Truth and Consequences Read Free Page A

causing continual pain. Sometimes these disks slid back into place after a while, the doctor told them, and sometimes they did not. There were, he was told, many different treatments that might help.
    For the next ten months, therefore, Alan consulted a series of health professionals. Each one approached his problem with new suggestions, and each time Alan and Jane hoped for a while that they had found the solution. But every treatment ended in disappointment, and some of them in rage and despair and increased pain. By Christmas Alan had seen what one of his colleagues had described as four physical therapists, three orthopedic surgeons, two neurologists, and an acupuncturist in a pear tree: a peculiar pale woman who worked in a cloud of smoky fruit-flavored incense and had inserted needles into Alan’s back and shoulders and then left him to lie in pain for half an hour listening to oriental music while she spoke on the phone in an unknown language. He had submitted to agonizing injections of cortisone and other substances, and practiced many different sets of exercises. He had sat and bounced on various inflatable devices, including one that looked like a dull black rubber donut and another that resembled a giant shiny electric-blue beach ball.
    In April, when nearly a year had passed without any change, Alan and Jane went to stay in a pretentious and unpleasant luxury hotel in a large city four hours’ drive away, so that he could undergo what was called a diskectomy. According to the surgeon, this operation was usually relatively painless and had a ninety-five percent chance of success. In Alan’s case, this turned out not to be so. After the operation, in spite of large doses of narcotic drugs, he was in continual agony, and his pain did not improve; rather it spread and worsened. As one of Jane’s less sympathetic friends said at the time, “Well, somebody has to be in the other five percent.” Before the operation the doctor had announced that usually there was immediate relief. At the follow-up interview afterward, however, he claimed that sometimes it took several months. But by this time, Alan did not believe a word the doctor said.
    Since then, he had treated his pain himself. He used heating pads and icepacks, and wore an electronic device called a Tenz Unit that was supposed to block nerve impulses and sometimes did so. He also took a great many prescription and nonprescription drugs. Unfortunately, the drugs all had side effects and led to new complications and ailments. Alan now suffered intermittently from constipation, severe headaches, insomnia, chills, leg pain, groin pain, weakness, and fatigue. The Tenz Unit had caused an ugly raw red rash to appear on both sides of his lower back. He was also eating too much, and not only at meals. Jane would come upon him in the pantry gobbling peanuts out of a can, or cookies from a cellophane package. Late at night she would sometimes hear a noise in the kitchen that could be mice or burglars and would tiptoe down the stairs to find Alan standing in the half dark in front of the fridge, spooning vanilla ice cream from the cardboard carton into his mouth.
    â€œJane?” called a grating voice from below. “What the hell is going on up there?”
    â€œJust coming.” She snatched three pillows of varying size and consistency off his side of their bed and ran downstairs.
    â€œSorry I yelled at you.”
    â€œThat’s all right,” Jane assured him, thinking at the same time that Alan now yelled at her, or at something else that had irritated him, more and more often. Afterward he always apologized, and seemed to assume that canceled out the yell.
    â€œAnd the ice,” Alan reminded her. “If you could get me the ice now.”
    â€œSure, right away.” She headed for the kitchen and opened the freezer, which over the last year had become crowded with refreezable plastic icepacks.
    â€œHere you are.”