I can’t walk.
Well, not entirely.
Mostly in the mornings, when I try to get moving and cry out in pain instead, grabbing furniture and counters or standing on one leg just to stay upright.
Sitting in the shower.
Then, about two hours after waking, maybe longer, the gabapentin kicks in and you’d never know it, though I still feel it, not too uncomfortably, but with every step.
I still play golf but the body that once produced fairly regular rounds in the low 70s now struggles to break 85 because its capabilities are a daily crapshoot. Nor will it allow for practice sessions longer than 5 or so minutes because standing over shot after shot, chip after chip or putt after putt is no longer doable.
So, I can play but hardly practice, which makes playing hardly worth it because if you’re done getting better, what’s the point, because it’s never not been a competition between myself and the player I should have become.
Wiring.
Perhaps two or three things really make you go: a romantic relationship if you’re lucky and a couple pursuits you can’t imagine life without because they’ve always been there and now one of them’s utterly threatened because muscle memory’s becoming just that, a memory.
Horrendous.
My lower back issues are two-fold.
It’s the lower spot killing my legs until the prescription kicks in and the spot two discs up I’m pretty sure I’ve just lived with for 20 or 25 years but that’s reached a new zenith; that has long had me pounding my thighs, buttocks and lower back withy my fists for years, more frequently of late, to find some release.
For a few minutes, it works.
Diagnosis was a process.
An X-ray, a CT scan, an MRI and finally one of those miracle shots directly into my back that might offer months or a year-plus of relief but for me only a couple of days.
Surgery looms, yet which one?
Rods and screws to address the lower issue, a possibly permanent fix, though I may no longer handle sitting for long spells and who knows what else, including having to learn to swing the golf club all over again or be left with a body that can’t repeat a swing and if that’s my future I might as well collect coins.
The worst.
Or maybe two different laminectomies in the same sitting, addressing both spots that might fix the upper issue but only kick the can down the road on the other, the one that leaves me walking, clutching and grabbing as though blind just to stay on my feet.
It #$%@^& sucks and still I know how lucky I am, with the insurance to allow treatment, trying to keep hold of my golf game rather than life itself, thus far avoiding narcotic pain relief while others don’t have the option, still able to do my work because so much of it requires only sitting: to do the research, take the notes, type and edit.
I’m grateful for the awful possibilities I don’t think I’m facing yet petrified of losing myself, like who am I, really, if I can’t do what I’ve always done. Like, is it really a life if I can’t run up stairs.
Hyperbole. Kind of.
So there’s that, which is ongoing. And then there’s what happened yesterday, all in a couple of hours:
The sudden death of Storm, our 13 1/2-year-old chocolate lab who died one day after jumping into our swimming pool three different times and sitting for the picture above this column, in which she’s flanked by Sammi, our cat, and Franks, her 135-pound son.
We got her nails clipped, and nearer a huge dog park in Edmond, went to it rather than the smaller one adjoining the Love’s corporate campus nearer our house.
All Storm ever wanted to do is chase the ball and swim, and though it may well have given her three years longer than her breed’s life expectancy, it killed her on Monday.
And, yes, we have to grapple with taking her to that park, which does not include a kiddie pool in which to lay down, nor a quick getaway — parking’s not close — should something life-threatening occur.
Technically, she succumbed to laryngeal paralysis, which must have been hastened by the heat, her airway all but shutting, her tongue changing color before we could reach the Vet ER, which was close enough but traffic and lights made it too long to save her if she could be saved at all.
Her temperature reached 108.
Sometimes I write funny.
This is awfully dry.
I apologize.
Storm and Franks weren’t mine until the Great Gwenda and I got together six years ago. But both have loved me entirely since, just as I have loved them entirely, animals perpetually better people than actual people.
Trump doesn’t have a dog.
When we came home after saying goodbye to Storm, Gwenda dropped me off and went to get ice cream while I gathered Franks and Sammi to tell them about Storm.
Because, of course. And we all mourn differently.
They listened and then maintained these poses together for a few minutes:
You can’t make it up.
Storm was a panter.
Kind of frantic.
The house is quieter.
I don’t mind.
But when I picked up her food bowl, not to be used again, it crushed me all over again even after I thought all of that was out of me by the time we got home.
Now, I’m sad for Sam and Franks, the latter having not eaten much today, though he gladly accepted some watermelon, cheese and crackers and a couple of his own treats.
His tail still wags.
But he knows.
(Tears).
It’s crushing, bot not a terrible thing to endure, emotion and loss fueled by love and appreciation, rather than bullying and scapegoating fueled by enrichment, wielding power at the expense of others without it and reelection.
Life goes on.
Try to make it a good one, not just for yourself.
Sorry for your loss Clay, as a dog owner myself, I can empathize. As for the piece, one of your recent best. I say this as I reach for a tissue and my dog “Mookie.” Yes, that Mookie. Thanks for the read.
Oh how I know your pain. I had to euthanize my cat and my dog 3 days apart in mid-June. This after my husband died last fall. My dog, too, died from laryngeal paralysis, and OH, that terrible sound as he tried to breathe. In addition to this, again, I, too, have had much ongoing back pain and my 2nd spinal fusion just in January. It DOES get better, though!. Its just plain hell getter older. Keep writing your wonderful columns. I SO appreciate you.