The terror within

It's elusive like the wind. It takes over your life--you can hardly stand or sit or try to move; there are times when it's barely there, when you think finally it's retreated to a someplace from which I hope to God it'll never creep out again.

For three months now, I've lived with searing pain that starts at the top of my left leg and runs down to my toes like a hot wire.  This morning it's defeating; it screams no matter what position I attempt, whether I stand or sit or try to walk to the other side of the room. It's as real as my hands, my fingers. It stays in my leg, but I'm not me when it burns.

It's phantom-like, never quite the same, differs, day to day, in intensity and even position. Sometimes all I have to do is sit here awhile at the keyboard and, almost politely, it leaves--a goodly fraction of it anyway. Sometimes it lays siege to everything that will happen. It's indomitable. Pain pills quite honestly seem of little consequence. I've had epidurals twice now, but this morning, it's as if whatever evil spirit is in me sits back in the recesses of my nerve endings and, without a dime's worth of pity, turns up the heat.

Sometimes I wonder--I can't help it!--whether it's actually there, whether I've made it such a disarming force that it's created its own reality. Every morning, I wake up, sit still in peace-and-quiet and try to determine exactly what degree of burn it will bring. Slowly, I swing my legs out of bed, as if trying to let the pain sleep. I sit there for five minutes trying to talk the devil into grace, then, carefully, I pull on socks first, then a sweat pants, then, this morning, a sweatshirt. I get to my feet tenuously, expecting an attack; but If I'm blessed, I can stand without significant pain. I swing my body away from the bed and take my first step. Immediately I reach down with my right hand to soften it's return because I can't help believing it will be there.

But will it? I may be programming my body to tell me it's there. I act as if it is before it is. I'm its victim, even in its absence I am its victim. I'm so terrified that it will appear that it does. Is all of this in my head and not my back? Will I ever be able to imagine that first step entirely pain-free? How much of my morning hasn't been victimized by the dreaded terrorist pain has become? Do I tremble beneath it extremes even when it's not there? Am I that much its victim?

Pain, like memory itself is shadowy, never quite under control. Memory is conditioned by pain. I come from a rich familial tradition of hypochondriacs. To what extent is all of this even real? I can't point to a moment when it began. There was no fall, no sudden movements that set off the fireworks. There has been no origin. 

An MRI says I have a bulging disk. It may help to know that, but it does nothing to relieve the pain. My eyes don't work well right now, and if a cop would ask me to walk a straight line, I'd be headed off to station. It's something of a wonder that I haven't fallen yet. My balance isn't gone, but it's obviously wounded--is all of that the meds I'm taking? I swallow pills by the handful. 

I've been awake now for more than a half hour. Right there behind my right glude a hot wire, maybe 150 degrees, just enough to burn but not sear. The exacting current it creates runs down the back of my leg to my knee, where, right now, it stops and pools. Soon enough, it will spill down into my calf and create pain that's akin to a charlie-horse.

I've become its victim. It simply dominates. 

Now I'll go upstairs, grab some cereal in a cup and come back down. Two trips on stairs. Not fun. Thank the Lord for handrails. 

In eight days I'll see a specialist. I may go under the knife. 

I've come--well, painfully--to realize something, just a bit, of what it might be like to give up--the fight seems too unwinnable. 

Maybe that's a good thing--I mean, to know what I know.

Maybe. But it's come at a cost.  

Sciatica--sounds like a horror movie. It can't help thinking it is.