{"id":224,"date":"2017-01-09T22:39:44","date_gmt":"2017-01-09T22:39:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thethinkersquill.com\/iwn\/?p=224"},"modified":"2017-01-09T22:39:44","modified_gmt":"2017-01-09T22:39:44","slug":"anthology-excerpt-the-grip-of-back-pain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thethinkersquill.com\/iwn\/anthology-excerpt-the-grip-of-back-pain\/","title":{"rendered":"Anthology Excerpt: ‘The Grip of Back Pain’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"IWN<\/a>Although written in a humorous tone, The Grip of Back Pain<\/em>, portrays an early moment in the long and painful process that many of us will experience, first as the child and later as the parent. As our parents age, our roles slowly reverse, until we are the guardians of our now dependent parents. While most of us dread this role, our parents dread it more. For us, this is added responsibility. For them, it is loss of control of their lives.<\/p>\n

At one end of the telephone line is an 88 year old man, still active and intelligent, trying to convince others that he\u2019s too young to write off. His son is at the other end of the line, trying to control the situation without appearing to manage. Their bantering conversations, peppered with irony and sarcasm, reveal the mutual respect and affection between father and son:<\/p>\n

Here’s an excerpt from the story, authored by Paul Weiss:<\/p>\n

Eric \u2026 calls his father.
\n\u201cHi, Dad. How are you doing?\u201d
\n\u201cNot so well. I saw Dr. Duchecky today.\u201d
\n\u201cWhy did you see Ducky?\u201d
\n\u201cI hurt my back.\u201d
\n\u201cWhat happened?\u201d
\n\u201cI strained it last week when I moved my treadmill.\u201d
\n\u201cAlone?\u201d
\n\u201cYes.\u201d
\n\u201cWe\u2019ll come back to that. Where is the pain?\u201d
\n\u201cLow back, about the level of my belt.\u201d
\n\u201cIs it sharp or dull?\u201d
\n\u201cNeither. It\u2019s more like a grabbing feeling.\u201d
\n\u201cDoes it go down either leg?\u201d
\n\u201cNo.\u201d
\n\u201cDoes it get worse when you cough or sneeze?\u201d
\nThere is the sound of coughing in the background. \u2026.
\n\u201cNo, coughing doesn\u2019t make it any worse.\u201d
\n\u201cSo what did Ducky say?\u201d
\n\u201cHe said I have a bad back and will have to live with it. He told me how lucky I am I didn\u2019t get it until age 88, and he has lots of patients in their 30\u2019s who are disabled by back problems.\u201d
\n\u201cDid he prescribe any treatment?\u201d
\n\u201cTwo types of pills. One for pain and one muscle relaxant.\u201d
\n\u201cAny stretching exercises or strengthening exercises?\u201d
\n\u201cNo.\u201d
\n\u201cDid he refer you to anybody?\u201d
\n\u201cNo.\u201d
\n\u201cThat figures. Ducky believes that if he doesn\u2019t sell it then you don\u2019t need it.\u201d
\n\u201cIs there something I want that isn\u2019t on his menu?\u201d
\n\u201cYou need to do exercises to strengthen your back muscles and your abdominal muscles. You also need to do some stretching exercises.\u201d
\n\u201cWhat specific exercises should I do?\u201d
\n\u201cI can\u2019t explain them over the phone. Actually I probably could, but there\u2019s no way for me to tell whether you are doing them correctly. Ask Ducky to prescribe physical therapy.
\n\u201cWill these exercises to make me better?\u201d
\n\u201cThat\u2019s what I would predict.\u201d
\n\u201cYou know that I don\u2019t believe most predictions.\u201d
\n\u201cWell, maybe you would be more open-minded about that if you knew that hundreds of years ago, some French guy actually predicted Dr. Ducky.\u201d
\n\u201cNostradamus?\u201d
\n\u201cNo. Moliere. He wrote the play Duck, Here Comes the Quack. Just think of yourself as the ducker and think of Dr. Duchecky as the duckee.\u201d
\n\u201cI think that you just made that up.\u201d
\n\u201cI did not just make that up. I made it up months ago. By the way, why didn\u2019t you have somebody help you move the treadmill?\u201d
\n\u201cBecause no one else was here.\u201d
\n\u201cThat scares me.\u201d
\n\u201cWhy?\u201d
\n\u201cBecause poor judgment might be hereditary.\u201d
\n\u201cI\u2019m glad they taught you something in medical school.\u201d<\/p>\n

————————————————————————–<\/p>\n

The full version of this story was first published in Hilton Head Island: Time and Tide<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Although written in a humorous tone, The Grip of Back Pain, portrays an early moment in the long and painful process that many of us will experience, first as the child and later as the parent. As our parents age, our roles slowly reverse, until we are the guardians of our now dependent parents. While […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-224","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-iwn-books-and-anthologies"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thethinkersquill.com\/iwn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thethinkersquill.com\/iwn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thethinkersquill.com\/iwn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thethinkersquill.com\/iwn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thethinkersquill.com\/iwn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=224"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.thethinkersquill.com\/iwn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":226,"href":"https:\/\/www.thethinkersquill.com\/iwn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224\/revisions\/226"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thethinkersquill.com\/iwn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=224"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thethinkersquill.com\/iwn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=224"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thethinkersquill.com\/iwn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=224"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}