Something for the Pain 9 comments

By Sara Zarr

Over the last month, I've been going to physical therapy for the lower back pain that's probably inevitable in the mid-life of someone who lives most of her life in a chair. Also, there is something on one side that's been specifically out of whack ever since a fateful Sunday on church nursery duty. Baby-lifting is no joke.

At my first appointment, I went into a very small room with an intern, Tyler, who made a number of assessments that involved me bending and twisting and stretching, standing up and lying down and sitting, while Tyler said things like:

“Do you mind if I lift the back of your shirt?”

“Do you mind if I touch your hips?”

“Bend forward.”

“Bend backward.”

“When I do this, do you feel better or worse?”

The claustrophobic space, and us so close in it, made me want to giggle or crack a joke. But I remained dignified and managed to act like people ask to touch my hips every day.

In subsequent appointments I've become used to the routine, and used to working on my exercises with three or four different people as well as Tyler. In the gym area, my legs get wrapped up in latex bands, and I contort myself in various ways in the interest of healing, and through it all there's usually a therapist or assistant sitting nearby making conversation, asking about my life and my writing and, of course, how my pain is.

Back in the little room where we work on my torsion, we always begin with me on my stomach, and the polite request:

“Do you mind if I lift the back of your shirt?”

Oh, Tyler, I want to say, don't we know each other well enough now that you needn't ask?

He prods my lower back, in search of the tender spot which, even though it's the source of pain all the way down to my right hamstring, is deep in my body and sometimes hard to find. When he does find it, I feel a little zing of satisfaction and relief (along with a larger zing of ouch) that that there's evidence of something really there.

When I turn over, there's a lot of purposeful pressing of my pelvic region—where apparently my hip flexors reside—as well as hoisting and propping of my legs onto Tyler's, and, oddly, sometimes being cradled, almost like a baby, for long minutes while we discuss the World Series and the changing weather. This is called a “positional release.”

It's an intimate transaction, between two people with no history and no future.

My friend Mike's father is a physical therapist, and Mike says that his dad's work is to “prepare people to engage with their lives, in ways they love, as fully as they can.” Mike, a writer, feels the work of the artist is in many ways the same. He may be right, even if the patient is only the artist herself.

Writing fiction, for me, always includes a process of poking around in my psyche until I find the part that hurts, that feels bruised, that feels like a shame or a failure, something that has been so overprotected for fear of pain and injury that I now walk, so to speak, crooked.

Only by touching the part that hurts—getting into awkward and possibly embarrassing positions by bringing it into my writing, getting the emotional blood flowing again—can it begin to be understood and, maybe, a little bit relieved.

As for whether or not the same is done for the readers, a writer can't know unless we're told, which is why hearing from readers—especially teens—is one of my favorite things about the job. I do know that I've experienced deep if fleeting relief through reading, looking at art, being lost or found in a movie, or when lying on the floor with my head between stereo speakers while, for example, Pierce Pettis sings:

“Can’t make the bad stuff go away / I can offer shelter from the rain / and the wind that blows the candles out / it also fans the flame / let me give you something for the pain.”

That moment of contact in a song, a poem, a story, or a work of art does strengthen and prepare me, in some way, to engage with my life—even if only the next moment of my life. The transaction is intimate, and goes to deep places, though I may never know the writer or the singer or the painter, or he me.

At the end of each PT session, Tyler again goes looking for the sore spot in my back and usually the pain is better, less. For a day or two. This work seems as if it's meant to offer temporary but ever-progressing relief, as you heal by tiny degrees. The hope is that next time, the muscles surrounding the injured area will be slightly less stiff and protective. That you become gradually looser and more free as you move through life.

Perhaps art can do likewise, both in the work of making it and receiving it.

I'm far enough along in therapy now where I can do all the exercises alone, at home and at the gym. Tyler has moved on to a new internship. But I'll miss the point of contact where the hands of another gently search for the place where something is wrong, and offer relief.