I shouldn’t be writing about Diane without her permission – lord knows she fusses when I post a photo without her approval – but I’m going to anyway.

On our way way home from Kansas, I noticed Diane ejecting herself from the van in the very same manner Brian adopted during his one and only eighteen hour drive with me to Indiana. Flick the door open and fall out with palms and knees flat on the pavement. By the time Diane had arrived in Acton, her back wasn’t just stiff, it hurt.

Even though I’d subjected my lower L’s to the American health care system in the mid-nineties, with eventual success, Diane assumed hovering to be the best medicine. The one man whose opinions I most trust, and whom I’d hoped would steer Diane to her doctor, affirmed her plan. I simply shook my head.

Diane, like an Olstein acolyte, knew she’d eventually feel better -except she didn’t – instead she devolved. Picture those charts that chronicle man’s gradual evolution from fish, to gorilla, to Lucy, to Neanderthal and finally to fully upright, only in reverse. Even with her inverted golf club for support, I figured she’d soon be looking up at her mother.

Diane’s new posture flowed from her pain. It hurt her to turn, to get out of bed, to bend down, to walk, and even, or mostly, to sit. All of this seemed acceptable for weeks, until last Wednesday when she crawled out of bed, and struggled to use the toilet. It’s funny how one word – bedpan – can focus a woman’s attention.

Yesterday, after Thursday’s office visit, where her internist diagnosed her “ligament strain” (again, I shook my head), and offered a plethora of pills, she lurched to her first physical therapy appointment. With a fairly-firm new diagnosis of a slipped disc, Diane blissfully endured an hour of electrical stimulation, heat and massage.