Waking up each morning in pain was not on my bingo card for 2025. In fact, for me, prior to this, pain was usually the matter of a stubbed toe or occasional headache. But in January, after a long bed-bound bout of the flu, I found myself with a nagging pain in my left buttock that radiated down the same leg – and it wouldn’t go away.

It would wake me up in the night as I tried unsuccessfully to get comfortable. It would greet me in the morning – a mean, pinching pain that could only be relieved by getting up and walking around. After X-rays, my doctor informed me that osteoarthritis had been found in my spine, and this was probably causing sciatica – painful compression of the sciatic nerve. Years of desk-bound work, sometimes seated in unsuitable chairs, had caused irreversible wear

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