A Pain in the Back

Chronic pain is depressing. Last Monday night, I was hit in the back by a bolt of lightning (AKA pinched Sciatic nerve) and I’ve been yowling out in pain at random times for a week. I swear, it’s the worst pain in the ass (which is a true statement as my ass seems to have spread out to the lower part of my back) that I have ever experienced.

Tuesday evening, I was sitting at the dining room table working on a project on my computer with Chet quietly sitting next to me working on his homework when suddenly, I shifted my weight in my chair ever so slightly to my right and this flash of piercing pain shot through my lower back and down my right leg.

“Aaaahhh – OH MY GOD, oh my God!” I screamed. Chet jumped out of his seat, screamed and threw his pencil across the kitchen. I held on to the side of the table with my head bowed, breathing heavily and trying to “blow away the pain.”

“Jeez Mom! Don’t you think you’re being a little dramatic?” Chet said, gasping to catch his own breath.

“Chester, if you knew the intensity of the pain I’m in, you’d never be asking me that! It’s like daggers, like burning swords plunging into my spine and then spreading pain poison with the white hot intensity of a thousand suns all through my back!” I said. In other words, “No, I’m not being dramatic.”

This pain has been piercing me for days and it’s making everything that involves movement very scary. The pain has me rather paralyzed with dread and that is getting really depressing. I went to lunch with my friends on Wednesday and I must have shrieked out loud and jumped six times during our conversation.

“You know, that’s my chiropractor over there across the restaurant,” said Maggie. “Maybe you should call him?”

“No. It should go away,” I said.

When I was pregnant with Chet, I had sciatica around 16-17 weeks. It was my first indication that I might be pregnant again. At the time, Davis was nine months old and I was teaching school full time. I was constantly exhausted, but just figured it was the first time mom drowsies.

I was a zombie passing through my days, really. I’d be up with Davis during the night nursing him, then I’d get up at 5:00am to get ready for school, nurse and feed Davis again, then head off to work. During the midmorning break at school, I’d close my windows and lock the door, set up my “Medela Pump-In-Style” breast pump and express milk for 10 minutes or so, pop it in the cooler, then open the doors to my classroom to teach two more classes before lunch. At lunch, I’d jump in my car, drive home and nurse Davis, drop my expressed milk in the freezer, then haul back to school as fast as I could to teach two more classes.

This became my life. On weekends, I’d try to catch up on as much time with Davis as I could, playing on the floor, going for walks, and exploring our surroundings. I remember kneeling down to take his picture one afternoon and I had this intense pain shoot down my leg. I fell to the floor and Doug looked at me like I was crazy. “What’s wrong with you?” he asked.

“My leg gave out,” was my reply, but I knew that this pain was too familiar, as I had the exact same pain when I was pregnant with Davis. I started thinking about it and I realized that I could possibly be pregnant again. I had, after all, been working out religiously trying to lose my baby weight, but I was at a standstill. In fact, my pants seemed to be getting tighter.

A few days later, I snatched up an old pregnancy test from Davis’s pregnancy and took it. After holding it in my “urine stream” for 5-10 seconds, I placed the cap on the collection space, set it on the back of the toilet and walked away. Some time later, I went into the bathroom to check it and was horrified to see two blue lines. I called my friend Knicole immediately. “So,” I said, “Is it possible to have a positive pregnancy test, like when you are nursing, because your hormones are all messed up?”

“OH MY GOD, NO!” she squealed. “You’re pregnant! Congratulations!”

I broke down in tears.

The following day, I went to have an ultrasound. “How far along do you think you are?” asked Dr. Stadler.

“Quite honestly, I have no idea,” I said. “I can’t quite believe that I am actually pregnant again. Maybe a few weeks? I don’t know. I haven’t had a period since I delivered Davis.”

“Well, let’s get you in the ultrasound exam room and have a look,” he said.

(*Readers, note here – no matter what you may have heard - you CAN get pregnant while you are nursing. Chester Joe is proof.)

The ultrasound tech inserted the wand and began probing around, searching for what I expected would be that little kidney bean shape you see at about five weeks gestation – complete with it’s blinking little heartbeat, its tiny little yolk sack inside an itty bitty amniotic sac.

“Oh my God! What is that?” I exclaimed, knowing full well that I was looking at a giant head.

“We’re not going to need this,” she said as she pulled the wand from between my legs. “We can just go right over your belly.”

The minute the probe hit my belly, I could see all of Chet; his arms, legs, hands and feet. He had a big ol’ head and a round belly and he was a perfect little person. “Looks like you’re going to have this baby in about five months,” said Dr. Stadler. I broke down crying again.

This time, the tears were more happy tears than scared tears – or maybe they were an equal combination of both. Five moths later, after a really intense and difficult labor, Chet joined the planet – all 8 pounds 13 ounces of him. I birthed a monster baby – one that periodically kicked me in the spine and sent shooting sciatic pain through my back and down my leg. I forgave him. Eventually.

The shooting pain in my sciatic nerve with Chet was never constant, like it is with this baby. I called to talk to a nurse at Northwest OB/GYN to see if there was anything I could do. “Did you have this with your other pregnancies?” she asked.

“Yes, but it wasn’t like this. I can hardly move without pain. I can’t bend over, I can’t sit down, I can’t get up, I can’t twist. I’m totally incapacitated with pain,” I said, trying to hold back tears.

“Oooohh,” she said. “Looks like this is going to be a loooong pregnancy.”

She obviously didn’t get the memo entitled “What Not to Say to Carrie” that Max consults before calling me. This was not what I wanted to hear. “Can I take anything for the pain?” I asked. “I haven’t slept in two nights and I have anxiety when I go to bed because I’m exhausted, but I can’t sleep.”

“Well, you can have Tylenol,” she said.

“K. Thanks,” I said, feeling helpless and defeated. I hung up and called Maggie’s chiropractor. When I arrived at his office, my palm and feet started to sweat. The thought of someone touching me, let alone reefing on my back filled me with panic.

He touched my back in a few places, causing me to wince and gasp. “Wow,” he said. “This might take some time to get this pain under control. Your baby is pushing right on this nerve here and all we can do is try to get the compression in your spine relaxed and open again.”

He commenced cracking and I commenced screaming and puffing out a bunch of “Oh my Gods.” Ironically, the Christian Radio station was playing over the speakers in the office and I thought of the irony; the religious zealot types saying that me surrogating a baby for my gay friends would send me to hell, my ex-husband trying to tell my kids that the Bible says it’s wrong, the pain in my back and the “Jesus loves me” music playing as I pray for this pain to go away.

It’s Monday, and I’m still hurting and it makes me sad. I have two appointments a day, every other day with the chiropractor this week. I’m hoping that this pain will play out like it did when I was pregnant with Chet, though that was ten years ago and I’m a lot creakier than I used to be.

“Our baby is being a bad baby,” texted Max.

“It is!” I texted back. “And for its punishment, it will get only one Oreo McFlurry today.”