I’m stuck. I can’t move very much at all. It’s been like this before. Something innocuous sets if off; this time it was taking off a wetsuit sock. An invisible horse that kicks me in the spine appears and my world becomes a cauldron of pain. Nobody, not even experts, really understands back pain. It’s a medical mystery. You can say it’s a “prolapsed disc” or a “nerve impingement” or some other plausible anatomical thing, but the truth is you can have “prolapsed discs” on a scan and have no pain. My back is a mess on scans but I reckon the scans look the same whether I am agonized or pain-free; there’s no correlation between the pictures and the pain. Pain—the most profound of bodily experiences is something which doesn’t obey mechanistic notions of cause and effect. Doctors don’t often fess up to this, they like to sound as if they’re in the know. And it might not be so bad if so-called “painkillers” lived up to their name. I’ve never come across anything so miss-sold as “painkilling” tablets. People respond differently to these drugs but I don’t seem to respond at all. But thankfully there are two things which I do find useful.

First—is my imagination. I can imagine that by this time next week I’ll be able to stand up long enough to cook dinner. I might be able to go for a walk, maybe do some easy climbing. I’m not getting any better at staving off these episodes (there’s work still to done on this!) but I am getting better at coping and at coming out of them quicker. It used to be that I would try and push through agony. I would make myself go for a walk and feel nauseated with the intensity of it. I could not tolerate the idea of being immobile. Not being able to move is such a huge threat to my being. Being stuck is very frightening. I need to move to feel okay, to feel safe even. And everything which brings me joy requires me to move. Yet I have learnt to know this—that I will move fine again, maybe tomorrow or next week or the week after, just not today.

And the second thing?... well, I’ll come back to that as it’s a wee bit embarrassing. This first lesson of coping—not to panic—was really brought home to me the day I broke my pelvis. As I lay on the ground I could feel blood pooling inside around my innards. Something very calm came over me. I lay still and thought about my breathing; just the act of taking another breath became my complete world. I thought I might die. If this was the last thing I was going to get to do, well then, I’d better stay calm and die well.

That’s a while ago now although it doesn’t feel like it. That day pain was telling me the truth; I was in jeopardy. But often pain is a terrible liar. My experience of pain today is as bad as it was with a broken pelvis, only I’m not broken. I only took off my wetsuit sock and nobody ever died from a wetsuit sock. Of all the things that might defeat me in life I surely won’t be undone by a wetsuit sock. Now the pain won’t stop if I fight it and it won’t stop if I panic and tablets will not make it stop either. Calm, optimism, and belief that it will go—these all help somewhat. Imagining being fine soon but not pushing through agony and pretending I am fine. Oh yes, and there was that other thing too… just a small quantity of gin, no more than two measures per day. Any more is a road to ruin. I only drink gin if I have bad pain as alcohol is very unhealthy, especially for women. And I don’t know how it works because I prefer the taste of whiskey, but it’s only gin that is effective. When it comes to pain, we don’t seem to know much. Except that it will go. I do believe that it will go.