I will fight no more forever

Long ago when this whole back thing started, I told someone that surgery would be the last resort, that it'd be the last thing I'd try after I tried everything else. And all the doctors that I've seen have agreed that'd be a good idea, and three years later I've tried everything and I'm in complete agony.

The last week has been pretty bad. I had a sleepless night a week ago, called my new doc in the morning and got new fancy muscle relaxants and an NSAID, which kind of work. I take both in the morning, drive to work drunk, take a Soma in the afternoon, then the NSAID and the Soma again in the evening. Only thing is the pain is so bad that I have to find a place to sit half way between my car and my office. And each night around 4am the pain blows up and I writhe in agony. And then in the morning I get up all twisted and in pain and pray for the stuff to kick in what little relief it's going to give.

Then there's the red flag. It's the one thing that all of my doctors - the smart ones, the idiots, and the quacks - have agreed on. I've been told that if I lose control of stuff in the basement I'm to go straight to the emergency room. The condition is called cauda equina syndrome and basically means it's all over but the shouting, raise the flag, the ship is sinking. The problem is I'm not exactly sure what's going on down there is what they're referring to. There's varying degrees of things that can happen down there and the most polite way I can describe it is that something untoward is happening, and has been happening for about two weeks now, so.

I'm about to make the call to my doc, the "look dude, I'm fucking dying over here and either it's surgery or I'm putting a bullet in my fucking head," call. The "Because I don't care about how old I am or I'm too young for surgery or your politics save this sort of thing for the end case because I'm in agony, agony, agony, agony and I cannot, cannot [...]

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