Struggling to live, battling to stay alive

A year ago today, I left hospital in Dublin after my first spinal surgery. Though I was in pain, I was chirpy and full of hope. The surgery had gone well, I had been told. The bolt had been inserted and held in place with four shiny screws. Over the coming weeks, as the graft took hold and the wound healed, my strength should return and the pain should ease and eventually subside. That was the plan and the promise.
I came here to Limerick to begin my recuperation and, though the wound healed nicely over the following couple of weeks, the pain never disappeared. I waited and I fretted and I hoped, but it never went away. It was clear that the procedure hadn’t worked and I was despondent.

A subsequent scan showed that the screws had come loose and no healing had occurred. A new procedure was recommended. I jumped at it. Surely, once those blasted screws stayed in place, then the pain would disappear. I had the second surgery and a third two weeks later to add further support, but the pain never disappeared.

One year after my first surgery and six months after the follow-up surgeries, my pain is worse than ever. All I have for all my troubles is a titanium bolt and seven screws. I feel screwed both literally and metaphorically.

With injections having achieved nothing except to fill my back with alien fluids, and with the failure of various alternative treatments to make any difference, I am left with strong medication to help me through each day.

Now there is talk of inserting a spinal cord stimulator to deflect the pain. I don’t know precisely how it works, except from reading the literature there is no guarantee that it will succeed either. Some kind of morphine pump seems a last resort.

It is no exaggeration to say that the joy has gone out of my life and I have no pleasure in being alive in my current state. I have been doing a little extra work of late, but all I look forward to and the only thing that offers any solace is sleep. Thank God, with the help of a pill, I can get a relatively good night’s sleep. 

I dislike the advent of each new day, because it means another day of pain. Some days are better than others, but no day is good. I cannot remember what it is like to be without pain.

I am full of self-pity, though I am no less deserving of chronic pain than anyone else. I try to focus on the positives – and there are many of those: a supportive community that gives me the luxury of allowing me to work at my own pace and that provides the financial resources I need; a loving family and a mother restored to good health after we thought we had lost her; 52 years of life during which I had no pain and got to see so much of the world; the knowledge that so many people are praying for me and sending me good thoughts.

Still, my natural tendency is to see the half-empty glass. Much of the time, all I can think of is escaping from the pain. I can’t see myself living into old age if my situation remains as it is. I can’t see myself enduring even another two years of this daily purgatory. My thoughts turn very dark and I am tempted to despair and self-destruction.

I pray every day for the strength to keep going and for a breakthrough to take place, for I find this agony so difficult to endure. 

Author: frommypulpit

I'm a Redemptorist preacher and writer, with an interest in history, politics, and sport, who is living with chronic back pain. View all posts by frommypulpit