I used to walk to work when I had a job--I walk anywhere I can. Now I stumble to my car, drive to the subway, stumble onto the train, and grimace my way to my chiropractor's office, which is downtown in a fancy neighborhood (though he himself is neither "downtown" nor "fancy"). A dude has to deliver my groceries. I haven't figured out yet how to vacuum or take out my trash, which explains the squalor, which explains some of the depression. Some.
I've tried a lot of things and currently have 5 doctors helping me--one I hate (my neurologist) one I feel ambivalent toward (my former physical therapist), one I just met and love but feel weird about (my healer who lives in CA and does sessions over the phone--more on him later if I don't chicken out) my chiropractor (also just met and love him but am uncertain about him) and my new physical therapist (haven't met her yet--but her name is Sunshine). Remember that I just walked out of my job. I have COBRA but it doesn't pay for the new age healer, surprisingly enough. I have very little income. I have a lot of time for worrying (also a lot of time for meditating and healing, but I'm not there right now--I'm moving toward it). I had surgery for this condition over 10 years ago, and I don't believe in doing it again. But I also don't believe in navigating this already challenging life while I'm hobbling, clutching onto rails and swearing under my breath, yelling at my dog, and trying for hours to find a comfortable sleeping position (there isn't one).
The healer helped. He eliminated my pain completely. Twice. And then it came back, the way my ego constantly comes back when I meditate. It doesn't want to go away. Yes, I have a disc pressing on a live nerve, but I've had this for quite some time without this amount of pain. It's like it's the memory of the pain that doesn't want to leave. Like the way my past doesn't want to leave--it stays in my head and is sometimes more real than my present, which is actually full of many things I asked for and got--basically, the life I want is right here all around me. I feel like I've spent the last two year churning around in some giant soul-renewal machine--I clanged around and got beaten and welded by my divorce, leaving the midwest, moving in with a stranger, learning to dislike this stranger, having a horrible job and leaving it, and many other things. I asked for a job that would bring me some joy (I got it--I'll be teaching high school in January), my own apartment ( I've been asking for this since before I was married) and a relationship that would actually help me to grow (I have many, and have learned that I can also have this with someone I'm sleeping with, and in fact this very growth factor is what sustains my attraction to him).
This morning I looked around and saw all of this stuff. I think the machine finally dumped me out here, with only part of a half-grown soul, in a life I want. I am physically damaged by it. But I got something else: a month to heal. Actually, a lifetime to heal. It's so much easier to see it this way when I'm not doubled over in pain so I'm going to try to stay here for as long as I can.
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2 comments:
Dear Shrew,
I feel strange commenting here because this blog feels more private than your others. But that's not exactly the right word. It feels, more like it belongs wholly to you, and not to your audience, which is good, but it makes me feel a little weird about reading and commenting, because I'm not sure if you really want comments from anyone, so making this one feels a little like trampling on a freshly-fallen blanket of snow in someone's otherwise pristine yard. (That's a terrible analogy, but I'll let it stand.)
I'm also reluctant to make suggestions because I'm sure you've had it with other people's suggestions and advice on life, love, employment, back pain, and everything else, so I just want to emphasize that this is not advice. I want to simply, for what it's worth, recommend a book that I think is worth your while. It's (don't laugh) a bestseller, written by a doctor who seems to me to be both well-versed in, and sufficiently critical of, modern western medicine, alternative medicine, and everything in between. You may have read something by hime already. His name is Dr. Andrew Weil and the book I'm recommending is called Spontaneous Healing. My guess is, you'll either love it or get pissed at it, or both, but I think it's a must-read for anyone living with chronic pain.
(You know you're a librarian when you have a book recommendation for every occasion, right?)
Anyway, if I were closer, I'd happily volunteer to bring you hot food and vacuum your floor, but I'm really, really happy that you're not in that misery factory of a workplace anymore, because you deserve so much better.
bm
I have heard of this guy, actually--and a recommendation from someone I respect helps because there is so much crap out there in self-help world. My CA healer also suggested reading Byron Katie. I will check both of them out--maybe books on tape for my future commute.
I don't know if I feel like this is more private or not--my relationship to blogs in general is so different than it was 2 years ago. I think this one is going to help me sort stuff out in a more conscious way than the last one, but I like that it's a way to maintain communication with people I never see otherwise.
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