David Barton - Stage 4 Survivor: Stepping Into Darkness

Copyright 2020 by David Noel BartonPhD

First Edition

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ISBN 978-0-473-51968-1(Epub)

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It was the 14th ofJune 2018. The day was cold and cloudy, the beginning of winter.Today I decided to take action. I got up, headed down town andwalked into Accident and Emergency at the Dunedin Public Hospital.The pain in my back had grown so painful I needed to get it seen tourgently. I could no longer lie down in any position as the painwas just too intense; too piercing. I couldnt sleep through thenight any longer and at this stage contemplated sleeping on thefloor. I thought the floor would be harder and better for my back,but I was reluctant to head that way because I didnt want my wifeto sleep alone. We had been happily married for 22 years and barelybeen apart. I wasnt keen to start now. So I pressed on for anotherfew weeks.

So here I was at A&E, readyto sit in the waiting room for an hour or two as you do - to seea doctor and hopefully get some answers. Maybe they could give mean x-ray, scan, or at least something to help me figure out whatwas happening to my back. What I received in the end wasdisappointing to say the least. After quite some time sitting inthe waiting room a nurse called me in to sit in an examination roomand after about another half an hour I was seen by a doctor. Shegave me a basic examination and ran through a few rudimentaryquestions. Then she discharged me with instructions to take somePanadol for pain relief and possibly seek out some physiotherapy.She thought I had probably sprained or twisted something in myback. The problem was likely to resolve itself soon. I figured shewas right as 2 or 3 weeks earlier I had been out running in thehills and thought I had slipped and pulled a muscle in my back. Itmade sense that this would be at the root of my pain, as I hadinjured myself before, on many other occasions in fact. Usually ittook a week or two to resolve, so I was confident that I was on theroad to recovery. But both the doctor and I were way off track. Herprofessional opinion and mine were hopelessly flawed. The truth wasfar more troubling that anything we could have anticipated. Theeerie fact was that an invisible evil was surreptitiously growingin my spine, my abdomen and other parts of my body. My body wastrying to tell me something was wrong, it was setting off alarmbells. But right then and there I was not completely ready tolisten.

But why would I? Up until thenI had lived a very active life. I had never been a drinker(alcoholism in the family), I never smoked, didnt take drugs(including prescription drugs which I almost never took), I wasnormal weight, I ran on average 3 times per week, pushed weightsregularly, ate a healthy diet, managed my stress well (at least Ithought I did), had an active spiritual life, played an instrumentand had a happy marriage. Psychological research supports every oneof these behaviours as protective factors against disease or atleast they resist the onset of disease. So why should I be worriedabout getting cancer, especially at only 46 years of age. My way oflife should have prevented this. Hence my personal opinion was thatI was experiencing either a sprained muscle or a protruding disk,something related to running one of the many bush tracks I ran on aregular basis.

There is a track near to whereI live called the big easy. Its a lovely bush track which youcan bike, run or walk along, and it takes you through some reallyscenic and beautiful New Zealand bush. I used to frequent this areaas it has many paths up and down a large hill. What I would usuallydo is climb up to the peninsula - which took me about 20 minutes -and then spend another 20 or 30 minutes running down the longwinding track. It was a great outdoors activity, and I could getsome good exercise while enjoying the beautiful scenery.

On this particular day thetrack was a bit muddy in places, as it had rained recently notuncommon for New Zealand. There were big pools of water along thetrail and some really muddy slippery parts too. I was making goodtime down the hill, but found myself having to course correct onseveral occasions due to the slippery surface. I didnt notice anymajor strains, but I do remember a few gnarly moments when I couldhave slipped off the track and had to strain to stay on course. Asusual, I would finish my run, drink some water once I got back tomy car and then headed off to enjoy the rest of my day. However,from that night onwards my back gradually started to hurt more andmore until I could no longer take it and went off to seek somemedical advice.

A few days after seeing thedoctor at A&E, I arranged to see a physiotherapist to get someexercises to help with the pain. I was full of hope. Physios hadhelped me before with other injuries so I believed they could helpme now with this one. My physiotherapist conducted an examinationand after an initial assessment taught me a few exercises to helpsort out the problem. One of the main exercises was called thecobra. It was developed by a New Zealand physiotherapist and isconsidered one of the gold standard exercises for treating lowerback pain. Basically it is like doing a push up, but you keep yourlegs and torso flat on the ground and just press your upper bodyup. It really stretches the lower back, and Im very confident itwill work to alleviate normal back pain. In fact I still do theexercise now, almost daily. But of course I didnt have normal backpain back then and these exercises did nothing to alleviate thepain at all. In fact they seemed to make things worse.