Living With a Pain in the Butt

Jamie has lived with the bulging disk pressing on his spinal nerves and the consequent pain in his back and buttock for 7 months now. When the pain is very bad the sciatic nerve is affected all the way to his knee and when it was so bad he had to be hospitalised for a few days for morphine pain-relief, it reached his ankle.

He is adamant he is not having surgery but that means living with the pain for up to a year whilst he has physiotherapy in the hope that will strengthen his back muscles and the disk will shift back into a proper postition. The condition is caused, according to his consultant, by his sitting at a computer for a living. Sitting and lying are the most difficult things for him to do now. He has slept on the sofa for months, propped up on his side with one leg dangling onto the floor. It seems horribly uncomfortable to me, but he says it's the only way he can sleep.

Right now he is only taking NSAID's for the pain and I can tell by how often he winces that it's not enough. But the next step up would be Tramadol but that makes him hover between sleep and wake all night, with hallucenating-type dreams. He hates that so won't take it. He's also supposed to take a muscle-relaxant, but that has a lingering effect on him during the day and he wouldn't be able to concentrate. He can get some relief from pain by leaning on his crutches and walking on the spot.

And while all this has been going on, we've had so much else to cope with, notably Grace's diagnosis and, less distressing but still pretty traumatic, especially to the kids, the cat's terrible accident, which need 2 operations and 6 weeks of 'cage rest'. Oh and he's been the church's main worship leader all this time too, strapping on the bass most weeks and leading the congregation in worship. But of course it's not as simple as that. It involves studying the text to be preached, considering song choices, rehearsing the musicians, liasing with the elders etc etc. And that last process has not been exactly stress-free! Few people realise that he's done all this in pain most of the time.

However, during this whole period Jamie has not once ever complained. Never asked 'why him?', never felt hard-done-by, never snapped at any of us and never despaired of recovering eventually.

That tells you something about the man, doesn't it?