Roll to disbelieve

Plato's cave, or for old-school D&D players, "roll to disbelieve": my back has relapsed again, this time as sciatica, which means the pain in my leg is not actually pain in my leg -- in a sense it's not actually even pain at all, just a false signal caused by a tiny amount of pressure on the spinal column.

I've been occasionally successful at making my saving throw versus illusion. (Yeah, so I relate better to the gaming metaphor than the philosophical allegory. So much for highbrow.) Meanwhile am scheduling another MRI, just in case there's ongoing nerve damage. And am trying very very hard not to fall into self-pity: too many of my friends are dealing with chronic pain conditions of one sort or another; the one I have is actually pretty common; and with this one in particular it turns out that quote positive patient outlook unquote actually has more measurable effect on longterm outcome than surgery does. So: rolling that d20.

If you're the praying or the sending-of-healing-energy sort, I wouldn't say no to some of that.