November 22, 2009
UTNE READER

Everything I Know I've Learned From My Bad Back

(Page 3 of 3)

September / October 2004
David Shields Spineline 
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Now rather than endlessly rehearsing how my life might have been different, I tell myself about how grateful I am for my life -- with my wife and daughter and our relative health and happiness together. (Knock on lumbar.) I'm newly in love with my wife -- aware of her weaknesses and completely accepting of them, because I'm so blisteringly aware of my own. I go to sleep with a night guard jammed between my teeth and a pillow between my legs. I walk around with an ice pack stuck in one coat pocket and a baggie of ibuprofen and muscle relaxants in the other. I'm not exactly king of the jungle.

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I like the humility and gravity and nakedness of this need, for -- and this is apparently a lesson I can't relearn too many times -- we're just animals walking the earth for a brief time, a bare body housed in a mortal cage. My back will always hurt a bit, or rather the pain will always come and go. But, as my doctor likes to say, 'Pain is inevitable; suffering is optional.'

Writer David Shields is the author, most recently, of Body Politic: The Great American Sports Machine (Random House, 2004). Adapted from SpineLine (May/June 2002), the little-known bimonthly trade magazine of the North American Spine Society (NASS). Subscriptions: $100/yr. (6 issues) from NASS, Dept. 77-6663, Chicago, IL 60678; free for NASS members; www.spine.org/spinelinetocs.cfm.

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