Anyone that has suffered a herniated disc knows that the road to recovery can feel like a spiritual journey. The searing pain can be so extreme that it leads us to prayer. We may even question the very design of the human body. Why would an all-powerful, wholly good Creator of the Universe endow man with the capacity to experience so much agony? To fear the electric jolt caused by a simple sneeze. To fear getting a haircut, because of the torment caused by sitting in a barber’s chair. I suspect that even some of the most hardened atheists have issued silent prayers for the remission of such intense pain.
I speak from personal experience. When I suffered a herniated disc last year, I was barely able to get out of bed for two months. For six months after that, I rode to work stretched out in the back of an SUV because sitting in a car seat was still too painful. It was very depressing.
The biology of healing
I remember doubting that the disk material pressing on my sciatic nerve would ever shrink up enough to allow me to heal without surgery. As a physician I understood the theory. The extruded disc gets dehydrated and can be eaten up by scavenger cells called phagocytes. These cells are designed to look out for, and gobble up, any foreign matter floating around where it is not supposed to be. Then, because there is no longer any mechanical irritation of the nerve, the symptoms can begin to fade away.
Research has shown that most people improve without intervention after two years, but my MRI looked pretty bleak. The few neurosurgeons that reviewed it thought I would probably need surgery. The chunk of herniated disc material compressing the nerve roots was quite large and might not resolve spontaneously.
Was it possible that our intervertebral discs might have been poorly conceived? If one ill-advised effort to twist and pick up a dog, or a baby, or a vacuum cleaner can result in chronic pain and loss of mobility, maybe the anatomical blueprints were not subjected to enough quality control.
I tried physical therapy, massages, analgesics, and nothing really did much to ease the pain. An epidural injection helped a little bit, but not that much. I even prayed in my own informal way.
A shift in perspective
Fortunately, after six months my symptoms started to improve. On bad days, I still doubted that I would actually be able to avoid surgery, but at least I was somewhat functional. I kept trying to walk as much as possible and gave my body more time to heal.
By 9 to 12 months, I began to think that I might avoid the scalpel. I even started to think that the creation of the gelatinous core of our intervertebral discs was not such a terrible idea after all. Yes, the gel had a tendency to rupture and leak through the outer annular ring of the disc, but without that softer inner core, would we have the flexibility to play tennis? Would our early human ancestors be able to crouch down to hunt and forage for food? On the rare occasions that the gel did spill out into the epidural space we have a built-in, cellular cleaning crew to mop up the accident.
I even found myself thanking God and being grateful for my recovery. I realized that my abrupt change in attitude from doubt, back to gratitude, and even faith in the design of the spinal column seemed all too convenient. I was making a 180-degree cognitive turn way too quickly. It seemed glaringly inconsistent and needed some reflection and reconciliation.
Faith and function
Maybe the lesson is that faith is not intended to be perfectly erect and linear. Perhaps an occasional crisis of doubt is necessary to maintain a healthy sense of spirituality. When we suffer serious illness or injury it is natural to ask ourselves, “Why is this happening to me? Why do bad things happen to good people?” The exercise of thinking through some of these existential twists and turns may not yield any answers, but it does leave us more in touch with the great mystery of why we are here.
When acute back pain subsides, we are left with a better appreciation for how well our bodies actually do function, most of the time. We are reminded that we possess an amazing capacity to heal. It is as if the journey through an acute episode of doubt can help us cherish the miracles we often take for granted: simply being able to see and hear and talk, and just walk down the street without any pain.
Eric Dessner is an ophthalmologist.
