Sunday. Malmö. Not Madeira.

If you saw me right now, you’d be wondering what the heck I’m up to. I’m writing these loosely thought-out lines in bed, lying face down, naked, on a rainy Malmö afternoon.

To get into a somewhat reasonable writing position, I’ve propped myself up on three large pillows.

The radiator, which normally sits at 1, is now cranked up to 4, and there’s a faint, yet pungent, smell of mustiness in the room that usually only gets tolerated when one of us has been floored by a stubborn cold.

On my right, bare buttock, there are two black electrodes attached. Further down, on the outer side of my right thigh, two more are glued.

The electrodes are square and look like large bandaids, with the distinct difference that they’re connected by thin wires to a small, plastic remote control with a display and several pushbuttons.

At the top of the tiny screen, it reads “Massage,” and by pressing one of two arrows, I can increase or decrease the electrical tension that makes the muscles in my right buttock and down my thigh either contract or relax.

You can hardly see the muscles moving under the skin, but if I increase the current enough, Charlotte says she can see tiny “ripples” on the skin around the electrodes.

Down at the bottom of my right leg, there’s a heating pad wrapped around my foot, held in place by the belt from my old, worn-out bathrobe.

Without the heating pad, the foot is completely numb and cold. It mostly feels like a heavy lump of ice, and my normally graceful stride is currently a distant memory.

On the bedside table, there are two kinds of tiger balm, a tube and a jar, along with a large glass bowl where packs of Advil, Paraflex, Etoricoxib, and Dolcontin are jumbled together.

I don’t like looking at the pile of meds, much less taking them, since all they’ve managed to do so far is make me a) constipated, b) overly loose, or c) foggy-headed, and a messy combination of two out of the three.

None of the pills have helped me with the pain, which is rooted in my lower back and then shoots down my leg, all the way to my, currently, thawed big toe.

Somehow, by some unexplained mechanism, I’ve managed to pinch the otherwise fairly anonymous sciatic nerve, and it seems it’ll take a miracle to un-pinch the bastard.

I’ve been dragging myself around with this paralyzing condition for nearly four weeks, and I’m literally and figuratively sick of it.

Unlike the grinding ache that arthritis brings, and which I’ve patiently lived with for over a decade, the sharp pain triggered by the sciatic nerve is an infernal hell.

It’s nearly impossible to describe pain; it’s such an intensely personal experience.

But try imagining someone sticking a long, rusty screwdriver into the middle of one buttock and then twisting it in wide circles with powerful motions. Now imagine they left the tool wedged there, so you couldn’t walk, stand, sit, or lie down without it pressing deeper.

That’s how it’s been for almost a month for me.

You can probably picture all the situations where that screwdriver makes it hard to do normal things without either squealing like a stuck pig or whining like an old wildebeest.

Whether the situation is akin to a month-long labor I’ll leave unsaid… but in a delivery ward, at least there’s nitrous oxide – which I’m thoroughly convinced provides much better pain relief than anything in the arsenal of pharmaceuticals piled on my bedside table.

One step forward, two steps back.

The worst part has been the uncertainty. None of the healthcare providers I’ve spoken to or met with know more than I do about how long this will last. Yet there’s no shortage of well-meaning, but unfortunately completely useless, advice (and some outright quackery).

Almost as bad is how some days I think I can see a glimmer of improvement, only to have a severe relapse the next day, where moving more than a few meters at a time is nearly impossible.

Even just standing up to relieve myself can be so painful I’d rather embrace dehydration. Not to mention when I occasionally have to sit down….

Right now, I’m rather alone with my pain. “Nurse Charlotte” has fled the field hospital (the bedroom) for warmer, less whiny climes. Who can blame her?

My dear wife truly deserves a sunny holiday from her temporarily gray, pain-ridden husband.

Hell, I need a holiday from myself.

Today, I once again slowly made my way to our local store. It’s become my daily training routine since the nerve got pinched.

As usual, I had to pause a couple of times along the way to let the tingling in my buttock, leg, and foot ease off a bit.

I try to think positively; since I can at least manage to walk slowly and with a slight waddle to and from the store, I can’t reasonably be that sick. But as an occasional hypochondriac, I’m still not fully convinced.

The past few mornings, I’ve done a stretching session with various yoga and qigong poses, and even though it hasn’t led to any noticeable improvement, it’s felt good to move carefully without it paining me too much.

I’m now hoping that the combination of gentle exercise, the heating pad, tiger balm, and electrodes will get that otherwise quiet sciatic nerve to relax again and eventually return to whatever purpose it actually serves.

Not least, I hope that when Charlotte returns from Madeira in a week, she’ll be spared the sight of me lying on my stomach with electrodes attached to my bare butt.

For even after 26 years of marriage, that view can’t be something she longs to come home to. Rather the opposite; she’s half-seriously threatened to extend her stay on the island.