To hell and back.

In 2012, I started doing something that has proved to be incredibly valuable (and that I recommend everyone start doing immediately).  In my Paperless list app on my iPhone, I started keeping a list I called "Wonderful Things 2012".  On it, I put all the significant and insignificant things that made my life better, or made me happy in some way.  Things as little as a movie I loved, or as big as moving into a new home.  A heartfelt and very emotional conversation I had with my best friend, reaching a big career milestone, new friends I made, trips to the beach, anything that enriched my life in some way.  At the end of the year, I looked back on it, and felt profoundly grateful for all the blessings that had come into my life.  So rather than waiting til late in the year to start one this year, I started it at the beginning of the year., and then just sat back and waited for things to put on it.  Then something happened late January that would set the tone for what has arguably been one of the most challenging and difficult years of my life, that I thought would rob me of even one thing to put on my Wonderful Things 2013 list.  And after months of not knowing whether or not to share any of this, I've decided I will.  Not because I'm looking for sympathy or pity or anything else, but because I've come out the other side of it better than I had hoped was possible at many points.  There are lots of people in my life who have yet to know the whole story about this, and I definitely didn't want anyone else asking me how things were while I was still in the middle of it.  But I'm not anymore.  So here goes.

I was getting ready to leave the house to go to the Wonderful Wedding Show in late January with my oldest friend in the world (who got married last month!).  I bent over to pick up my coat, and felt this huge jolt of pain down my right leg that actually made me cry out.  I've had a questionable back for several years now, but I'd never felt anything like this before.  It was like electricity that occasionally got turned up with no rhyme or reason.  I told myself I'd walk it off over the course of the day.  But it got worse and worse, and by the end of the day, I was desperate to get home and get off my feet.  I don't remember sleeping that night, the pain was so foreign and strange.  I decided before sunrise to take a cab to the Urgent Care down the street from me (it's literally 2 blocks away, but I knew I couldn't drive safely in my pain-addled stupor, and I wasn't capable of walking more than a few feet.)  In situations like this, it's usually a curse to be a nurse because your brain automatically panics and goes to Worst Case Scenario.  In this case, my foot was cold, pale, pulseless, the sensation was off, and I was convinced I had a DVT and needed vascular surgery. Like immediately.  It turned out I didn't have a DVT, but the doctor there couldn't tell me exactly what was wrong, but she thought it might be my sciatic nerve, so she referred me for an MRI, and gave me a couple of prescriptions.  This turn of events sent me to a new chiropractor, an acupuncturist, and resulted in my being away from work a LOT.  In nursing, we use something called a Pain Assessment Scale.  We ask patients to rate their pain on a scale from 0-10, 0 obviously being no pain, 10 being the worst pain you could imagine.  My pain for the first 6 months of this year fluctuated between about a 5 or 6 at best, up to a 10+ at its worst (although it kept finding a way to top itself). It was never gone, not even for a minute.  It was like my shadow.

Critical mass occurred in June and would result in my sitting in the Emergency Room with my mother for 14 hours.  I had got my MRI results back, stating I had 2 extruded discs in my spine that had completely displaced a nerve (not my sciatic as it turned out) that runs all the way down my leg, and basically been told by 2 different doctors that it would "resolve itself". I was in so much pain this particular day I could barely dress myself, taking a shower was out of the question, and I couldn't sit up for more than a couple of minutes at a time.  I remember my mother bringing me lunch in bed and having to eat it laying on my stomach, saying "This has got to be the lowest point yet."  It got so bad that I couldn't mentally or physically cope with the pain any more, and I told my mom we had to go to the ER.  Things were clearly not resolving themselves.  The doctor I saw in ER was the first one I had seen this year (apart from my chiropractor) who I felt took it seriously and seemed to understand just what this was costing me.  He told me no acute intervention was required, and gave me different pain medications.  They actually worked, and I could say my pain was reduced to a 3 or 4.  I actually slept.  My mother went home.  I wasn't in the debilitating pain I was, but I wasn't really able to do much of anything either. My endurance was gone.  I tried going back to work at just 4 hours at a time to start, but it was exhausting. I'd come home and collapse into bed and sleep the rest of the day.  I had no idea how I'd ever get back to working 12 hour shifts again.  I felt stuck.  And I was still on a LOT of medication, which I was deeply uncomfortable with.  The longer I was on them, the more sure I felt that I was going to have to accept that this was my life.  Pills, and pain, and barely being able to make it through things.  I was starting to lose hope, and feel like....what was the point.  If I couldn't work and this was how I was going to feel all the time, what was the purpose of my life?  And because I was thinking this way, I started to deeply fear developing what is commonly known as a "Chronic Pain Personality", a medically ambiguous term that describes a patient who tends to be difficult to deal with because of the level of pain they experience on a daily basis, and our inability in the medical community to control it.  The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory describes the most common personality characteristics of those with chronic pain as "neurotic, demanding, complaining, and exaggerative of body feelings."  Not pleasant. So I made a choice.  I wasn't going to let this defeat me entirely or take any more from me than it already had. Every day I started trying to find something to be grateful for, even if it was just a snuggle with the cat, or a nice text from a friend.  I was determined not to slide into insufferability.  I would not dig myself into a hole of isolation and misery.



Pill bottle graveyard.  This was what it took to get through this year.
Plus countless bottles of OTC ibuprofen, naproxen and Robaxacet.
 

The turning point then came in the form of my angel WCB worker, Anita, sending me for a physiotherapy assessment.  They recommended I be taken off work again for about 6 weeks to work on a reconditioning program 5 days per week.  I was relieved and excited, and almost kind of desperate too, because if this didn't work, then I'd be out of options.  Plus I knew I was hugely deconditioned and weak and that this was going to be a LOT of work.  But deep down I felt like it was going to work.  It was going to be worth it.  And it was.  I started working with a kinesiologist named Lindsay, for about an hour and a half, every single day.  It hurt, it exhausted me, but slowly it started to work.  My core got stronger and started to stabilize, and the pain was subsiding on less and less medication.  And when 6 weeks were up and it was time for me to go back to work, I could do it without passing out at the end of just 4 hours.  My hours advanced from 4 to 6 to 8 to 10, and as of about 10 days ago, I am back to work full for 12 hour shifts, and my life is essentially back to normal.  I still do my workouts 2-3 times a week, but mostly on my own, with occasional guidance from Lindsay. 

I have these moments of clarity every once in a while, when I'll do something that I'll realize was impossible 6 months ago.  Something as simple as picking up the laundry, or cooking a meal, or getting my socks on.  I had once such moment in the shower last week (the gravity of which I'm sure threw my partner who was shaving at the time for a total loop).  I recalled trying to shower before going to the ER and ending up on my hands and knees in tears after less than a minute of standing on the sloping floor of the tub.  And as I stood there last week, under the hot water, having a glorious time, I realized things have gotten so much better than I ever thought would be possible again.  And that made me realize how close I had come to giving up entirely.  Sure, the sensation in my foot will probably never be the same again (it's still pretty numb/pins & needlesy), but it's just my foot, not my whole leg, it doesn't affect my balance, and it's a small price to pay for getting my life back.  I've had some considerable support to get to this point obviously.  First and foremost from my mother, who listened to me cry and whine and yell and curse, as often as I needed to, whenever I needed to.  Who came and took such good care of me, with such immense patience and generosity.  My chiropractor Dr. Cooper, who listened to my unfiltered raging and despair up to 3 times a week, and never lost his patience or level headedness with me.  Anita from WCB, who never stopped trying to find ways to help me. And Lindsay, my determined and chin-up kinesiologist, who never allowed me to give up on myself or cheat myself out of a full recovery.  These are the kinds of people you need around you in times like those.  Who support you, and lift you, but ultimately get you to determine your own course and take responsibility for yourself.  And if you can find at least one thing every day to be grateful for, no matter how seemingly trivial, it makes all the difference in the world.  I promise.


"If you are going through hell, keep going." - Winston Churchill