By Thomas J Huber
In a matter of days, I turn the ripe old age of 42. (I can hear you real, old timers laughing in the background.) I’ve decided to use a few of the 47 sick days I’ve accrued to just lie in bed night and day in another attempt to get the upper hand on a case of sciatica that just doesn’t seem to get better.
Bed rest is normally the first thing that is prescribed when sciatica is reported. For me, however, it is my last resort of “inaction” of “doing nothing” before I decide to call the doctor for the cortisone shot. [Actually I never got the cortisone shot. I was referred to physical therapy instead.]
It has been over three months since I first learned what this sciatica business is all about. I’ve had several friends complain about this condition where shooting sparks of pain travel from one’s butt down one leg when the sciatic nerve gets inflamed. Although I had a notion of what they were describing, I could only wonder how bad the pain really was which caused them to lay in bed for extended time periods. Now I wonder no more.
The expression, “I wouldn’t wish this on my worst enemy” comes to mind.
Over these past three months I’ve read about sciatica on the Internet and in books, tried every over the counter pain reliever available, saw a chiropractor for weeks on end, iced my butt followed by moist heat, began massage therapy, took a yoga class, consulted with several folks who had a first person knowledge of the condition, practiced various relaxation methods and performed just as many stretching exercises, but when the nerve gets excited the pain can be so unrelenting that all I can think of is MC Hammer singing his signature line, “Can’t touch this” as he raps his moves all over my exposed bare wire of a nerve.
Every life is sometimes called upon to endure pain. No one is immune to it. Pain is generally there for a reason. Its job is to get our attention. I subscribe to the idea that everything in life has a purpose, some teaching or lesson is presenting itself—if only we can open up and become aware of the inner truth. So I can’t help but wonder what this pain which has on occasion become so severe that all I can do is cry out “Momma!” is trying to teach me.
I took some personal “hits” in 2004, had a few deep lows which weren’t exactly counter balanced by the highs. In early November just prior to the onset of my sciatica, I was looking forward to a better year in 2005.
Just before the new year of 2004 was being ushered in, my father at age 77 passed over to the other side of life. As a long time hospice volunteer and bereavement facilitator I knew that the healing/grieving process would be a priority in the coming year and I set about to do the work. I felt intuitively the rightness of memorializing the life and death of my father at the close of one year in the heart of winter. It also gave me time to work through the first phase of my grief before spring which I knew would be a critical time with all its symbolism of new life and growth and with my father being a lifelong farmer and gardener.
Perhaps the most devastating blow of the year came on May 21st the day before I was to leave on a family vacation on the coast of Lake Michigan. Although it was never officially classified an actual tornado, wind speeds were clocked in excess of 100 MPH and the brief but violent storm cut a tight diagonal pattern of destruction coming off the big lake just north of Benton Harbor sweeping from the northwest to the southeast before losing its strength as it traveled into Indiana. Our small 20 acre homestead just happened to be directly in the path of the unusual storm. The trees were fully leafed out then and became like sails capturing the unseasonable northwest winds and sending thousands of mature trees to an early death. Black cherry trees with their shallow root structure were perhaps the hardest hit, but with the high demand of the prized furniture wood at least fetched a good price from timber companies.
At the time of the storm, I was visiting a friend at a nursing home during my lunch hour in the southern part of the county. All the residents were quickly ushered from the dining hall into their rooms as the storm bore down with screaming winds, lightning, and pelting rain. It was all over in a matter of minutes. As I exited the nursing home the damage from the storm was evident everywhere in the form of broken tree limbs strewn like dismembered body parts over the landscape.
The drive back to the college where I work normally takes about 15 minutes, but by the time I arrived almost two hours later the premises were deserted as power was lost from the storm. I had to crisscross the county to make my way back north and west directly into the path of the storm. So many large trees of all kinds of species had fallen directly over the roadways making travel nearly impossible. The carnage of so many large oak, maple and cherry trees was hard to process.
Hours later I finally made it to the driveway of our homestead fearing the worst for my family, house, and property. I knew the direction of the storm made a pass over or near our home likely. As I drove the 1/3 mile driveway through a stand of pines and up a hill, I thought so far so good as my way was unimpeded. However, as I looked across the open land toward the house I knew something was not quite right when the missing tree line behind the house finally dawned on me. The good news was that only one tree came down on the roof of the house at a generous angle inflicting minimal damage, and the family had not been home and was safe and sound in the nearby city of St. Joseph.
In a state of disbelief I walked around the land surveying the damage. Around 350 trees were either blown over or snapped like twigs. Most of the largest trees were the worst off including the two large white pines that my two girls named the “spirit trees.” “Momma tree” which stands at the border of a ravine and clearly visible from the house had her top third blown off. The other special white pine, “Grandfather tree” which lived down in a hollow was completely uprooted taking many others with him. The largest tree on the land, an ancient shagbark hickory, which stood as a sentinel on the western line of the hilly property also toppled over along with a nearby large red oak. The crater where the meaty and extensive root structure of the hickory once was is now big and deep enough to hold a hobbit house.
I believe the first stage of my sciatica began that day of the storm and the days that followed. I felt like someone had kicked me in the guts. I was listless as my mind attempted to get itself around the immense clean-up project that lay ahead. The feelings of grief were palpable since these trees were all like best friends to me and my girls. The property as a whole behaved much differently as well. Wind now whistled across the land through decimated sections of what was a once thick stand of woods. It felt and looked like a much different place—more like a war zone that required extensive healing.
I removed the jack pine that had snapped off and repositioned itself on the roof. The forty others would be gradually tended to in the weeks and months ahead. Warm weather was on the way and with the quickly growing poison ivy vine there was only a small window of opportunity to remove some of the fallen softwood.
A good portion of time in 2004 was also invested in training for a rim-to-rim hike of the Grand Canyon, which put a limit on available time for the logging activities. The gardens and orchard also required regular tending, but no new building projects were initiated as a promise to my wife that this would be an “easy year.” Little did I know at the time I made the promise what was ahead.
As the months passed by I was only able to make a dent in the tree clearing arena, and it bothered me as though I could not properly attend to my fallen comrades in the woods who required a proper burial ritual. Also at this same time, I was going through some rather unpleasant difficulties at work and contemplating making a job change of sorts. It would be impossible to go through all the subtleties of what I was experiencing, so let me just say that this was not an easy time and part of why I was very much looking forward to 2005.
The hiking trip to the Grand Canyon was one of the high points of the year, and upon returning I began to finish gathering the firewood for the upcoming heating season. Our passive solar home utilizes an efficient masonry stove for wintertime heating, and we usually are able to make it through the worst of the winter on only a couple of full cords of wood or so.
So after I returned from the Grand Canyon, I picked up the chainsaw and splitting maul to finish the job I began in the spring. Even though in my hiking training I did all kinds of core strengthening exercises so that I could successfully hike the 24 mile course including climbing the mile up in elevation, this was not the same as my normal homesteading type of weekly workouts. Over the passing years my drive to complete the manual labor tasks had lessened, and I was losing muscle mass and tone. I’m afraid I sat in my rocking chair on the porch stewing and fretting about the work ahead and the disagreeable life/work changes of the day instead of just getting up and doing the work that needed to be done. I grew soft stewing away all that time drinking cold beer in the shade.
These where the conditions that led up to my coming down with sciatica in early November. As much as the emergence and disappearance of sciatic pain seems to be spontaneous and mysterious to most, I have to believe it is more a function of it emerging into one’s awareness very gradually without the full recognition of its precipitating causes. Once the nerve is inflamed or irritated it takes a good long time to heal. I now know that I probably should not have done any chainsaw work this winter, but what can I say? The hickory tree wasn’t going to cut itself up, and hardwoods take a while to properly season before they can be burned.
Besides, the chainsaw work is probably no worse than all the many days of my desk job humped over a computer doing email and advising students while sitting down hour after hour.
On my 42nd birthday I will travel up north celebrating our annual “No Juice Weekend” with a few buddies. No Juice means no electricity; we heat the cabin and cook our meals with wood. No fossil fuels are permitted. We will drink dark beer loaded with flavinoids (heavy ales, stouts, and porters) and play free range ice bocce ball under the moonlit sky and stars.
So I’m nursing my sciatica condition for the next few days giving my body a chance to heal, trying to understand what it all means. When the time comes to journey northwards, sciatica pain or not, No Juice Weekend here I come!
And the future outlook regarding the required working lifestyle of homestead living? Can it be maintained with the “on” again “off” again nature of sciatic pain that so many report? That’s the question I find myself pondering in the first part of 2005.