Once, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who spent 10 years in prison, told me: the main thing there is not to get sick. No one will treat you. If you get seriously ill, you die. Any zek (prison inmate) will confirm the same truth for you, and will обязательно add a story from personal experience. About how someone in his cell got appendicitis, writhed in pain for two days and begged to be taken to the hospital, and they only took him away when he turned green and started losing consciousness. Now I’m learning that truth for myself. This unpleasant thing happened: my back started hurting badly. I can neither bend nor straighten up. Those who followed my court hearings may have noticed that I never sit in the “aquarium” and instead walk around for hours. That’s because I could either stand or lie down. Apparently, I pinched a nerve from constantly sitting hunched over in prison transport vans and narrow holding compartments. I kept quiet about it. Unpleasant, of course, but not fatal — they’ll treat it. But they don’t. When I was transferred, I started to worry and began writing every day: hello, it hurts badly. Send a doctor here or give me some medicine. They don’t. Now it’s already hard and very painful even to get out of bed. They take my complaints, but do nothing. A week ago, the prison doctor examined me and started giving me 2 ibuprofen tablets, but I still don’t know the diagnosis. Exactly as people with back problems describe it, the complication has spread into my leg, and whole sections of it have lost sensation. If you put weight on my right leg, you just fall. That’s a little upsetting — over this time I’ve gotten rather used to my right leg. I’d rather not part with it. On the other hand, if life gives you lemons, make lemonade. I can already picture myself walking around the prison camp with a stylish cane. Inside it, of course, I’ll hide a sharp blade. Or maybe with a crutch. That I could easily throw, turning it into a deadly weapon. But the ideal option is a wooden leg. Remember my metaphor about prison? A space voyage. Well then, in that case I’ll become a space pirate! On a wooden leg! I’ll be able to speak in lines from *Treasure Island*, like: “Some feared Pew, others Billy Bones, but me… me Flint himself feared.” You have to admit, that would be cool. The only thing is, I don’t know where to get a pirate parrot for my shoulder. Well, maybe some will fly over our prison camp, and then I’ll catch one. Stay healthy 😉