The meaning of lower back pain

Ow, ow, ow. Ooff, ooff, ooff. Oh God, no, please not now, but there it was. Excruciating pain crept up my legs and gripped my lower back. No doubt I would spend the next days, if not weeks, in the cruel clutch of an arthritic attack.

I can still hear the doctor’s words uttered when I was 27. "I have a strong suspicion but you’re too young ... please get an x-ray right now to confirm..." Getting into the prescribed position – so difficult, so painful, so almost impossible – for the x-ray, I knew the doctor would be right. I couldn’t get into position without moaning and breaking out into a sweat. "Yes," the doctor said, "You have rheumatoid arthritis of the lower back. You won’t die of it but it can be inconvenient, painful when it acts up. It is not curable, not related to diet. You have to keep your back limber. Find a stretching exercise regimen you like. Soak in hot tubs, do hot compresses, take painkillers. Cortisone may help but stay away from it. Surgery is not worth it. See if you can go for acupuncture. That will definitely help. If you don’t take care, you could be crippled in mid-life." This is what led me down the healing path that 30 years later would be called "alternative." To keep my rheumatoid arthritis under control, I turned to yoga and acupuncture. They worked for me.

How did it begin? It struck at a time when I was trying to teach myself batik, a difficult craft, as an escape from aspects of my life I didn’t want to look at too closely. One day, I had a lower backache that I ignored until it escalated so that I couldn’t brush my hair without pain. Then I dragged myself to the doctor’s. At that time, I had a loving, concerned husband who looked up rheumatoid arthritis in a medical encyclopedia (no Internet yet) then informed me that I shared this affliction with dinosaurs. It didn’t cause their extinction but maybe it made them walk funny because there is a position your body takes to enable you to walk with the least pain.

Arthritis runs in my family. As I write, I see my grandmother walking that walk I sometimes recognize in me. I see my uncle’s hump. He had arthritis of the upper back. I see another cousin now developing that, complicated with scoliosis, which brings me to my grandmother’s sister, whose spine curved sideways, not unsightly, but she required special dress fittings.

Advocates of alternative medicine know Louise L. Hay and her little blue book, Heal Your Body (got my copy at Powerbooks if you’re interested). In Hay’s view, all disease, sometimes stated as dis-ease, has emotional roots. Address the emotional root and you start the cure or healing process. Instead of pills, you have affirmations, statements you repeat to yourself three times a day, one after every meal, plenty of water and bed rest, and you shall be healed.

I look up "back." It divides into Lower, Middle and Upper. My affliction is in the lower back, where my tail would be if I had one, but a little off to the right. It reads, "Fear of money. Lack of financial support." This is unbelievable. That issue is always at the back of my mind, bigger since I gave up regular employment because I did not do an actuarial study before I did. The situation became untenable for me and I knew I had to change what I was doing for my soul’s health but I didn’t stop to compute how much longer I would have to live and support myself. I just knew I didn’t want to work at the same job any more and I didn’t want to be supported by my children ever. Between those two strong considerations, I just have to find my way.

What was I doing when the backache attack struck? I was packing my biggest overnight bag for a four-day-three-night stay in town where I was to give a newsletter seminar. That’s money coming in. Where’s the anxiety coming from? Maybe the start of a new year? This year started auspiciously. My stereo started to buzz mysteriously, is still in the repair shop. My computers – desktop and laptop – suddenly malfunctioned and had to be brought in for repairs. My 18-month-old home suddenly sprung a leak that quadrupled my water bill but we couldn’t find plumbers free over the holidays so I lived knowing that my hard-earned money was leaking into the ground. My water heater stopped heating, forcing me to take cold baths on the coldest days of the year. My car tires needed changing. "I seem to be working just to maintain my things," I complained to my daughter who suppressed a giggle and asked, "Mercury is retrograde, did you know?"

Of course, I did not know because I no longer go to office where my buddy Pach, who dabbled in astrology, would walk up and down our corridors and into my office warning, "Mercury is retrograde, prepare yourselves."

"What does that mean precisely?" I asked, knowing other people would come in to comment on his weird behavior and ask me what Mercury in retrograde meant.

"It means there will be minor inconvenient breakdowns. Small appliances, equipment will break down. Even communications might break down as a consequence. Never hurts to be prepared for these things so you don’t get overly aggravated,"Pach explained. And sure enough little things would break down, leading you to suspect that there might just be something to this position of the planets stuff.

One of my students at the newsletter seminar gave me a recipe for a hot liniment and true to his promise, it is hotter than what’s available on the market. I have my painkillers and my water heater is working now so I can have hot soaks and compresses. I have Hay’s affirmation: I trust the process of life. All I need is always taken care of. I am safe. My pain is diminished but it’s still there, has been there a week today. I hope it goes away soon. I can’t live through another week of ow, ow, ow, ooff, ooff, ooff, every time I move.

* * *

Please send comments to lilypad@skyinet.net or www.lilypadlectures.com.