The Many Faces of Pain - Part 1

I learned the hard way - there are many faces of pain. The faces of pain are, but not limited to, depression, anxiety, fear, self-loathing, loss of dignity, and loss of ability to function sexually, loss of ability to have a good quality of life, the toll on your finances from the medical bills, and on and on. The list of the faces of pain is unlimited. I want to share my pain story with you and this may take several articles to complete, but trust me, you don’t want to miss this.

I woke up about 8-9 years ago with a funny aching in the middle of my lower back. Over time (about 4-5 years), that ache got worse and worse, and then severe. It got so severe I could not sit for long periods of time, could not sit on the toilet, could not drive any distances over 20 minutes or 20 miles, and I could not get comfortable in any position in the bed. I went to the doctor and he told me he could stop the pain with intense treatment for about 3-6 months. Well, it did not go away and it has been 9 years since then. The pain, however, in the last 5 years, has gone on from severe to crippling and debilitating. Since then, I’ve dealt with this pain 24 hours a day, every day!

Not only could I not do the things listed above, but even when cooking I had to run to the bed to lie down and take pressure off my back, then come back and continue to cook. Many times I burned the food as my family sat and watched TV and did other things, but did not notice my struggle or that the food was burning. I used to love going to the movies, going to open houses and walking through them, going to dinner, shows, and traveling with the church to church events with my husband. All of this has stopped, and I am no longer able to sit in a movie, travel long distances or even sit for dinner. Things I loved to do have become uncomfortable and some even, eventually, impossible tasks. I can no longer go each weekend to new model houses and walk through just to see the trends. I can no longer go to the grocery store or mall and shop or brose as this is too uncomfortable. To travel, I lie down in the back seat of a car until we reach our destination. With all of the tasks above, I have to double or triple the amount of narcotics I am taking to get some minor relief. The relief is just enough for me to get through whatever I am doing. What is amazing about all of this is that not even my family or those closest to me noticed. Everyone said, “Oh you look great, wow you don’t look like you are in pain”. My family expected me to continue all the tasks I was doing before the back pain started and they offered no help with the back pain. Remember my family offered no help as they believed I was okay, and they really don’t understand the pain.

After many, many doctors’ visits and many, many injections on both sides of my back, this still provided only minimal relief. Sometimes in one year I have had 13 separate injections which required 13 surgery visits for the injections. These injections were as many as 4 individual injections at three different levels both on the right and left sides. Do the math. That was 12 injection sites on the right side and 12 injection sites on the left side. Not to mention I have had to place myself in demoralizing positions to have some of these injections. Many doctors suggested surgery with my chances for recovery at 50/50. (With those odds, I have yet to choose surgery.) So, I have continued for 9 years with every injection there is to help this back pain. They wanted to put in a rod in my back to stabilize my spine and/or replace a disc. However, the problem with a replacement disc is that I have three bad discs and in America, they will only let you replace only one disc at a time (Of course this is that wonderful American insurance industry of money at play here.); thus I would have to have three surgeries.

To date, this back pain has personally cost me $242,000.00 and this is with health insurance. This has financially destroyed my family and my family’s dream of having no unwanted financial debt.