Next Friday I am having yet another medical intervention to try to calm my chronic back pain. A series of Botox injections will hopefully ease the muscle spasms in my back. At least that’s the plan.
But whether it will make any difference I am not at all sure. I have had so many procedures over the pasts 18 months, so many false dawns, that I am afraid to hope anymore. I have had so many interventions, and all I have to show for it is a titanium bolt and seven useless screws. My pain is more intense now than at any time in the past and I feel broken. At this stage I feel that the life has been sucked out of me and I’m not able to endure much more.
Over the years I have known and admired people who had chronic pain. I think of a Redemptorist confrere of mine and his sister who both suffered for years with arthritic pain that left them wheelchair bound. They were always so phlegmatic, so serene in face of adversity. I don’t know how they were able to do it. I’m not as heroic or as stoical or saintly as they were. I can’t envisage spending the rest of my life like this. I know I won’t be able.
I cling on to the hope that maybe the Botox will do something. But it’s a long, long wait until Friday.
frommypulpit 