back pack

Still feeling a little wonky — not great, not worse. Maybe a bit better. I remember when I reherniated that I was not able to do the straight leg test — very easily. That is to say, sitting in chair I could not straighten my right leg. I’m still able to do it. It hurts a bit — maybe even a bit more than it did before the dog yanked me, but I can raise it. So hopefully this is just a muscle strain. It took a week for the sciatic symptoms to show up last time. Until then I’ll be holding my breath. 
A season of suffering. Everyone I know is going through some sort of hell right now. I just got off the phone with my friend C in Texas. Her father’s cancer has returned. She’s incredibly upset of course. I lost a friend this weekend to cancer, Christopher Trumbo. He was Dalton Trumbo’s son and someone I had the good fortune to get to know over the last few years. Then there’s the head of my department at school also sick with cancer, but hopefully recovering.
Additionally three of my friends are semi homeless — all educated and employable, just down on their luck. I have a student who is going through hell. I can’t discuss it here but it’s financial and incredibly stressful. The fun never stops. 
I hope I make a lot of money in 2011 so I can afford Artificial Disc Replacement (ADR) surgery if I need it. It’s like 100K and no insurance covers it. I could go to Germany and get it done for 35K but I’ve just been reading a lot of horror stories about people who’ve gone there — the artificial discs being put in upside down or otherwise improperly implanted. It’s not like getting your appendix removed. They go in through the front to remove the disc and then put this in between the vertebrae.
It’s supposed to be better than a fusion because it preserves motion and by doing that you have a better chance of avoiding stress at the upper and lower disc levels. With fusions typically the patient will have complications for the rest of their life that have to be addressed with additional surgery. The idea here is that you put this in and you’re done. The reason no American insurance company covers it is because it’s too new. They like to have thirty years of data and these things are about fifteen years old. I’m probably jumping the gun by shopping for artificial disc replacements at this stage but I’m one of those people who likes to plan for all possible contingencies in advance. Also, this marks one year of being in pain for me. One full year of non stop pain. So I’m a little grumpy today and just trying to imagine the light at the end of the tunnel. It’s exhausting and I get into a "please kill me now" frame of mind a little too easily. All this ADR stuff is on my mind because of the flare up but also because my friend C told me about a friend of hers who had the surgery done in Dallas. She said that he was not a rich guy so he was able to find a way to afford it somehow. According to her he had it three years ago and his life has improved considerably. He’s as active as he was before the disc herniations and suffering no ill effects from the surgery. That’s kind of what I wish I could have now. Just a solution. But I’ve got waiting instead. Waiting without attachment to outcome but simple waiting. Attachment to outcome would be hope for the wrong thing. I have to see things as they are without expectation of how they should be.

D’s sick. He’s got the horrible chest cold that’s going around. Great. I mean poor D. He’s burning up. I just can’t afford to get something that will make me cough and hack. It’s too dangerous for me right now. Especially on top of my doggy induced relapse. 
Is it bad that I want to have my dog put to sleep? He’s seventeen, senile, pees all over the house. I don’t think he even knows who I am any more. He’s just blank. The one thing he does remember is food. At night he wanders the house in circles — he seems so confused. He’ll jump on the couch for a second before jumping off and wandering around. It’s all making me a little crazy. I try to remind myself what a good friend he’s been to me all these years. I promised myself that if he wasn’t in pain or suffering that he he could stay as long as he wanted. He’s otherwise totally healthy, too. He’s not going anywhere on his own anytime soon — and seriously, he is not suffering or unhappy at all. D resents that he has to get up and walk him at seven in the morning. I hear him muttering, "I hate this dog." It’s all heartbreaking but I kind of hate the dog right now, too. And let me tell you, I never thought I could be this cold hearted. My mom, who used to be a nurse, said that by the time her long suffering terminal patients died, the families were ready. A quick death is a tragedy, a long slow death is a relief. It all makes me feel like a terrible person. 
I’ve been searching for this quote — from Jack Kornfield — that makes a certain sense to me but makes me feel worse because well, I’m a failure at this, too. "The thought manifests as the word. The word manifests as deed. The deed develops into habit. The habit hardens into character. So watch the thought and its ways with care. And let it spring from love born out of concern for all beings."