The never-ending saga of my back…



Yesterday morning I actually whimpered trying to get myself out of bed. I haven't done that since 2009. I had a big day to get through with back-to-back meetings that day, and I could not take the time to think about it. I subconsciously held onto the notion that it would be gone the next day when I woke up.

Not the case.

So, I headed to the doctor today. Since all of the medical files are digitized nowadays, the drama of the last five years erupted out of the screen. This was good, because to see someone today, I had to see someone I had never seen before. He seemed a bit overwhelmed by the sheer volume of medical notes and shook his head after a few minutes and examined my back.

"Does it hurt here?"
"How about here?"
"If I press right here, do you feel the urge to get up and do the hokey pokey?"

You know, the standard questions.

After he was done poking me, he chewed his bottom lip as he walked back to the mess of notes on the screen.

"I could send you for X-Rays, but you don't seem to be in the condition to stand very long." His reaction was a furrowed brow and more head shaking; he clicked through a few more screens of my digitized file. "I could order an MRI, but I see here that resting on your back is painful." He looked at me and frowned. "I'd send you the PT, but you already have the exercises." I could envision him going through all the protocol of what a doctor normally does with a patient presenting back pain, trying to find something that I haven't done before.

After spending a couple years with the pain clinic and the doctors who treat chronic pain every day of their lives, I am always surprised when I go to a normal clinic and a doctor tries to fix me. Don't get me wrong, I'd love to be fixed! However, I know that's not realistic, and I need to accept that and be okay with it. Eventually, he came to that conclusion as well, and it seemed to defeat him, and that made me a little sad…I wanted to hug him and soothe, "It's not your fault, Doc!"

With a heaviness to his voice, he asked, "Do you tolerate high doses of medication well?" I nodded, and he prescribed a powerful, short-term medication for me. It reminds me briefly of my aunt Brenda who used to joke about all the amber bottles in the "drug drawer" for the three of us when I lived with them. Forget apps: there's a pill for that.