Chronic Pain Diaries IV

Okay, spine. Listen. I know it’s hard. Life is hard for you. You shouldn’t be fused, and you are. You shouldn’t have metal scattered about you, and yet you do. For some reason all your happy little nerves coming from your facet joints aren’t actually happy. You are tired, angry, and you are trying your utmost best to curl into a ball despite the intervention of several very professional, steady-handed fellows.

I get it. I’m in the same boat as you. We’re in this together.

You’ve been really pulling me down lately, spine. I mean, this whole crunching and grinding, and the inexplicable pain. The strange muscle issues gravitating towards my left hip. I know it’s just because you’re acting out, because you are confused and afraid about what the future holds.

But you need to cut this shit out.

I’m serious.

Because, you see, here’s the thing. I don’t want to be unable to sleep every time I do a 4 km walk. I’m trying to get in shape for both of us, and with you acting like a petulant teenager who has not gotten their way and whose only recourse is through slamming doors, there is no way either of us will exit this life with a smile on our faces. Well, one face. Listen, you piece of shit spine, the fact is I need you to stop aching every time I roll over at night, and I need you to stop going all wibbly wobbly every time I try to sit on a hard surface like, oh, I don’t know, a chair or the ground, or anything that has a density greater than a memory foam mattress.

I need you to stop being inflamed all the damn time, because you and I, we’re looking for a job in order to pay for the medication that you need to stop acting like a spine that was crafted after my DNA decided to get blind stinkin’ drunk one day and assembled into unconventional shapes. You need this medication, I need this medication. You and I both know the Alberta Government will not help us pay for said medication, so it’s up to us to stick together and work in relative harmony in order to get those drugs.

I know, I know. I hate you too. You are literally the worst part of me, and I say that knowing that I still get to claim to be at least a little bit cyborg. You are awful. You are the worst. If I don’t have at least four consecutive hours of uninterrupted sleep tonight, I will take a knife to you and unzip my back like a virginal teenager on prom night. I am not shitting you. I need to sleep. I am cranky, I am sore, and you, dearest spine, are preventing me from getting the rest I need.