SCIATICA 2

Technically, sciatica is caused by pinching the major nerve that goes from the spine down the back of the butt and leg to the bottom of the leg. If it gets caught and pinched It can be very painful and prevent walking. There is an equivalent nerve down the front. There is no drug but an endless array of exercises meant to widen the nerve channel. Most them of involve lying down.

Since I’ve had the damn condition for weeks now, I”m an expert and will tell you all about it. 1) it’s related to the maintenance of the core body muscles. (There are exercises one can do standing up.) This is my fatal flaw. A doc decades ago said, “You haven’t got a muscle from your shoulder to your hip!” When I tell that story, people think it’s very funny. They don’t link it to the consequences of writing all day every day, sitting.

2) Once inflammation takes hold, the phenomenon is systemic. I’m finding myself thrown into the future, feeling old age. My handwriting is changed. I think my mind works differently in strange ways. Sometimes I hallucinate for a while. The ghosts aren’t scary — just ghostly overlays of ordinary folks, mostly from TV ads, going about their business. Once a little girl in pajamas and robe came up beside me and leaned on me. Mostly it’s women doing housekeeping.

No one in town missed me. I’m on twitter and they might notice my wisecracks were missing. This blog is my main contact with the world. I have a few more than a hundred readers per post. I do not look for followers, fans, and so on. I think it is phony. I tried emails for a few hours and attracted no one who didn’t have an angle.

My life has been deliberately solitary so I could write. There is no place in this house to perch, drink coffee, and gossip. But this means the usual visitors who help out are missing. Today my best neighbor realized my difficulty and asked what she could do. I asked her to come over and lift the big bag of cat kibble the grocery store left against my back door over the threshold so I could drag it across the kitchen. I’ m not sure she’s taking this seriously, but the cats hope she is. Otherwise, I’ll break the bag open and bail it into a bucket to carry.

My life now is bailed into plastic sacks and then into buckets. Cat poop and empty cans mostly. Some trash. The sacks are piled up like a trash strike on a NYC sidewalk.

To be as debased as this anytime would be miserable, but in a time when our nation is eviscerated and the weather keeps plunging to ten below zero, it is almost unbearable.

If I survive, I wish you Merry Christmas with ironic humor.

PS: I spilled the kibble but the cats are in a cluster eating it, delighted.