I feel like there’s a line drawn through my lifeline where before, I was healthy, and after, I wasn’t. When I was 18, I got sick. Very sick. We didn’t have health insurance at the time, so I didn’t go to the hospital, which I should have, so we aren’t exactly sure what it was. The other three members of my family got it also, but I got symptoms earlier and more severely, and got over it after my family members were all well again. We believe it was food poisoning, since the four of us had eaten dinner together at a restaurant a day or two before I got sick and my boyfriend at the time, who had not gone to dinner with us that particular night but spent almost every free moment he had at our house, did not get sick. I spent two or three days (can’t remember how long now, it’s been 6 ½ years) in bed or in the bathroom, projectile vomiting, terrible fibrous diarrhea (my apologies for the tmi factor, that’s the only way I know how to describe it), and feeling like I had a million tiny spiders biting me all over my body. It was the first time I ever felt sick enough to call in to work. I haven’t felt 100% since then.
Soon after the illness, I started having an aching pain all over my body, like I had been doing physical labor all day every day. Lower back pain that I already had during physical activity became almost constant. I found myself going out less, moving less, doing less of the things I like. My mind became cloudy and I couldn’t seem to focus for very long, becoming distant and flaky. My already sensitive digestive system went haywire, and my doctor diagnosed me to have Irritable Bowel Syndrome. I gained a lot of weight within the next year, and when I suddenly started exercising a lot and lost some of it, the pain became unbearable and I had to stop and rest, gaining weight back. My boyfriend had gotten a much better paying job, so since I still didn’t have health insurance (and by that time, no job) he paid for me to start going to the chiropractor. I went for about a year, and that was the least pain I had been in since it started getting bad. I started losing weight again, going out again, participating in activities I liked. I started working again.
When we got engaged, my now fiancé and I had to stop going to the chiropractor and start putting our money toward our wedding, honeymoon, and house. The pain came back with a vengeance. I once again became couch-ridden and unemployed, gained all my weight back and then some. Most of my friends accused me of being lazy. I spiraled into sadness, becoming antisocial and hostile to everyone close to me, including my poor fiancé, the only person who may not have understood my pain, but accepted its reality and never pressured me to do more than my body would let me. I felt like I was wandering around in a haze all the time. Our wedding was small and a little lonely; I worry it was a byproduct of my alienating our friends.
Soon after we married, our finances required that I get another job. My sibling got me a job working rotating 12hr shifts manufacturing movie film in a darkroom, lifting 32lb rolls of film hundreds of times a day. At first, I loved the job, I was getting exercise, I was earning money, I was meeting new people, and most of all I was good at what I did. The pain started to subside. I lost about 25 lbs and was proud of myself. After several months of physical labor and sleep deprivation, I started aching again, but not so badly that I couldn’t handle it. Having a pretty mindless job, it was ok that I had problems concentrating, because by then I had stopped going out and everyone took my brain fog as a result of my work schedule. I started looking up vitamins and supplements to see if I could find something to help the pain, my digestive issues, or my concentration, and started taking Calcium, Magnesium, Vitamin D, B6, and C, and those helped slightly, but with my schedule I could never seem to remember to take them, and stopped a few months after starting them.
When we became short-staffed, they started expecting each of us to make more product at a faster pace, so we were working much harder physically than before. The pain became worse than ever, and I worried that taking it too easy would cost me my job. Aside from the all-over ache, my lower back started having sharp stabbing pain and my legs would begin tingling by the end of the work day, causing me to limp slightly, despite taking the maximum amount of OTC pain medicine every day. Coworkers of mine told me they could see I was in pain and that I should talk to my boss about it, so I did. I made a doctor’s appointment, where they focused only on the lower back pain, not the all-over ache. I was put on restriction, meaning I was not allowed to lift film until I was better. I started taking painkillers and muscle relaxers, going to physical therapy, the works. The pills turned me into a zombie, and the physical therapy didn’t do much for me, as the pain was still there. I was sent for x-rays, they found nothing wrong. After a couple of months on restriction and pills and physical therapy with very little result, they sent me for an MRI(thankfully that job had good insurance!!!). Still they could find nothing wrong. My boss grew annoyed with me; my doctor thought I was faking and ignored me when I tried to explain over and over that I was hurting everywhere, not just my lower back. When it was announced at work that our department would be closing production in the fall, 6 months away, and all of us would be laid off, I decided to “grin and bear it” and start running production again. I was taken off restriction, I stopped going to physical therapy, and I stopped taking the pills. Once again I was in daily agony, limping my way through work, relying on OTC pain medicine.
After I was laid off, my husband and I decided I would not get another job until I was ready. I rested for a full month. The pain started to subside once more, and then I started going on weekly walks with a friend of mine, trying to slowly build up my strength. I didn’t want to get into physical activity too much too quickly like I had in the past, and though I was getting a small amount of exercise, I gained back all my weight, topping out higher than ever. After the New Year, I gradually started working out more and more, we were up to three days a week going for walks, I was using the Total Gym regularly, and I started riding my stationary bike. I lost 23 lbs. and the pain receded again.
We then took a very stressful 2 ½ week vacation, and when we got back, I had such bad jetlag that I was nearly bedridden for a couple of weeks. I stopped exercising again, and the pain started getting bad again. I’m still working on getting out of this slump of bad days, but at least I now know it’s possible. I just have to remember to not push myself too hard, take my vitamins, and try to stay positive.
