Ageing Spine – Harbinger of An Unyielding Nature?

 

Neurophysician, whom I consulted for backache, ordered MRI scan of the spine. Scan threatens to reveal much more than I had expected to learn.

Spine is the seat of a man’s character. It is subjected to superlative praise and humiliating slanders in social parlance. Ignominy of being called spineless – although, often behind your back – chafes endlessly. A ramrod spine hugely elevates the stature of the person. Spine bears the weight of the body and the spirit, alike.

My changing spine might presage remodelling of my nature. This worries me.

Radiologist said, my spine has lost the natural curves. Does my straightened spine foreshadow a staid, unchanging behaviour, robbed of its naturally meandering nature? This condemns me to an insipid life of inflexible dreariness.

Wise aver that chameleonic personality is a blessing in our world. Gottfried Willhelm Leibniz, German mathematician, and philosopher of early eighteenth century, opined that we live in the best of all possible worlds. Human nature that has seamlessly adapted to this perfect world must be flawless. A rigid spine threatens to disturb this delicate harmony in my personality and deny me the fruits of a protean nature.

Physician instructed me to avoid activities where I must bend. Now, I do not like the creepy creatures. And do not recommend their form of locomotion when required to merely bend. But to bend gracefully in the mild breeze of societal demand is a trait that lends beauty to life. This appeal in my nature, I fear, will now recede.

Doctor also informed that changes in my spine would have taken a long time to develop, perhaps decades. In this insidious beginning, people in family have discovered the cause of my occasional intransigence; ‘No wonder you are so obstinate, so opinionated. It is in your bones. MRI does not lie.’

Friends are delighted to find newer reasons for my scepticism – that I have sharpened after decades of reading popular science – ‘You had it in you to be so intolerant of alternate views.’

‘These are degenerative changes. A little early perhaps, a little more severe, but quite run-of-the-mill at your age.’

I have not only been condemned with a degenerate unwavering stance; but am being denied the solace of ruing that my spine has aged prematurely. Changes are in sync with my age.

‘You need to exercise your back,’ advised a spine-surgeon.

Do I? I am sceptic of this advice. I have lived successfully for nearly sixty years. But for the back, no organ of my body is exercised more, as I weave my way through the vicissitudes of a work-a-day life.

‘Do not flex the spine. Controlled extension may be beneficial,’ further adds the surgeon.

Flexion is bending forward and extension the reverse. I am not averse to leaning forward to garner gains for myself. But bending over backwards to please others? At my age? My spine plans an ignoble dotage for me.

Surgeon looked at my glum face and offered a hopeful advice, ‘If there be need, we can fix the errant vertebrae. It is a safe surgery today’.

My spine would be steeled in a fixed, uncompromising posture for life. Would it steel my character too? And deny me the gains of a flexible back in a world that values timidity and a pusillanimous bearing.

I fret my future as I bemoan the loss of my supple back.