The 100th Anniversary of Virgina Woolf’s “On Being Ill”

Author Darcey Steinke writes about the world of pain and how it affects those who suffer and those who love them.

I was lying in my attic bedroom reading a book, when my husband came up to speak with me. I wriggled over to make room for him and heard a muffled sound like a wet branch snapping. As I stood up, an electric bolt of pain shot down my leg.

Time suspended. After an x-ray, I learned that the disc between L5 and S1 in my lumbar spine had burst, the gelatinous core herniated out, pinning down the nerve root and driving pain down my right hip into my leg. My physiatrist kept insisting that if I used the elliptical on its most difficult setting and did my clam shells, I’d improve.

My life shrunk. 

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