My appointment with the people at SSDI is on May 15th. I thought I might trawl around some of the sites where folks with back pain gather to see if I could get any tips about the SSDI process. I ended up getting really annoyed at some of the postings here from people who are suffering from various ailments that are causing back pain. While a few of them make me thankful that I'm not as bad off as they are (people with morphine pumps and implants to block nerve impulses who can't have any more surgeries because of built up scar tissue, people with previously misdiagnosed conditions or botched procedures), I honestly want to *shake* some of these other posters! One woman was ranting on (in all caps, no less) about how she couldn't walk for more than 30 minutes at a time without pain. A man was lamenting that his recurring pain would take "a few days" to subside. Another man was complaining of pain that had forced him to curtail his daily walk to 2 miles.

WTF?!

I can't walk to the bathroom or kitchen anymore without wrenching pain and leg weakness, and my feet feel like they're falling asleep all the time. I have to lean on Tyler or pieces of furniture as I go. Sometimes I don't leave the house, not even to stoop sit with Tony, for days at a time. Walk for 30 minutes? I'd sell my soul at this point to walk for 30 minutes without pain or to have this whole mess subside in a few days.

Perhaps we back pain sufferers should stick together; perhaps we should have our own version of the Blue Wall of Silence, where any back pain is *all* back pain and no one who has it doubts anyone else who says they have it. If one of us has it, we all have it; that sort of thing.

I think maybe I've been watching too much NYPD Blue ...