Pity Party for Pain

Alrighty...whining ahead. This is more for me than for you, dear reader. To avoid the whine, just go on ahead and skip reading this post. If you proceed...well, consider yourself warned! :-) (And bless you for actually reading!)

< whine >

It's been a bad couple of days for joints in my world. And I'm not talking pot here...I'm talking wrists and back and hips and knees...otherwise fondly known as numbness, dull ache, falling off and won't bend.

I'm too young for this shit. I'm firmly convinced of that.

The problem is that I've been saying "that" for more than ten years now. And it's not gotten any better...just worse, slowly but surely.

I'm 27 years old and I live every day of my life in some degree of pain...most days are really just what I'd now consider a dull roar...but some days, like the past few, are just not good. Not good at all.

I try to deal with my various joint pains in the same way that I deal with other issues in my life...I'll bitch occasionally but largely just tuck it inside and "deal".

When I was 15 and 16, my family doctor (at the time) blamed my aches and ouches on "growing pains". I was prescribed Celebrex. It worked fairly well. He stopped promoting that theory when he came to the realization that I really hadn't grown a speck since age 12 and that a closed growth plate would definitely mean that "growing pains" was not the cause.

At 17, the doctor conceded that I had "arthritic tendencies" but was hesitant to diagnose arthritis in someone so young. (To paraphrase Billy Joel, "tell me about it!") I remained on Celebrex. I was alright...for awhile.

Three months before my 18th birthday, I was in a car accident in Ocean City, New Jersey, where my parents owned our summer home. It was pretty bad. I was turning left from a two lane side street across a four lane main drag with a wide center turn lane. I was hit by a Mercedes going in excess of 60 MPH in a 30 MPH zone. He never tried to stop...instead, he had accelerated to get through the light one block prior and never slowed back down to speed. I was driving my mother's two week old car and was hit directly between the front and back seat doors on the driver's side. The impact caused my car to spin for one full block before I managed to regain control and bring it to a stop.

It was a miracle - a true miracle, in my belief - that I spun straight down the road instead of bumping up over the sidewalk and hitting any of the kids who were playing outside on that sunny summer day. The secondary miracle was that the other driver hit my car directly on the frame, instead of directly on my door. Even so, the frame was bent in by almost eighteen inches. The driver's side door was completely bent in and would not open. The passenger door was jammed because of how far everything had shifted internally.

It took several rather large men to pry the driver's door open. I was removed on a back board and transported by ambulance off the island and to Shore Memorial Hospital, on the mainland in Somer's Point. At that point, a bad situation was made worse. The ambulance was one of the last vehicles off the island before bridges to the island were closed and raised for the annual Night in Venice boat parade. My parents, despite the fact that my dad actually witnessed the accident from our front porch (he didn't realize it was me - didn't recognize the car since it was so new) - did not ride in the ambulance with me and did not make it off the island in time. At the hospital, because I was under 18 and determined not to be in critical condition, left me strapped to the back board - completely immobilized - for more than two hours after arrival until my parents got there. I believe that that lead to my continuing issues just as much as the whiplash from the accident.

Afterwards, I wore a neck brace for about two months. My doctor put me on Skelaxin to deal with my increased pain levels. I was also given a muscle relaxer. Despite that, my neck began to freeze: I would be in the middle of normal activities and would suddenly become unable to move my neck in any direction. This was most often accompanied by severe pain. The worst point came when I sat down on the kitchen floor one day, talking to my boyfriend on the phone, and found that I absolutely could not move to stand up - my neck had frozen, but so had the rest of my back, as well. My boyfriend had to come over (no idea where my parents were...can't remember) and literally break in to take me to the hospital. I was in full spasm. It was awful. I've never again experienced that level of severity, but I have had my neck continue to freeze as recently as a few months ago.

I began to see a chiropractor. Running x-rays - something my family doctor had never bothered to do, post accident - he found that I had conflicting vertebrae - two vertebrae in my neck were pushing in the wrong direction and pinching nerves, causing the freezing I had experienced. He began treatment immediately, and I felt some degree of relief immediately. I later complained to him about having lower back and other joint pain as well, and he ran additional x-rays on my lower back. The discovery? Scoliosis that was never caught/diagnosed by any other means. I went back to my family doctor and he validated the diagnosis of scoliosis and seemed fairly embarrassed that he'd never caught it, despite my continued complaints.

Back to the chiropractor, who I was now visiting three times per week just to be able to live in a fairly pain-free state. Piecing together x-rays from my upper, middle and lower back, the chiro came to the conclusion that the state of my vertebrae was such that he firmly believed that degeneration would continue, accelerate and leave me physically incapacitated by age 40. I chose then, and I choose now, to ignore that as hogwash. Mainly because I cannot accept any such dire prediction based on funny looking pictures.

But it still scared me.

I continued to experience other aches and pains throughout college, including a rather nasty and infected stress fracture in my left leg that ended my days as a runner. I was switched to Bextra. I forced myself through as many physical activities as possible, to prove that there was nothing wrong with me. I probably only made things worse. I was finally switched to Vioxx. It's the medicine that worked best for me...ironic that most of the meds I've taken for pain, however, are now off the market.

After moving to Texas, I found a new chiropractor and decided to try to face life without meds and instead find alternative ways to control my pain. The second chiropractor did not agree with the first's dire prediction of incapacitation but did agree that things would probably only worsen over the years. Ugh. Being a smart man, he also realized that the hip pain I continuously complained of was probably cause by a tilt in my hips caused by my unresolved scoliosis. Short of wearing a heel lift with every pair of shoes and every single day, no real way to alleviate that, unfortunately.

Finances won out over pain management and I discontinued seeing the chiro when $60 per week after insurance simply became prohibitive. Besides, at that point, I had other health issues to deal with and needed to tighten my focus. Due to various health issues - a severe back spasm in 2002, breast surgery (lump removal) in 2003, oral surgery in 2004 and several burst ovarian cysts in 2005, I stored up a stockpile of Vicodin. Since then, I've been parceling out a pill to myself here and there to combat really bad days. I used to try Advil, but it would take a mouthful to even make a dent in the pain. I've tried OTC arthritis meds...they work for about an hour before I need another dose...but doses have to be 4-6 hours apart.

I have no more Vicodin left. About six months ago, during a very thorough check-up at my family doc following another health issue, I complained loudly and strenuously about my pain. I even admitted that I took a Vicodin - or two - once or twice a month just to be able to deal with my pain. She was, surprisingly, ok with that admission. She responded by running a rheumatoid panel as a part of my bloodwork. It came back clear. She also suggested that I had arthritic tendencies, but said that she would feel uncomfortable prescribing any medication toward that end without also prescribing birth control, to avoid the possibility of getting pregnant while on medication that could adversely affect that. A follow-up with my endocrinologist (I have Grave's Disease, a form of hyperthyroidism) found the advancement of the theory that the pain could be connected to the Grave's. Far-fetched at best. There's no known link. She suggested going on BC, having radioactive iodine treatment to kill my thyroid and seeing if that helped my joint pain. Weak. I've refused that treatment for years and without any damn good proof of a link between Grave's and joint pain, I won't reconsider. The OB/GYN was in agreement as well...no more pain meds for me.

So here I am. I took my last Vicodin about a week ago. Today, my joints are just freaking screaming. I have pain shooting up and down my left leg when I walk. I have to shift in my seat every few minutes and still my hips kill. Crossing my legs or sitting Indian style? Out of the question. Even typing...getting painful.

So really, all I have left right now is to whine. But something's gotta give. If it feels like this now, at this age, how the hell will I feel in 5 or 10 years? Frustrating. Simply frustrating.

That's all I got. Now, off to take my aching body to bed...and one last check in my medicine drawer to make sure there aren't any more Vicodin left.

If you actually got through this, bless you.

< /whine >

Good night!