To See Things as They Are Part LIII
My Odyssey with Pain Part One

9 July 2006


From Be An Island by Ayya Khema, "Seeing Dukkha as an inescapable condition bound up with existence, we no longer feel oppressed by it. We accept thunder and lightning as inescapable – understanding that there have to be thunder, lightning, and rain so we can grow food – so we do not reject them. Dukkha is equally inescapable. Without it, the human condition would not exist. There would be no rebirth, decay, and death. If we understand this we lose our resistance. The moment we are no longer repelled by Dukkha, we suffer much less. Resistance creates a craving to get rid of Dukkha, which only intensifies it.” p.31

The last time I wrote on January 17th I spoke about sciatica and about how I was coping with it. Two weeks later I went to Guadalupe, AZ with a team of IT people. Guadalupe is in Southern Phoenix about an hour and half away from Tucson. We went on January 31st and then again o February 2nd, the Tuesday and Thursday of that week. I was having trouble getting in and out of the truck. I was having trouble walking and standing. I was having no trouble sitting.

Then on Friday morning, February 3rd, when I was trying to get ready to go to work I could barely walk. I couldn’t get dressed and I called my boss and said I needed to take PTO (Paid Time Off) and that I would go to the doctor that day and be back on Monday. That was the first of several calls to Brett about my optimistic ideas about returning to work. My job, after all, is a miracle and provides me with my income and I don’t know that another job would be possible at my age of 62 and several million tech jobs having been off-shored so companies can make more money. That leaves a glut of tech people wanting jobs here.

I drove to the Dr. appointment on my right hip experiencing excruciating pain getting into and out of the car. I got out and stumbled to the door and managed to sort of sit on my right hip waiting for Susanna, the Nurse Practitioner I see. I got into her office and she evaluated me. She wrote prescriptions for three different drugs. When I left her, I drove to the drug store drive-up window to hand in the scripts. I was told they’d be ready a few hours later so I went home and got out of the car and got to the door and back to the couch. I didn’t know what was happening. I did know that I could barely function and I thought the drugs would take care of the problem.

I forced myself out to go out and get the drugs and experienced incredible pain in the process. I got them, got back to the couch and took them. I waited to get better. Someone knocked on the door. It was my ex, who came over to see how I was doing. I told him about the drugs I’d just started taking and he told me about a Physical Therapist he likes here in town. It was nice of him to come over. I’d called him earlier in the day crying because of the pain and asking him if I should go to a Chiropractor, Orthopod or someone else? He advised going to my regular doctor and was worried about the 3 aspirins I’d been taking every 3 hours around the clock. I was not medicating myself appropriately. I was glad he chose to visit.

It was still Friday and I could not possibly make something to eat so I ordered a pizza which someone delivered an hour or so later. I put the pizza and cheese bread on the counter in the kitchen. I ate a couple of pieces. I called my brother, Bob, who’d had similar problems in the past and he suggested going to a Physical Therapist, having an epidural steroid treatment and buying a cane. I tried to call the Pain Center at El Dorado Hospital on Saturday but no one answered. I wasn’t eating because it hurt too much to get up. I lived on the couch and on the bed.

It seemed like the meds were helping sort of but I was disabled to the point of doing nothing except using the TV remote control and playing solitaire on my Palm Pilot. My upstairs neighbor Rahime and her husband Ismet started helping me almost immediately. She’d come downstairs with her little 2 year old, Arta, and they would fill my water bottle so I could take more pills. Rahime went to the drug store and bought bottles of Motrin and Aleve. I cannot speak enough about her generosity. It was stunning.

After two days of the medication regimen it was obvious that I was NOT better. I could barely walk at all. I could get to the bathroom but I could barely wipe my butt. I became increasingly constipated because of the drugs so the wiping problem only presented itself every few days. I knew I couldn’t go back to work on Monday and I called to let Brett know.

I called the Pain Center on Monday and could not get the required MRI until the following Monday. One cannot have an epidural without an MRI. I called and made an appointment with a Physical Therapist and got it for Wednesday. Drove over there, struggled to get into the building and was asked “lie down”. I could not do that. I could lie on my right side but not on my back. I had some electric therapy and something else, the guy moved my bad leg somehow and when it came time to go back to my car I could hardly get there. It’s hard to talk about pain but I bent over the front of the car to relieve some of it and it barely worked. Somehow I got into the car and went home.

I learned a few things early on. If I bent over something, the bed, a counter, a table I felt better. The pain would stop. If I bent way forward when on the toilet and a little to the right it felt better. When I tried to dress myself I’d spend more time bending over the bed than dressing. Pulling my pants up hurt terribly on the left side. I took my first bath on Thursday because I was filthy and planning to go to another Physical Therapist on Friday. I got into the tub somehow and curled up on my right side. If I stayed that way and didn’t move it didn’t hurt. I washed somehow but it hurt a lot and I didn’t do a very good job. I got out of the tub, sort of dried off, pulled on a zip-up bathrobe thing and went back to the couch.

I arranged the couch so that I could get the phone easier. I was always on my right side so I used the end table on that side where my answering/fax machine sits. I moved my phone next to the machine. I started using my laptop, in front of the couch, sitting on a tall waste basket, as a table for my drugs, pen and paper and other necessities. I put a big box of cereal I’d gotten from Costco next to the waste basket and kept two water bottles on it. The coffee table was pushed on an angle away from the couch so I could walk away from the couch without going the long way around. I knew it felt better if I leaned with my right hand on the arm of the couch when I got up. So I did that a lot. I had a wonderful blanket I have from camping and I used it to cover myself when I was cold or someone came in. I moved the electric line for my Palm Pilot so I could recharge it when it ran out. I played lots of games of solitaire.

I watched a lot “Free Speech TV” which is incredible. I could only see it through Access Tucson programming and watched it whenever they played it. I watched a lot of C-SPAN and some PBS (Public Broadcasting). Otherwise I watched movies when I saw something I might like. The best was the Free Speech TV. I’d be playing solitaire on my Palm while the TV was on.

I’m going stop here and continue next time with what happened. I will say I was totally disabled for four weeks and out of work for seven weeks. It’s been an experience which changed my life, my sense of what I’m doing on this earth and what’s possible and not possible. I thank you for reading this and hope my experience has some meaning for you in your life. I’ve spoken with so many people who’ve had similar back problems or other problems. It’s an eye-opening event. I wish you well.



Judith is a Crone who is also an activist in several groups in Arizona. She works with Tucson NOW as well as other politically progressive and anti-war groups, etc. She's facilitated a Socrates Cafe group for the past seven years. An MCSE [Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer] and a Buddhist she tries to live her Buddhist philosophy all day, every day at work and at home.



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