I Could Tell You What My Sitting Pain Feels Like, But You Wouldn’t Understand

Every time I’ve tried to explain what my sciatica feels like, I walk away from the conversation feeling like I’ve failed. Which is vexing.

I spent my high school years competing in speech and drama, my college years studying English, my early adult years writing for newspapers and selling software, and my adult career in corporate academic publishing. Communication is not my weakness. Why, then, is it impossible for me to describe this thing I have?

How Can I Put This?

I’ve tried every approach I can think of to explain what I’m dealing with. I’ve used my English-major literary flare with metaphors: “It feels like I’ve got a length of electric fence strung through my leg.”

I’ve tried the corporate, outcome-oriented approach: “I sleep two to four hours a night, and my legs are swollen. I’d like to be able to sit down again.”

I’ve tried medical pain survey jargon: “Sometimes there’s a tingling or electric sensation along my sciatic nerve. Less often, I feel a burning or stabbing sensation.”

I’ve tried using the four rules for polite conversation I learned in linguistics (be honest, be informative, be relevant, and be clear): “This is ruining my life. Please, is there anything you can give me? I need to sleep.”

But at the end of each conversation, I walk away, knowing I’ve failed to get my point across.

Once, a well-meaning woman at a work event saw me leaning against a pillar and said, “I’m sorry you’re in pain.” I thanked her for her kindness, but I found her sympathy out of place. If she really understood, she would realize I was standing to avoid pain.

Once, my boss insisted that I go to a company social event, even though it was off-site, and the only way to get there was by car. (Fortunately, the admin assistant balked, and I didn’t have to go.) I suspected that if he really knew what I was going through, he would never ask such a thing.

Once, a doctor who couldn’t offer any other treatments wrote me yet another referral to pain management. I had seen this doctor several times before; he knew as much about my condition as anyone. I explained, once again, that my problem wasn’t pain. It was cramping. And I doubted very much that pain management could help me.

Words Fail Even Great Writers

I take some small comfort in knowing that more eloquent writers than me have struggled to spin their physical suffering into a compelling story. In her 1926 essay “On Being Ill,” Virginia Woolf wrote:

“Finally, among the drawbacks of illness as a matter for literature there is the poverty of the language. English, which can express the thoughts of Hamlet and the tragedy of Lear, has no words for the shiver and the headache. It has all grown one way. The merest schoolgirl, when she falls in love, has Shakespeare, Donne, Keats to speak her mind for her; but let a sufferer try to describe a pain in his head to a doctor and language at once runs dry. There is nothing ready made for him. He is forced to coin words himself, and, taking his pain in one hand, and a lump of pure sound in the other (as perhaps the inhabitants of Babel did in the beginning) so to crush them together that a brand new word in the end drops out. Probably it will be something laughable.”

From “On Being Ill,” published in The New Criterion, 1926

Woolf had a history of both physical and mental illness, and it’s impossible to know the ratio in which she combine them for this essay. Nevertheless, she sees something I’ve run up against myself. No matter how many times I say, “Charley horse,” or how often the listener has experienced cramps, I can’t seem to convey how devastating my situation actually is.

I can’t seem to convey how these cramps creep up on me quietly, and strike like a SWAT team. I can’t explain why I’ve become more terrified of them than I am of death, or why, in the moment, I would give up every cherished memory to make them go away.

I sometimes hope that my actions will speak for me when words fail. When I stand for ten hours straight, it’s a demonstration that I prefer the pain of standing over the pain of sitting. When I insist on a walk late at night in a dangerous neighborhood, I show that I prefer an external threat to my safety over an internal torture.

But even these physical signs are often misread. People assume standing is no longer painful for me, that I’ve gotten used to it. They assume I’m reckless, or naïve to go out by myself.

Do I Understand Other People’s Pain?

On the recent Sitting Disabilities Survey I conducted, I asked respondents, “Please describe your pain. (E.g., Is it a sharp stabbing, or a dull ache? Does it radiate? Does it disappear when you stop sitting? Does it keep you up at night?)”

I admit I was asking out of selfishness. I wanted to see if other sitting-disabled folks had found better ways to describe what was going on in their bodies.

Their answers ranged from the eloquent to the succinct:

• Depending on where it is, it’s often an electric kind of pain. I get sharp and dull pains every day. It never fully goes away, there’s always some kind of pain. Lying down helps but I need to lie in very specific positions and I need to roll over regularly or my body will stiffen.
• Different types of pain. One constant nagging pulling pain, radiating from my back over the back of my whole right leg. Also shooting pain, electric shocks like lighting.
• When sitting or standing still, the constant pain gets worse very fast, making me literally sick to my stomach. After sitting or standing too long, a hour or so later, the awful shooting pains start. When I sit or stand to long, muscle spasms start. Also very difficult to pee or poo because all my muscle become cramped in my pelvis
• All of the above 😉 it’s a constant dull ache, sharp pain on sitting with muscle and nerve impairment (it is harder to move after sitting) and constant pain at night. Sleeping is challenging and is the only time I take medication.
• Stabbing and dull, it is better if I lay down flat
• Varies from acute when sitting to dull ache that grows unbearable over the night while laying
• Sharp stabbing in vagina, aches and spasms of pelvic muscles. Nerve pain immediate, muscle pain delayed. Since getting the neuromodulator the pain does not keep me awake.
• Nerve pinch all the way down one leg. Feels a bit like ‘hit my funny bone’ pain.
• Dull burning pain that intensifies to sharp stabbing pain after sitting. Radiates around my hip bone. Takes about 10-15 minutes after sitting to remove pain. And usually does not keep me up at night.
• Burning, stabbing 24/7
• Symphony: deep& pulling pain, high lightening strikes, mid level shearing & tearing pain. Cramps, bugs crawling, burning pain
• Stops sleep, painful, sharp
• Strong ache, usually gets word by afternoon.
• Yes often wakes me in the night

I read these answers slowly. I summoned my powers of empathy to see if I could make my nerves tingle from their imagined pain.

I nodded my head when I read that someone only took medication to sleep. My chest tightened when I imagined my pelvis cramping up on the toilet, and I winced when I read, “Sharp stabbing in vagina.” I liked the evocative description of “hit my funny bone” pain, and paused, impressed, to consider the symphony metaphor.

When I concentrated, I felt like I could understand each person’s pain. But did I? There was no answer sheet, no way to compare my reaction against the reality. I’m sure there were things I didn’t really understand, and things I couldn’t understand, because of the dissimilarity to my own experiences.

Even if the sensations I imagined were accurate, they slipped off like a loose dressing gown when my mind wandered. That, I knew, was not true for the owners. Someone would be woken from a deep sleep by a sharp stab of pain, or be interrupted by a burning leg while they were having a tense exchange with their partner. Their pain wouldn’t be a thought experiment. It would be an inescapable component of their reality.

My Response to Virginia Woolf

I can never really understand the influenza that inspired the essay, let alone the turmoil that led her to walk into the river with pockets full of rocks. But I was struck by her gallant attempt to describe an experience which, it would seem, is inexpressible even to someone whose powers of description are renowned.

Virginia Woolf was a genius, who pioneered stream of consciousness, and who feminists quote on tote bags. Even so – and I will defend my position to the bitter end here – “On Being Ill” could use a lot more paragraph breaks.