Back pain

My physiotherapist has given up on me and my ailing back but doesn’t have the courage to admit it. Instead she piles up the goose chases, the latest of which is the suggestion of cognitive therapy, my back pain might be in my head she says, messages my brain sends to my lower back, or vice versa, can’t remember which, apparently magnify any perceived pain. I’ve trained my mind to expect pain, it looks out for it and when it appears my brain catastrophises it, telling me it’s more intense than is the actuality, says she. It’s all very interesting and a video presentation by an Australian professor by the name of Lorimer describes in detail the relationship between brain signals and nerve endings, apparently we choose to select a voracity of pain depending on the situation we’re in. Stubbing your toe, for example, as you enter the house after a rotten day at work is more painful than stubbing it on the steps as you embark on a flight to your jollies in Torremolinos. You dwell on the pain caused by the former but brush off the inconvenience brought on by the latter.

Fair point, so I decided to take this concept onto the golf course. It didn’t work, although I’m not sure I was fully committed. I had a word with myself as I addressed my golf ball. Usually my lower back pain goes through phases as I swing the club, it starts with a dull ache, graduates to a sharp twinge in the backswing and reaches a crescendo of minor agonies upon impact, the follow through being equally traumatic . Today though I silently repeated a mantra to convince myself that this would not hurt, this would not hurt, this would not hurt. I’m not sure my heart was in it to be frank but repeating the phrase was at least some sort of concession to my physio and Professor Lorimer, after all, I’d tried everything else without any consequent signs of improvement. I was imploring my brain not to sense any pain and my lower back not to send any signals to that effect either although I was still confused as to which part of my body was sending signals and which part was deciphering them but this was immaterial quite frankly. With hope rather than expectation I took the club back, brought it down and before finishing my swing, cramped up in a convulsion of bloody agony. Believe me, mantra chanting is not all it’s cracked up to be, I couldn’t even look up to see where the ball went it was so blinking painful. I tried a couple of times more but there was no improvement, Lorimer could do one, back to the drawing board.

Or should I say back to the physio. I returned to see her the following week to share my experience. I’d not given it long she claimed, fair enough I suppose, but another element now needed to be brought in from a psychological perspective according to her, in an effort to distract my mind from a) the pain and b) the overemphasis I’d been placing on golf in my life. Her attitude was that I’d set myself up for a fall in that I’d convinced myself that I couldn’t cope without golf in my life, it’s exclusion would decimate my week, I had nothing else to focus on, I’d built it up as some sort of idol in my life. I needed to reduce the importance I put on golf and turn my attention to other endeavours she suggested, cooking or jigsaws for example. If I told my brain golf wasn’t critical, it would take attention off my back pain because my back pain was telling me I couldn’t play golf. Or something like that.  So, always one to embrace new initiatives, I made the family a beef cobbler the following day and started a thousand piece puzzle of a Mediterranean bay. That night I still went to bed with a sore back, at 2am after a marathon jigsaw session, and the following morning the family took a dose of the squits because I’d not cooked the meat through. Back once again to the drawing board.

She’s probably right about golf being too high a priority in my life but that’s the way it is I’m afraid. I’m too old for football, too out of shape for running and not interested in much else. It’s a good walk in the fresh air at the very least, even if you’re playing like a camel, and when you’re playing acceptably it’s tremendously rewarding. No, golf would remain in itself rightful place at the summit of my extra curricular activity list and nothing was gonna stop me. My physio and doctor would just have to persevere, do what they were paid to do and find a remedy. Stretches and exercises hadn’t worked, nor had manipulation, acupuncture, painkillers or an anal investigation to establish whether I was carrying something more sinister. Cognotive therapy, cooking and jigsaw puzzles had accomplished diddly so I fixed yet another appointment with the quack and he booked me in for an MRI scan to see if there was anything wrong with me structurally. It’s set for three weeks hence, enough time to complete my jigsaw and recover from beef cobbler induced trots.