Today, I faced down a demon and won.
Only a small one, you understand. One of my demons, which has haunted me these seven years, ever since the experience of giving birth to my son. It was a good outcome, no-one who sees my son in action will quarrel with that. But Phil and I had an experience which, while being in no way life threatening, or even threatening, did make us question some of the wonders of modern technology.
The technology in question is the small, unassuming machine which deals out electrical impulses to help back pain.
Here we call it a tens machine.
I first met this little machine in a cosy sitting room, in a house somewhere at the foot of Dartmoor. There, I was growing more matronly day by day, and expecting the birth of a lovely bouncing baby.
The whole pregnancy thing was new to me. In truth, I never really became accustomed to it. Nature compulsorily purchases you and turns you into a child-growing machine.
But what they never tell you is this: Nature never explains a thing. She never says, Oh, Yes, you might feel a little sick, poor child; tears may overtake you easily, my dear; men will look at you as if you are an alien from another planet, sweetheart, get used to it; or any other internal communications whatsoever.
No, it all just happens, unceremoniously, and we have to rely on the varied lore passed across the coffee tables of housewives, and Nature’s competent and world-wise deputy, The Midwife.
Mine sat me down and told me that I needed this machine to relieve the early stages of discomfort which I could expect from childbirth.
I nodded enthusiastically and trotted obediently to Boots The Chemist, to hire one of these wondrous pain relievers.
It consists of a couple of pads which one attaches to one’s lower back, where back pain tends to be. It has a dial. Keep it low, and the electrical impulses are lovely little tingles which relax one’s musicles perfectly. Turn it up and the tingles become more and more insistent.
I never, of course, turned it up that far.
It was a great help. I found it restful, relieving, restorative. It and I were buddies, which was good, because by this time no-one else could get close enough to me to offer any kind of group hug.
Three years later, I found I was once more with child, and there was no time for the tens machine.
Finally, a month before Felix was forecast to hit the ground running, he began to make himself plainly understood. He has never lost this capacity. It was evident he was becoming impatient for a little action, and he was coming out if that was all right with me. Or even, possibly, if it wasn’t.
Heaving a sigh, I grabbed the suitcase and headed for the labour ward.
A very clever midwife looked me up and down. Her ward was full to bursting because clearly every prospective child in the area felt the same way that day. She housed myself and my husband in an enchantingly pretty little room, and she took measures to calm me down so much that Felix would reconsider his decision.
And once we were ensconced in that lovely little place, she gave me a tens machine.
The way I work is this: I get to know something, work out how to operate it like a pro, and then when it goes out of use I forget all about it. Every vestige of what I knew is gone, ditched to make way for some new obsession or necessity.
I stared at the machine with the very same mixture of incomprehension that I had used on the Boots The Chemist  shop assistant three years before. I attached the pads to my back, and I sat back on the sumptuous bed.
I must have been watching an exciting television programme, or engaged in a particularly animated conversation with my husband, because about a minute after this, my hand slipped.
Round went the knob to the maximum setting. And I shot up in the air and began, vociferously, both to dance and to protest.
At times of pressure, is it not the cruellest joke of all that our ability to communicate opens the nearest window and jumps out?
That’s what airplane cockpit training is all about, isn’t it? An engine may have fallen off, but while we still have words in our body, it is right and fitting to use them to salvage what may be a very grim situation indeed.
My words became incomprehensible, if slightly comical,screeches. Phil was trying mightily to decipher these, and divine why his heavily pregnant wife was now doing a light-stepping tarantella round the chintzy room, but he drew a blank.
Eventually, by sizing up my overt non-verbal language, he managed to glean enough information to realise that the little unassuming machine was at fault.
We both grabbed the machine and tore it off. And sat there, breathless. I savoured the sensation of not being attached to over-enthusaiastic electrodes. The aftermath was strangely cathartic.
And then we settled down to work out what we would tell the midwife about the dishevelled state of her machine and its now less than perfect electrical wiring.
Today, I was about one minute late for my physiotherapy appointment.
Lower back pain followed a car accident, and I have been meaning to take the six proffered appointments for a while. Today was the day of the first, and I arrived huffing and puffing.
Whereupon the nice lady physio brandished a tens machine. Hold on there while I put these pads on, she said, and everything in me wanted to make a mad dash for the street from whence I had come.
But I was already out of puff, and she looked fit enough to tackle me and win. So I let her put them on.
Now, she said, how’s this? And she turned the dial.
I became a pastiche of that painting: you know, The Scream?
She read my body language and turned it down to the minimum setting. Then she gave me the controller, and said: you do it, then. Every time you feel comfortable, turn it up.
Reader, I did. I had ten minutes on that tens machine, controlling my minor demon with an electric dial. And when I walked out of the clinic, I was floating about two feet off the ground due to elation, electricity and a feeling of distinct self-worth.
I smiled foolishly all the way round Sainsbury’s.
Kate Shrewsday 
Oh my, we do live and learn, never heard of the tens machine.
There were times when I wish I never had, Cindy….
Interesting thing a TENS machine..(stands for, “transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation”) some folk swear by it and some of us found the thing worse than useless! I can remember ripping mine off in disgust as more than anything I found it irritating.
BUT I’m so glad it has given you some relief from your back pain.
Once the pain has been addressed you’ll be able to start doing some appropriate back strengthening exercises. I have recently bought ‘Treat you own Back’ (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Treat-Your-Back-Robin-McKenzie/dp/0959804927) which you may find useful. The physio I have used recently uses quite a few of his techniques. I know your back problem will be specific to your injury, so I’m not suggesting this supersedes individual advice, but may help for ‘maintenance’ afterwards
Pseu, that’s great, thank you! Always good to have an opinion from the medical professions….
Kate, I tap-danced through labour – involuntarily, really – and there was no TENS machine in sight. As you say, Nature never explains a thing.
Glad today’s session left you floaty!
Sunshine
Hi, Sunshine, lovely to hear from you! As Pseu says, you either love the TENS machine or you hate them. Odd contraptions. Hope the back is great these days though. I find I need a strong spine for those London pavements…
Yikes! You had me experiencing the pangs of labor there for a few sentences, Kate. I’m glad you got some relief for your back. How interesting that this machine is used for labor. I had not heard of a TENS machine before, though I think something like it was indeed used on my own aching back at one time.
Erk! Sorry about the flashbacks Penny…not something any of us would care to repeat! It does help with backache, but the DIY electricity administration does feel very oddball indeed.
There’s must be a reason this device keeps popping into your life at such poignant moments as well. A letter to the manufacturer? A new patent created by you Phil? That we must all face those demons?
Either way the contraption looks a bit science project gone mainstream…the perfect gadget for this post….loved it!
Ps. Back pain. Oye. Go easy with it. Take care.
Will do UE 😀 Thankyou! That’s an idea- a ‘leitmotif’ which pops up at significant moments. I’m not sure I want it any more than I have to, though. I think the fact it is a flow of electricity with a dial has always given me the heebie-jeebies. Shock-yourself-therapy. But the absurdity of the contraption redeems it. Phil and I can’t help laughing raucously at the whole business.
I’ve never had the “pleasure” of TENS ~ glad you’ve mastered the dials.
Thanks Nancy- however, a word of caution: I can always forget completely again.
TENS unit – I’ve never heard of it being used during labor – I wonder if we do that in U.S. Back in the day of me being a psychotherapist, though, I had a client with severe back pain because of literally “breaking her back” when she caught a many-too-pounds-heavy laundry bag on duty at her job. The TENS unit gave her huge relief and she wore it a lot of the time.
I’ve been blessed with no back pain in my lifetime except for five days last August when all of a sudden I experience an inflamed nerve. My own diagnosis!! I think it might have been caused by too many hours in one day raising my hands over my head to braid grape vines together. Pain so great, it made me groan involuntarily. WOW, the power of the body to change the course of our day.
Glad you’re reunion with TENS offered relief this time.
You’re right, Deborah – the body can change our course so easily. I’m not sure I would want to wear the unit so much of the time…I have Mary Shelley’s distrust of electricity 😀 I didn’t mention, at the end of my post, that the clever physio, and her massage techniques, probably clinched the deal. Humans are so clever 🙂
I’ve had it used at the physiotherapist, and always felt the better for it. luckily I’ve never been in labour so i can’t relate there
Glad it works for you ;-D And the other is highly overrated.
Memories, memories… 🙂
After being in a car accident that messed up my neck, one physiotherapist gave me a tens machine to use when the pain became unbearable – Hah! Even at the lowest setting the thing made my neck muscles spasm, which made my head jerk toward my shoulder at which time the muscles shrieked – I couldn’t, the pain left me gasping – as the vertebrae crunched. The darn man insisted on finding the right position for the pads, until, he noticed the look on my face, which told him: one more touch of that dial and we dance the dance of death. And I would have happily dealt some kind of the death blow, even if it meant I could never turn my head again for as long as I lived. That was in the eighties, I still have neck problems – some of the headaches that lay me low stem from that neck damage, and our current weather plays its unwelcome part.
After all that, I’m delighted the nasty little machine brought you such relief 🙂
A fellow TENS sufferer! When the dial is in someone else’s hands I get very jumpy indeed 😀 It is, when all is said and done, a nasty little machine.
Thanks for that wonderful comment Liz.
Have you tried microwave heated wheat bags as a local source of heat to reduce those spasms?
I use one from this range;
http://www.amazinghealth.co.uk/wheat-bag.htm
thanks Pseu, we do have wheat bags but they’re shaped like giant bunny rabbits, and therefore a little knobbly. Might check out your range…
A chiropractor used a tens machine on me years ago, but I’ve never heard of one used during labor. I remember once telling him to turn it down. It didn’t hurt, but I didn’t want to see what a higher setting felt like. There are some days, however, when I’d like to have one at my disposal.
Regarding Nature: It’s too bad we don’t come with an instruction manual.
Yes, what was Nature thinking of? Life would be so much simpler if only a definitive version existed…
How goes the back?
Gingerly, thank you 🙂
Sympathies
Thanks, friend 🙂