I have a number of diagnoses. Failed back syndrome, a medical term that means just what it says and suggests surgery didn’t help. A “bone stimulator” was implanted during one surgery to encourage growth between pieces of cadaver bone and my own vetebrae, but too much bone grew in around my sciatic nerve, giving me sciatica, or a burning sensation from my rear down my left leg to my toes, which often are numb and tingling (I take another medication for nerve pain). My left leg has so much atrophied muscle that it drags behind my right and I had a pronounced limp, but the fentanyl patch largely has eliminated that by providing more steady pain relief. I am disabled, but no longer outwardly appear so, which, along with my age, probably accounts for the daily dirty looks people shoot me when I park in handicapped spaces.