Back business

Our friend Peter rang this morning, looking for a coffee and a chat, both of which we can usually manage. Sydney swelters, but we press on with life’s essentials. However today was different, a bit special. Alex left early to see a neurosurgeon about his back. Peter registered the size of the shock correctly. “Is nothing in this world stable? Next you’ll be telling me he’s giving up the fags!” Then he congratulated me. Wrong. Alex doesn’t do anything until he’s ready, and that includes dealing with the lower back pain which frames everything he does, every day.

In the decade we’ve been together he’s managed (as they say) his unreliable spine with a mixture of stoicism and contempt and, when the pain is acute, with hard core painkillers and withdrawal into an inaccessible emotional space just big enough for him. That last bit drives me nuts. So his appointment with a neurosurgeon was a big deal, for both of us.  

For years now he has swatted off my helpful suggestions about how he could “fix” his back. Exercise, I’ve demanded. It works for other people – why not you? I’ve raged, I’ve pleaded. Do something. But Alex is a fatalist by inclination, and Eastern European by birth (the two are somewhat related). He doesn’t want pity. Nor does he want to be told what to do. In his situation, I couldn’t not do something, couldn’t not act to alter the odds. I don’t want to believe that things can’t get better. When he and Peter started walking and swimming together a year or so ago, and he began to feel fitter, it had nothing to do with me, which was the beauty of their arrangement. But of course I secretly took some credit for his physical improvement. That made it all the harder when, just before we were due to leave for the Pacific last May, his back went out. Something silly, something small. That’s all it takes. He took to his bed, did what he needed to do. I was the one who was devastated.

Alex had a back operation 20 years ago when the technology was much more primitive and the risk of coming out of the theatre unable to walk was very real, and very scary. Seeing a neurosurgeon today was a big move. It was about being ready to contemplate something radical, again. He’s 63, with oceans to cross and the time to do it. That’s why he went to see the doctor this morning. Where it goes from here is his business. My business is to keep him company, and when that’s not required, deal with it.