When the going gets tough, the tough gets going :)

Beware! You may or rather will encounter some scientific terms during the length of the post. If you are not interested or you don’t get it, simply pass off as blah..blah..blah :)

I didn’t know how bad it was getting.
Until a few days ago Luis imitated me or better, my limping gate.
(Someone he finds otherwise impossible to impersonate.
AND uno momento dude, NO dal for you in future !!!)

The abiding memories of sitting in the doctor’s clinic, alone, waiting to be examined, and finally with no improvement, has left me sadly scarred. So I don’t fancy myself doing it anymore, even if I have to painfully cry myself to sleep.

Lately there was a long lasting feud between "The pain" vs. “Me”. And “Me” finally gave in today.
I went to the doctor.
As usual, it was kind of odd for the old grannies and grandpas in the clinic to find company with me, as much as it was for me to place myself with people who had weathered far beyond years. But I found some happy faces, and it was good.

Now, there’s good news and a bad news. Let me hurl the bad one later.

The good news is that the doctor was uber nice. (Yeayyyyy…finally!) And she could speak English (Double yeayyyyyyyy!! )

Her hands were so warm and comforting that the moment she started the physiotherapy, I had tears in my eyes. Call me nuts, if you wish to...its okieeee. Because I know, its indiscernible for others what a healing touch does to you, when you have forgot how it feels without waking up with pain and sleeping without it.

For instance, people esp. my colleagues; often tell me that I “look” almost fine. Ta-daaaaaaaaaa, I look because I want to. All these years it has taken a lot of patient questioning on my part, to accept the inescapable and remind myself that Iam not unloved by God.
And really rough days are tamed with what I call the kill-pills. They kill the pain as well as your tummy. Nonetheless, they are good enough to camouflage the red-eyed silence.

Now, the bad news.

Firstly, the doctor said that I was as stiff as a stick, (and initially I thought she was talking about my head!) But I was enlightened soon enough. Personally, she thought that the harmony between my bones and the back muscles was as good as some crazy pebbles loosely stuffed inside a sac!

Secondly, to circumvent the arthritic pain in my sacroiliac joint (The joint between the base of the spine and the pelvis) while walking, sitting, sleeping etc, I am giving way to an absurd S shaped spinal curvature (at an angle which helps me in gliding / dragging myself in way that hurts least). Consequently, I am progressing in to something called Adult Idiopathic Scoliosis.

I thought she was talking all Greek, until she asked if I suffered from debilitating musculoskeletal pain and nerve impingement in my upper extremities in addition to my lower body. The answer was a big fat YES. (And come to think of it, I always cracked up thinking, it was “Scientist’s-Chronic-Fatigue- -Syndrome” !!hahahahahaha)

The ‘problem” if not attended well in time, which means taking a few days off (Doc…are you kidding??) and avoid lifting heavy stuff (People who have lifted JA-10 Beckman centrifuge rotors know exactly what I am talking about), going easy on work (I have started with the 3rd year of my PhD and there is surely NO escape. I want my degree.) , I might suffer from associated degenerative disorders (Well..I have been stoned with the facts long ago, when I visited my first doctor. And I know :))

In principle, I think the doctor knows what’s wrong and what’s getting worse each passing day. But unfortunately what she doesn’t know is that I cannot let go of what I am doing right now. She doesn’t know what I am here for. She doesn’t know what all this it means to me. And it’s just not another degree.

Lance Armstrong faced less than 50 % survival chances once. While battling against metastasis, where the cancer spread to almost every other organ of his body, he said that “Pain is temporary. It may last a minute, or an hour, or a day, or a year, but eventually it will subside and something else will take its place. If I quit, however, it lasts forever.”

And I am not quitting. Even if I am limping. Even if it hurts. Period.

P.S. Lately people are very very inquisitive regarding my medical condition for obvious reasons ( They ask me questions like aapko polio bachpan se tha?? Hahahahaha..To save time, I can just say read my blog. Pssss..psss.. that’s a smartass attempt to increase the all time dipping low readership of my blog ;) )