i started this on the 9th….then had to wait and see. it’s taken awhile to admit what’s happening. i didn’t want to type out loud that the pain is back, but there’s no denying it now.

august 9
A week and a half, and the pain is back. It started yesterday around my hip and today it settled into the groin, hip and is pressing down my left leg.
I wonder, if I close my eyes and feel my way back to before yesterday, can I somehow live there? The day before yesterday is still so close I can almost taste it with the tip of my tongue.

Those too few days of freedom were so very sweet.

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august 17
i tried to rub the pain away, i tried to stretch it away, walk it away, but it came back just the same. it’s almost as bad as before the epidural.

the doctors have this little chart-like form for you to fill out everytime you go into the office. there’s a little person on it that is supposed to represent you…one drawing is facing front and one facing back. then you have symbols to choose from to draw on top of the little person’s front and back aspects. these symbols show the doctor what kind of pain you have. 000 = achy, /// = stabbing, +++ = numb. these are the only choices. then you rate the pain on a scale of 0-10. then you rate the percentage of change since your last visit. if there’s no change, it doesn’t matter, you have to deface the little person who represents you and choose the same numbers, etc.

i don’t think the doctors even look at the picture because they ask you the questions that it’s supposed to answer anyway. i think they make you do this to keep you quiet while you wait far too long for the doctor to see you. last time it was 45 minutes after my scheduled appointment time. given that i’m in pain and sitting really really exacerbates the pain, by the time the doctor poked his head out the door and called my name, I was in utter agony.

i asked if i could change my drawing.
he looked confused.

now, i want to know what these doctors are thinking. they specialize in a patient base that is experiencing unrelenting, excruciating pain. It’s hard to describe the level of “ouch” that the spine and nerves can cause, but because of it, you spend your days choking back the shouts that rise up your throat each time you take a step, try to sit or simply shift your weight. and these guys just let you sit there for 45 minutes? how does that in any way translate to reasonable patient-care?

so, anyway, the pain is back. the day i got the epidural i rated my pain an 8. right after the epidural it shot up to 10. the next day i would say it was a 6; the day after that a 4 and i was almost pain-free until day 8. i would think by the time i go back for the second epidural, i’ll probably be back up to 8. but only on the left side. i guess that’s something.

i now think of the pain as an entity, separate and distinct from me. i think it has something to do with the little person that represents the front and back of me. putting the pain there has somehow given the pain an identity — a thing-ness that is fighting for its own existence. it is a parasite and it doesn’t want to let go–to die. so, this is a different kind of battle at this point. i must have let my guard down on the eighth day and the pain managed to slip back in. it bit down on the disk, wound around my groin and is pushing it’s tendrils down the nerves of my left leg and is stinging top of my toes with poison.

this isn’t just low back pain. this is an invasion and i’m fresh out of percocet.