Exorcising
Chronic lower back pain, a common complaint among adults, has no surefire remedy. I can go about my daily routine, working through the stabbing pangs of level six or seven out of ten. I have a fairly high pain threshold but when the bite exceeds that status, it becomes the loudest voice in my body, demanding attention.
By 1985, I had my share of unsuccessful physical therapy and chiropractic experiences. Pain meds weren’t doing their job. Lotions and salves were a waste of my money. I was in distress, willing to try anything. I remembered driving by a seedy-looking storefront in a not-so-nice part of town a few miles from home. What attracted my attention was a handmade sign in the window – ACUPUNCTURE.
Maybe, just maybe, this would be my cure, my achy body shrieked at me, drowning out all other thoughts. I parked on the street, as close to the place as I could find. Struggling to get out of my car, I trudged closer, small steps, hunched forward. I approached the dirty window, went in, passed the warped and water-stained placard. In a few moments, a skinny old man wearing a white shirt and white pants emerged from a door in the back. Exchanging a few words, he asked me to return in thirty minutes. I didn’t realize that the wrinkly human, years past retirement age, was the pain shaman. I writhed back in my car for that long half-hour, reentering the building only to see a burly girl in sweats thanking the old fellow as she left.
After a short interview, without any paperwork, the fellow said he could help me. He asked for $75 cash in advance. It seemed like a lot, but my misery was ready to be challenged by anything. He escorted me into the back, an unkempt room, under yellow flickering fluorescent lights with warped paneled walls. A tattered chiropractic adjustment table was beside an antique cabinet. It was more like a Halloween haunted house than a medical treatment room. Discolored padding leaked through the cracked and torn vinyl on the examination table. Neither duct tape nor exam table paper concealed the pitiful condition of the ramshackle fixture. He instructed me to lay face down where presumably the previous patient was a few minutes before.
I complied. At least I didn’t have to remove my shirt and plop my bare skin on the unsanitary eyesore. He pulled my arms and legs a little, weakly stuck his fingers into my spine, and pushed at my hips not relieving my pain at all. I didn’t feel like his heart was in it.
I’m a little afraid of needles, especially in a dirty place, so I had no objection when the old geezer said he wanted to do something else instead of acupuncture. And then the weird stuff started happening. I turned my head to see the old guy open his cabinet and remove a box that looked like somebody’s grandma’s spice rack. The forty or so “spice bottles” with screw-on lids had typewritten labels which appeared to be affixed years before with yellowed scotch tape. The smudged names on the jars were body innards. Some of the names I saw were appendix, bladder, colon, gallbladder, goiter, liver, pancreas, and spleen. Each bottle was filled about three-fourths with what looked like water. The setup, like everything else in the place, was dilapidated.
I was in agony, ready to try anything. What would I get for seventy-five bucks? The oldster got me face down again, took a bottle from his case and waved it around over my back like working a Ouija board, then another bottle, then another. I lost count. I was praying to myself that his gyrations would exorcise my pain. He explained that the potions inside the jars worked right through the glass, right through my shirt. Eventually he proclaimed that my goiter and spleen were the causes of my suffering.
I followed him up front, where he offered me the antidote, Formula 4, for another $35 cash. My discomfort screamed at me to make the additional purchase, a one-half ounce of oily kerosene-smelling stuff in a small dark glass bottle with an eyedropper top. Its multi-colored label was written in Chinese. I was prescribed five drops under my tongue every morning until empty, a challenge to administer without retching. I ran out of that awful elixir in less than a month.
Weeks after I emptied the tiny bottle, the back pain became tolerable. It still flares up, unexpectedly, now and then, but never severe enough for me to return to the worn-out old coot.
© Mike Marks
Growing up in the Midwest, Mike Marks was the middle of five children born in a six-year span. He was taught writing structures by Illinois Poet Laureate Gwendolyn Brooks. He received his bachelor’s degree in creative writing from Kansas State University. Now, with over a hundred published poems and stories, Marks lives in Akron, Ohio with his wife, Anita, and their five children.
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