My back pain started when I was seventeen, and it has progressed through a dull ache to raging sciatica and everything in between. I pushed through the pain for three years, telling myself that a teenager doesn't have serious back problems. Later, I faced a plethora of doctors and a definitive MRI and slowly woke up to reality. When I could no longer live with my burning leg, I went under the knife for a simple surgery that promised a two-week recovery and a six-week hiatus on my daily runs. However my body had other plans.
I'm at a crossroads now, because Western medicine has nothing left to offer me save more radical, more painful surgeries. I'm not interested in spinal fusions, so I am turning to the unknown and the unaccepted. I will document my experiences here for posterity's sake, and so that, maybe, someone out there will find knowledge that can help them.
I always wanted someone who could relate to what I am going through, a younger person who's body failed them as mine did me. I wanted to hear opinions on treatments and learn new ways to kill time, hear survival stories and know that there is hope. That's why I'm writing a blog. Some of this will be reports on current treatments; some will be memories of my convalescence; some will be revelations and tidbits and stories about what I do all day as my body debates whether I've done enough to start living again. I hope that all of it is interesting and informative, and if I'm lucky (and not too conceited), inspiring.
If you're out there, don't lose hope. If someone can recover from cancer to win the Tour de France, or swim the Olympics with a prosthetic leg, or surf with one arm, anything is possible.
The best of health to you, and me. These are Confessions of an Invalid.
photo credit: http://latinainstitute.files.wordpress.com/2008/11/hospital-bed1.jpg
God speed, young Chesire.
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