To the Pain

There's an exchange in "The Princess Bride" between Wesley and the Prince that goes along the lines of
Prince "To the death"
Wesley "No, to the Pain."
And that's what this weekend has been like.  To the pain.  Not that at my age I don't expect pain.  Joints and such have been used and abused beyond design standards, and then there's things like falling out of helicopters and other bits of adventure over the last few years.  So pain is something I've learned to live with over the years.  Until recently.  Late in December, my back decided that it had had enough, and two of the vertebrae started rubbing the nerves on the right side. So, I live with constant pain in my right leg.  Usually around the hip, but on extra special days it can extend from mid back to my foot.  Which makes simple things like walking, sitting, standing or even laying down all kinds of fun.  Or, it can lead to things like walking along and loosing the feeling in my leg.  Which is somewhat disquieting when one is near a wall.  When one is in the middle of a room with nothing to grab onto, its an indescribable feeling.  So, I've gotten used to carrying a cane.  No that that always helps.  There are things one simply cannot do while encumbered with a cane.
But we're talking about pain.  It comes in three flavors - dull, throbbie constant, what I call transient pains and fire.  Dull throbbie constant is just that - the pain that is there day in and day out regardless of the meds I take or the levels I take them at.  Pain meds take the edge off and let me move.  That's about it.  Its still there in the back of my mind, affecting everything I do.  Try to stand up?  Not so fast there camper.  The throbbie pain is now the up yours pain.  So, last year where I could just stand and do, now I have to plan things out.  This is especially true of lying in bed - transitioning from horizontal to vertical means planning and being prepared to have some part of my lower body tell me that its done, frag it. 
Then there's the transients.  Sharp shooting pains that appear, leave their love and go.  Imagine if you will, being stung by a bee and hit with a hammer at exactly the same time on the exact same spot.  Fun right?  Along with instant pain, with the transients I get leg jerks and twitching skin.  Twitching skin, I can hear you asking.  Yup, twitching skin.  The skin feels like its twitching.  This makes waking up at zero dark thirty in the morning with your skin twitching a new experience - I wake up feeling like I'm in a horror film, looking about for the strange Japanese chick from the DVD I watched that I shouldn't have to come and drown me. 
Neither of these hold a candle to fire however.  Have you ever seen a raspberry cane?  The vine that raspberries grow on is covered in fine little thorns.  Imagine that made from stainless steel, and dipped in the oil from a jar of jalapeno peppers.  Wrap it around your leg and attach a motor that causes the wires to tension up and dig into your leg at completely random times during the day or night.  And then add in a transient or three in the same area.  It gets distracting fast.
Why am I talking about this?  In part because I keep getting asked when I'm coming back to work.  Easy answer to that is when the doctor says I can - as a side note, I've been told that the best thing that can be done is surgery.  But, because I'm on the large side, it can't be done right now.  The doc's response to my question well, how do I exercise when I cant move that well.  His response?  Bariatric Surgery.  That's so very helpful.  People wonder why folks don't want to go see doctors.  And in part because some days I don't have the energy to write - which is why this is a bit late.  Such is life.