Chapter Ten - Part Four.
In the fall of 1996 I was hit with sciatica. It left me in terrible pain in my right leg. Also my life was made worse by my doctor who refused to see anything serious in my infirm condition. I was lucky. I found a new doctor who helped cure me. Doctor John Robinson was an immigrant like myself. He was a cheerful physician with a sense of humour who came from Ireland. He had practised in Canada, first in Newfoundland and then in Ontario. Finally he'd ended up in Vancouver.
"You've got sciatica," he told me. "The femoral nerve that comes out of your back and runs down the front of your leg is causing the pain." He advised me to go home and rest. Then he sent me to a specialist.
Friends like Dick Prinsep and Rodger Garbutt phoned me many times during my time of staying at home. Sandy Cameron,, a tall now retired teacher, and the partner of Jean Swanson, came to see me. June Black, an energetic member of the Unitarian Church phoned me often. Suddenly she was gone. A car hit her and killed her on Granville Street. This happened while I was staying inside. I didn't learn how she'd died - or if she was dead - until I came back to the Unitarian Church.
Finally, Maureen Rivington, a former friend of Eric Sommer phoned me regularly. By now Eric had left my life. Yet Maureen and I had become close friends, and her many phone calls helped me connect with the world outside.
Then one Monday morning in January 1997 I got up from the armchair I'd lain in for over two months. No pain ran down my right leg. I couldn't believe it and felt as if a miracle had touched me. For the next four years femoral pain and sciatica wracked my body but never to the extent of my first attack.
"I have come back from the dead," I told Sandy Cameron whom I met in the street a few weeks after the pain vanished. "
"I can't believe it," he replied. "You look so much better."
The 1990's had been a creative but disruptive decade for me. It had been full of ups and downs. Yet it ended on a positive note.
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