#She is so cryptic. and gives the other three heart attacks weekly

[monards]

SSLLEEEPLESS YOU BEAUTIFUL BEAUTIFUL GENIUS I LOVE YOU AND I NEED EVERYONE ELSE TO READ THIS. OHHGUUMYYGOODDDDD

the more I think of hexenzirkel modern au the funnier it gets

[backstrom-for-selke]

My Chronic Pain Story

TRIGGER WARNING: death, serious injury, surgery, sexual harassment/assault, drug use (painkillers, marijuana), depression, suicide, weight shaming

I had just started getting back into the one thing in my life that made me feel truly happy: horseback riding. I had a job and my own car, so I was able to pay for lessons once a week and drive myself out to the stable I rode at. I was excelling faster than I ever had in my monthly on-and-off lessons since I was a young girl. Gone were the days when I would stare in envy at the rich girls who could afford to ride every day (some who complained about it, even) because I was putting myself first. I was paying my way through my own hobbies. It was my first taste of real independence.

Every Christmas and birthday, I would ask for checks to go toward extra lessons or a new pair of boots or a new helmet. I was obsessed with this, like many girls my age, but as I got older, I didn’t grow out of it. It’s a love that I still feel, and I have to say, there is nothing like mourning the loss of the one place in your life that you feel at peace. For me, that was in the saddle.

I fractured my spine just two weeks past my 17th birthday. It was one of the worst days of my life even beyond the obvious reason; my car broke down, I was late for school, I had one of my first panic attacks, and I was 45 minutes late for my lesson (because of the car breaking down) which cut me down to just half an hour of riding time (out of the kindness of my instructor’s heart). 

I finally arrived on a blustery March afternoon to a fully tacked, 19hh Percheron/Thoroughbred cross, grandson of Secretariat, and the same horse I had been riding in the last three weeks of bi-weekly lessons, and from the moment I got on, I knew something was wrong. He was usually a relatively excitable horse, but he had his ears pinned back and was prancing around like he was some sort of show pony - not at all the hefty horse I was used to riding. 

We usually started out at a walk, but Indy (the horse) had other ideas and broke out at a lively trot. Clouds were rolling in, and if I recall correctly, there was a snowstorm on the way. He shied away from the gate halfway down the long part of the arena, so my instructor figured he might be acting weird because of the weather, so we started him heading toward the barn (the other direction). He shied from the other gate, too, but this time, he took off at a full gallop down the center of the arena, blowing past jumps set up in the middle and heading straight for the other end. 

I remained relatively calm. This wasn’t the first time I had ridden a spooked horse, but it had been a while, and I was already having a terrible day. In hindsight, I should have stayed home because horses are emotional creatures; they can feel what you’re feeling, and my foul mood likely didn’t help matters at all. We had recently practiced an emergency stop where you hold both the reins in one hand and tug as hard as you can with the other on one side, forcing the horse to turn his head and body abruptly. I tried it. Several times. He didn’t budge. 

I stayed on relatively well until he took an abrupt turn to the right. I only had one safety stirrup on (I lived in the middle of nowhere, and I was lucky to even have one), and thank god it was on the foot that got stuck. As I was coming out of the saddle, my foot got stuck, and I did the splits mid-air, but I don’t remember this part. I don’t remember much at all from it, really.

What I do remember is seeing the ground rising to meet my face, a hard hit against my shoulder as I braced for impact, and then nothing. I remember thinking, even as I was heading for the ground, that this was my fault for being stubborn and riding that day. At no point did I blame the instructor - or even the horse - for the accident. I knew how empathetic horses were, and I got on anyway. I was at fault. 

For those who don’t ride, it’s common practice to sign a liability waiver before beginning lessons with any instructor or school. It basically says that if you are injured or die during your lessons, your instructor can’t be held liable for medical expenses/be legally responsible for it in any way. A common theme is that, “horses are unpredictable and thousand-pound creatures, and their actions can result in injury or death” and that we “ride at [our] own risk”. 

I remember each of those contracts that I and my mother signed, and I always took it to heart because it made sense: the instructor in no way pushed me beyond what I was capable of, nor did they intentionally spook the horse. They were no more at fault than the horse was for following its instincts. I, however, should have known better. 

I came to on the ground seconds later with my legs in front of me and an unbearable pain in my back. I screamed about it hurting, and I knew to immediately try to wiggle my toes to make sure I wasn’t paralyzed. I wasn’t. I took a breath of relief, but that didn’t negate the pain at all. After the panic was gone and my instructor was rushing toward me, I stopped screaming and listened to her tell me that her husband was on his way with the truck. She knew that an ambulance ride was a private expense and likely wouldn’t be covered by insurance - she also knew that an ambulance likely wouldn’t be able to get out to where we were, so we were on our own for getting to the hospital. 

This was the point that my parents had the most problems with, and in hindsight, we probably should have called the ambulance anyway, but given the dire situation and the pain fogging my judgment, I can see how we would come to this solution. I was scared. I was so scared. And at some point after walking to the truck at a 90 degree angle (I couldn’t stand up straight) and sitting myself in the pickup truck, I found my coping mechanism: a sense of humor. 

My stepdad and toddler sister had gone to Burger King for dinner, and I called them just as they had ordered. 

“Hey, [name], I’m going to the hospital,” I said into the phone between groans of pain. “I hurt my back.” 

“What? Seriously? We just ordered.” My stepdad said, and at the time, I was a little offended. You’re really worried about your food when I might’ve just broken my back?! In hindsight, again, I know that shock and grief can do strange things to a person, like making them worry over the little things to better cope with the bigger concern. Eventually, he agreed to meet me at the hospital and sounded as panicked as I should have felt. I felt oddly calm. 

Next, I called my mother. She was 30 minutes away in my hometown, and was much more panicked than my stepfather. I don’t recall what our words were. 

Then, I called one of the students in the play I was a part of, joking, “I don’t think I’m going to make it to rehearsal tonight,” I said, and I’m pretty sure I was smiling. 

“Why?” They asked of the cryptic greeting. I told them, and they all wished me well. It still didn’t quite feel real even though the crippling pain was very, very real. 

When we got to the hospital, my stepdad was waiting for us. My instructor had called ahead to make sure we could park at the emergency (ambulance) entrance, and she ran in to get a wheelchair for me. When we got inside, my stepdad was panicking because he didn’t have my insurance information handy. The office staff tried to make me wait until a kind nurse came along and demanded that I be put in a room to start examining me. I was still vocalizing with groaning sounds in pain. This is one of only two times I have been in this much pain in my life. 

Once we got into a room, a nurse offered to help me undress. I told her I was fine, that I’d be slow, but I could do it. I also joked that I had a MAJOR wedgie, and proceeded to pull my cotton underwear straight out of my ass in front of her. Looking back, you’d think I had already had the pain meds when you find out what that was all about. Shock can be a great painkiller.

I finally got into the bed and remember thinking that it was the fastest I had ever been processed in the ER, and I was wholly impressed with the speed at which the doctors attended to me. I was seen by two or three doctors relatively quickly, all rushing in at once. I was their most urgent patient, and it made me feel like a superstar - a nice distraction from the pain. 

They informed me that they couldn’t give me the morphine they wanted to give me until all my injuries had been diagnosed, and I groaned but agreed to this course of action. It would be four hours until I finally got painkillers. 

I was rushed in for a CT scan of my back and legs (I had complained of knee and shoulder pain, too). I had a few x-rays done, too, as I had blood on my face and a headache. The only injury they could find on the x-rays and CT scans were a broken nose and a broken vertebra. However, when they came to tell me about it, they said that the imaging was so identical on the T11-T12 that they wanted to do a repeat scan to rule out a shadow on the machine. 

It wasn’t a shadow; I had broken both vertebrae. 

My mother and sister arrived in the time I was in the CT scan, and they were there when I called my dad to tell him what happened. They left shortly after to get food. (I told them this was alright - I wasn’t going anywhere, I said.)

Sometime while I was alone, a woman popped in from behind the cloth divider, asking me what I was “in for”. I was still audibly groaning in pain, but I managed a smile and told her. She said she would pray for me, and that she was here for her mother who was having chest pains. I remember thinking that they should pay more attention to her, since my injuries weren’t life-threatening, just painful. 

By the time my mother and sister got back with food and ate, the doctors moved me off the back board and onto the regular bed. 

“Are you on your period?” They asked with concern. 

“No,” I replied, confused. 

“When was your last menstrual cycle?” Fuck if I knew. Luckily, my mother and I were just about synced up, so she replied, “about two weeks ago.” That sounded right, I confirmed. 

I was bleeding heavily from “down there” (in addition to pissing my pants thanks to a bodily reflex to losing consciousness). 

In perhaps the most traumatizing exam of my life, a male doctor stuck one finger into my vagina and one into my anus, and the pain was excruciating in addition to being humiliating and my first experience with anything “up there”. I sobbed and screamed as it happened, and my mother held my hand while it happened and reassured me it would be over soon. My carefree attitude didn’t really pick up again until after I got my morphine an hour or two later. 

That massive “wedgie” I mentioned to the nurse when I was admitted was actually my underwear tearing my skin from my vagina almost to my anus almost down to the colon wall. My back didn’t require surgery, they said, but I would need surgery that night to repair the damage down there and stop the bleeding. I finally got painkillers four hours after I was admitted, and was sent to surgery about two hours later. 

Perhaps the worst part about this experience, physical pain aside, is something I vividly remember the doctor saying to me: 

“Compression fractures heal very well. You won’t need surgery to repair it or physical therapy. In fact, you probably won’t have any chronic pain at all.” 

I made it through surgery fine and was put back into my room in the wee hours of the morning. My mom slept in a chair, and my stepdad took my sisters home. 

At seven in the morning - less than six hours after I had been put in my room for the night, a nurse burst in demanding that I urinate. I told her my bladder was empty. She berated me for not being willing to try, so I got up and sat on the toilet fruitlessly until telling her again that it was empty. She brought in an ultrasound machine to make sure it wasn’t a lack of sensation, and sure as shit, to her surprise, my bladder was empty. Another relief, in part, that I hadn’t lost sensation of my bladder in the fracture of my spine. 

I was finally discharged around lunchtime that day (it was a Saturday) with a prescription for painkillers and an order to rest to recover. 

My mother woke me up for school on Monday. I couldn’t believe it. I told her I literally just broke my back on Friday night, that I wasn’t ready for school yet. She (begrudgingly) let me stay home from school that day, but I was expected to go in on Tuesday. I did. 

I was confronted with rumors that I had been shot, in a car accident, or in an argument with a friend. I brushed them all off as jokes. I completed my play that spring after spending 6 weeks in a back brace, and spent the remaining 3 months of school on prescription painkillers. 

At the end of that 3 months, I told my doctor that I didn’t want to keep taking these painkillers due to the risk of addiction. I told her that I was concerned that I was still in enough pain to need them, and that I wanted to get to the bottom of it. She referred me to a neurosurgeon an hour and a half away at the nearest large hospital. We spent a long time going back and forth to that doctor.

He told us at first that most insurance companies wouldn’t approve any sort of imaging or surgery until at least 6 weeks of physical therapy were completed. I agreed to go, figuring that it couldn’t hurt. 

I saw a local physical therapist that I never quite felt comfortable with. He was younger, and the dad of a kid in my school (a few grades below me), but something always felt off about him, particularly when I was practicing my exercises in front of him. It was summer, so I usually showed up in gym shorts and a tank top. He gave lots of oiled massages and used a TENS unit at the start of our sessions, and spent a lot of time behind me when I was practicing my exercises. 

A few weeks in, I felt an erection against my ass when he was performing a chiropractic maneuver. This was my first experience with an erection as I was still a virgin. I questioned it for a few days, and told myself it was something else entirely while I was still there, but I couldn’t bring myself to go back. It only validated the creepy vibes I got from him from the start. 

Luckily, it was just long enough for the insurance company to approve an MRI which found the beginnings of bone spurs, and most notably, that my T12 vertebra was in worse shape than when I broke it. It was deteriorating instead of healing, forming a giant chasm in the middle of the bone where there should be spongy bone. 

My surgeon said we had 3 options: 

1. a stressful, inpatient procedure with rods and pins and a 6 week inpatient recovery  period. 

2. an outpatient, minimally invasive procedure only requiring a small amount of medical-grade cement to fill in the gap

3. continue treating with existing measures and hope it gets better

Obviously, 3 was a no-go. He did tell us that it was possible it wouldn’t work, but he was “very confident” this would solve my residual pain. I felt that same confidence as I still had a great deal of trust in medical professionals at that time. We decided to go with option 2 because I had commitments at school that were coming up that winter (it was fall at this point), and my mother wasn’t sure about our ability to pay for a 6 week recovery time (and missing that much school). 

I’m not sure what happened behind the scenes with the insurance. I was too young to understand a lot of it. Hell, I still don’t understand it sometimes. We had to get a pre-authorization for this surgery, and all I know is that they called after I was dressed in a hospital gown and had peed in a cup to prove my virginal ass wasn’t pregnant (I joked with the nurse that I’d be having a Jesus if I were), and they got a hold of my doctor to tell us that it had been denied. 

This surgery was $20,000 without insurance. 

My mother looked down at me - I’ll never forget the look she gave me - like she was about to cry, and I don’t blame her. I would cry, too. I panicked, thinking I wasn’t going to get the surgery I needed to be pain-free. Instead, my mother surprised me by telling the doctor to do it anyway, that we would figure it out afterward. 

So I went under, and when I woke up, I was in a dark room, alone. The surgery didn’t take more than 45 minutes and went well, but it took me some time to be able to stay awake long enough to leave the hospital. My mom wheeled me out to the car. I told her I was hungry, so we stopped by Outback - a rare treat for us because of our rural hometown. 

I fell asleep at the table, no joke. I didn’t even make it to when the waiter introduced himself. My mother had to wake me up to get me to order my drink. I fell asleep again after that and woke up when the food got there. My mom took pictures (I don’t blame her - it was hilarious). The poor waiter probably thought my mom had drugged me. I wasn’t even awake long enough to know if she explained it to him. 

I ended up taking most of my meal home in a box, and I didn’t touch it. I slept for 18 hours that day, and my mom came in the next day to get me to go to school. I again told her I wasn’t ready (it was a Tuesday, I believe), and she (reluctantly) let me stay home but told me I was expected to go in Wednesday. I did. 

I had an emotional breakdown on the first day of school that year (earlier on) as my best friend from when I was a kid had died in a car accident. I cried about her and my back, and I think this was one of my early signs of pain-related depression. Breaking down in the middle of class was not my thing. I was the bubbly, goofy nerd, not the emotional crybaby. 

All along, my mom had promised me that once I was pain-free, I could ride again. I found out that winter that this was an empty promise. She told me I could ride again if I wanted, but that if anything happened, I would be the one responsible for the medical bills. That she wouldn’t pay for me to get hurt again. I understood where she was coming from, but I was incredibly hurt that she fell back on her promise. It was the first time she did that, but it wasn’t the last. 

By the next spring, we knew that the surgery hadn’t worked, but there was no more structural damage that could explain my pain. I was off to college, so it wasn’t feasible for me to continue treatment with that practice. 

I was at the point where the pain was interrupting my life by the time my freshman year started. I had to leave football games early, had to schedule my classes close together so I didn’t have to walk too long, and found myself in a great deal of pain if I stood for too long. At this point, laying down was still alright, as was sitting. It would not stay that way. 

I saw a doctor and was told I was just feeling pain because I was “depressed” and that a small dose of an antidepressant would help. It didn’t. When I went back, they said that they didn’t know what to do for me because there wasn’t anything physical wrong. I started biofeedback therapy (tricking your brain into thinking you’re not in pain), and continued that for a while until it, too, wasn’t working. 

Even though life was going pretty well - I had a great group of friends, my first boyfriend, my first kiss, good grades, I felt like I was falling apart beneath my perky mask. 

I fell into my worst depressive episode to date - and perhaps my first big sign of future issues - that spring. 

I broke up with my boyfriend in December after being compared to her for the greater part of our short-lived relationship. I started skipping a lot of classes, staying up way too late, and sleeping in until the early afternoon. I was still incredibly social and had a strong drive to see my friends, but absolutely no motivation to go to class to pursue my career. I couldn’t get myself out of bed, and I couldn’t sleep when it came to nighttime. I was also forced into a social light a lot of the time because of living in a dorm, so maybe all my socializing wasn’t completely motivated by me. 

I was also trying to push myself to be more social because for a little while, I did feel “normal” to some degree. I dressed up one night in a cute dress, tights, and a jacket with a pair of high heels to go play poker with my friends. My ex was there, and my friend and I were the only ones dressing up (because we felt good). 

My ex called me a slut/whore for dressing up. 

I wouldn’t say this was my trigger point, but it was a contributing factor to the steady decline that followed that spring. I had a cold at some point and had been prescribed cough syrup with codeine, and it got so bad on more than one occasion that I considered drinking the whole bottle. I had told myself that I would wait about half an hour and then go sit in the hallway because I had a single room and I didn’t want my body to sit in my room for days on end until I was found. I wanted someone to find me. 

Plus, I thought, I could get free tuition for whoever found me. Do a little good on my way out. 

Ultimately, I couldn’t bring myself to drink it, and reached out to my ex in a last desperate cry for help. He was a total ass about it and basically told me he was busy. 

I failed a lot of classes that spring, but was able to requalify for student loans by filing a claim that I had been depressed, resulting in my inability to attend classes. It was approved, and I planned to go back in the fall after meeting my now-husband at a party. 

Some time after I met my then-boyfriend, my ex expressed concern that I was leading him on and that I had misled him by helping him study for Chemistry (a class I had previously taken). I invited him over to talk it out because he was being pretty persistent about wanting to talk. 

He came over, we talked until 6am the next morning, during which I told him to leave to sleep before his final several times, but he refused each and every time. He later blamed me for failing it, and told our mutual friends that I didn’t let him sleep, further “evidence” that I had led him on and caused him to fail his studies. He dropped out and didn’t return. 

The following fall, I recovered well from my depressive episode, touting a 3.2 GPA that semester and generally enjoying my classes. I realized, however, that I had no real focus, and I was quickly falling into a hole with my education that I would have a hard time getting out of. When I started at the school, I was intending to go pre-med, and at this point, I was a psych major. Psychologists don’t get paid as much as doctors, and I couldn’t justify the cost of schooling any longer. 

So I left, and I moved in with my boyfriend. 

Washington state had legalized medical marijuana, and it remains one of the few things that has helped me in the treatment and management of my pain. I knew someone with their green card, so I had access and frequently smoked to deal with my pain. 

I got a job that spring - I was on my feet about six hours a day, and that sucked, but I was managing just fine. I didn’t have any additional suicidal spells. I started pursuing a cure for my pain again the following winter. I began physical therapy with a wonderful woman, and they recommended doing acupuncture concurrently. I followed all their recommendations with the promise from my doctor that after 6 weeks, if I was still in pain, I could have an MRI done to examine my spine again. 

Only, when I returned to that doctor, the doctor I had seen previously was unavailable due to an emergency surgery. They asked if it was alright if I saw a different doctor, and I thought sure, why not, the notes are all in my file about our plan. 

A young (male) doctor came in with a lot of energy and what I thought had been genuine concern on his face. It was not. I told him that I was still in pain, and that while the physical therapy helped with some pain in other places, it didn’t relieve my chief complaint of pain in my mid back where I fractured it. He began asking a lot of questions and told me that he didn’t think that I needed an MRI. He said that I was overweight (I was only about 20 lbs heavier than my lowest adult weight, by far not overweight), and that I needed to get into shape in order to cure my pain. I told him that I walked regularly, but much more than that caused serious flare-ups making it difficult to work out. He told me, basically, that it was bullshit and that I needed to work out vigorously. 

At that point, I began to cry. You’d think men would know by now not to comment on a woman’s weight, especially so aggressively. I said I just wanted to go, that I’d work out, whatever, just to let me go. He refused to let me out of the room, blocking the door and saying, “you’re not leaving until we figure this out.” 

I cried harder. I just wanted to go home and end this nightmare. He started asking about depression, asking if I wanted to kill myself. I told him that I was depressed in the past, but that I was fine now and my crying was because he wouldn’t let me go, not because of depression. 

He didn’t believe me, and insisted we sit and figure this out. At that point, I started to agree with him just to get him to let me go. I didn’t care what he was saying. Honestly, I don’t even remember what he did say or what I supposedly agreed to during that appointment. 

I was so traumatized by that appointment, that I couldn’t return to the office. I had an appointment scheduled with my regular doctor, but I couldn’t bring myself to go through the door. I told my amazing physical therapist about it, and she told me that he was a doctor that frequently worked with athletes, so he’s used to berating patients and being able to get away with it. I expressed my wonder that he was still in practice at all. 

It got to the point where I didn’t have a doctor treating my pain any longer, and when a $800 bill came from the physical therapy center for my treatments, I realized I couldn’t afford to go any longer. I was stuck “dealing” with it again. So I continued to self medicate, and once again, I suffered no depressive episodes during this time period. I actually felt alright. I felt like I was living a decent life. 

Washington state legalized recreational use of marijuana right as I was leaving the state. 

I moved to a state where it isn’t legal in any form - even to this day - and the difference in quality of life is night and day. Shortly after we moved here, I started my THIRD round of physical therapy which also resulted in no relief. I had an MRI, it showed that there was no physical problem with my spine. I was told at that point that it was likely psychological. I didn’t like that answer. I didn’t accept it. I had been through varying levels of psychiatric health, and my pain never changed. I had been in states of bliss and heartache, and it never changed. The only time it changed was my level of activity or position. I was hurting all the time, and no one believed me. 

I went to an urgent care clinic a few years ago and was lucky enough to see a doctor who actually seemed to care. He took an x-ray and said I had a smaller space than normal for my peripheral nerves to pass through, and that the irritation was causing an already inflamed nerve to swell up more, resulting in worse pain. He prescribed an anti-seizure medication frequently used for pain management, and my god, it worked like a charm. 

The only issue was that a month or two in, I started having terrifying episodes of a lapse in recognition of common places - the drive to work and work, primarily. One time, I recall walking into work and knowing in my brain that it was “work”, but not knowing where work was or where I even sat. My doctor (a CNP who was amazing and my biggest advocate for relief) stopped the medication immediately. 

In the months that followed, I tried everything. Muscle relaxers, anti-inflammatory drugs, anti depressants with secondary therapeutic use as pain relievers - we tried every drug out there. Rather than blaming it on my weight as all my other doctors had done, my doctor referred me to a pain specialist in the area. He said there wasn’t much we could do, but we could try an injection. I had the injection done, but it didn’t do much. After that, he basically told me there was nothing he could do. 

I was devastated. I’ve suffered numerous depressive episodes since leaving Washington, and even come close to suicide again. I’ve cried myself to sleep and curled up wishing I could die to end the pain. I’ve even wished I was paralyzed sometimes so that I wouldn’t feel anything - as misguided as that is.

I was so depressed at one point that my doctor gave me a prescription for 10 hydrocodone, emphasizing that she didn’t normally prescribe pain pills to anyone but terminally ill patients, but she said that she was afraid I was going to kill myself if I didn’t get some relief. I can’t tell you the weight that took off my shoulders. 

I made 10 pills last more than a year and a half - almost two. I had been out for a month or two when I went back to the urgent care clinic in serious pain - enough to drag me into the clinic in the first place. I saw a doctor who told me he used to work for the pain clinic I had gone to. He asked what I did to manage the pain. I told him I’ve tried everything, that I take ibuprofen/acetaminophen on mild days but it’s not a mild day. He asked if tramadol worked, I told him no. I told him about some sort of injection they gave me at the clinic one time. He said he didn’t think it would help. He told me to see a chiropractor (as if I hadn’t tried that), and I began crying and asked what I could do to relieve my pain now. 

He asked what worked. I told him that previously, I had been prescribed hydros. 

He immediately discredited me. He went on a long rant about how if they wrote scripts for narcotics (which I had gotten in THAT office, by the way) that they’d have “a line out the door” for them every day, that they couldn’t just be giving them out to just ANYONE. And get this - he actually wrote IN MY FILE that I was SEEKING DRUGS that day. Me, a woman with chronic back pain who had gone through TEN pills in over EIGHTEEN MONTHS. I was enraged. 

This was now a part of my medical record. It was permanent. I was pissed. I got some lousy anti-inflammatory from him, and I found myself in yet another situation where I was agreeing with what the doctor said just to get out of the room. 

I haven’t gone back to a doctor about my pain. I don’t know if I ever will unless we move. I know what works, but doctors are too blinded by the opiate crisis and the controversy over pain treatments to see that I know my body better than them. To see that I know what will work, but I can’t get it. I’m beyond frustrated at this point, and my mental health is seriously compromised by my terrifying experiences in an attempt to pursue a method of pain management within the confines of the law. 

I am seriously concerned for the day I get pregnant like I want to be because I know it will be hell on my back. I know that I will be in more pain than I ever have been. At least that pain will be worth it. 

My doctor wasn’t wrong when she said that she was worried I would kill myself if I didn’t get some relief for my back. I’m falling right back into that mindset as each year passes by that I continue to suffer without any option of even temporary relief. 

If you’ve read this far, thank you. Writing this has been therapeutic to me, and I hope it has been eye-opening into the horrors that sufferers of chronic pain have to go through just to be treated like they are humans instead of second-class addicts (in the medical industry’s eyes, not mine). I’ve paid tens of thousands of dollars towards treatments, and nothing has worked. Every day that I walk this earth is a miracle because I suffer through every minute of it.