Pain in the Back

Currently I have a thing with my back. A pinched nerve, a slipped disk, a pulled muscle - I don't know. It hurts like a motherfucker. When I lie down, when I get up - it's like a knife stabbing me in the kidneys, and my hips swivel on a bed of jagged glass.

I'm on painkillers now, and mostly they're working.

I remember a few years ago when I went to see a doctor about my back, another doctor came in and asked what was the matter. The first doctor said to the second, "He came in today complaining of-"

"Hey," I interrupted. "I'm NOT complaining. I don't complain, ok? I deal with it. I don't complain."

It's like I was channeling Clint Eastwood from Gran Torino.

"Sorry, sir," said the first doctor. "It's just part of our jargon, it's how we understand a patient's chief complaint."

"Oh," I said. "Right."

Anyway, it's gotten to a point now where I have no problem complaining. I'm happy to give the details about waking up in the morning, sitting on the toilet for too long, playing with my daughter, and going to bed at night. I can go on about how I feel crooked and hunched, how I am acutely aware of my acute pain.

I've done physical therapy. I've gone to the chiropractor. Tomorrow I see a specialist. But all this is a long way round my elbow to get to my ass about a conversation I was having with my mom the other day.


Mom: It's good you're going to see someone.

Me: Yeah, I hope they can help. Of course, I can't help but wonder if this was 1813 or even 1913. If someone had a pinched nerve or something, would they just live with it?

Mom: Yes, I think so.

Me: But they'd probably die of consumption before it became something chronic, right?

Mom: Uh, probably.


My next stop will be acupuncture if nothing can be done. They've been doing that for thousands of years. Eventually Western medicine and Eastern medicine will meet somewhere in the middle, right? Weastern medicine?

But hey, I'm open to try anything; weird salves, elixirs, herbs... Maybe even a root.



I know pharmaceutical companies have a bad rep; they're evil and unethical, and now they're above the law somehow. But divorced of politics and money, I am a big fan of modern medicine and science in general.



Of course, left to my own devices on a desert island, I'm pretty much coming up with a spoon and a lean-to. And maybe a sharpened stick.