I’m 27 and male and had my first back spasm (commonly referred to as ‘throwing your back out’) at age 13 and have had chronic back pain and episodes of acute and incapacitating pain multiple times a year ever since. It is no exaggeration to say that this condition is the single most destructive force in my life and it’s absolutely breaking me. It has put me in some extremely dark places and there’s hardly a moment that passes by that I don’t have the thought floating around my mind that I could end the pain permanently if I chose to.
I was told by doctors, parents, family members, and friends that my pain was something everyone dealt with as they grew but I knew that something was wrong.
After finally convincing my mother that something was wrong and getting an X-ray taken I was diagnosed with scheuermann’s disease around age 17 or 18. In layman’s terms, it’s like scoliosis except it’s front to back and not side to side. In extreme cases it shows as a hunchback. It’s curvature in the upper spine that puts extra stress on the lower back, the discs, the nerves, the muscles, and the vertebrae themselves.
I was told then that this disease usually doesn’t cause much discomfort and that pain normally dissipates by age 30. I was told that all I could really do was to strengthen my core muscles to protect my spine. I was told that my symptoms weren’t severe enough to warrant a back brace and that surgery was more likely to do harm than good.
Over the last ten years I’ve had 3 different doctors tell me more or less the same things: that surgery isn’t advised, that the symptoms will go away, and that I should strengthen my core. Even after an MRI that almost broke me financially showed 3 bulging discs and inflammation around them (this was over a month after I had an episode of back spasms) I was told the same things.
They suggested physical therapy for the physical pain and psychological/emotional therapy for the crippling depression and anxiety caused by always wondering when the next spasm will happen (they can happen when you’d expect — lifting/bending the wrong way (which I’m an expert at avoiding) —as well as being completely unpredictable (a sneeze or rolling out of bed for example..) and from literally existing in a state of pain that makes me feel hopeless, etc. It’s not all bad though, I have dad jokes and a kitten.
I did strengthen my core. I worked out religiously for 4 years but the chronic pain continued to worsen and the spasms kept coming and each one would set me back months in terms of muscle atrophy and weight loss (I’ve always been underweight since depression kills my appetite). The spasms and chronic pain worsened over the last 3 years though and I’ve been unable to maintain my weight and haven’t been able to do a significant number of exercises I once did every week.
My issue, predictably, is that I cannot afford either types of therapy or the medical scans and doctor visits I need to actually learn if there’s more going on around my spine than those doctors were seeing. I have a 4000 dollar deductible on my health insurance before they even consider paying for a portion of my medical bills which makes that insurance useless unless I can pull that 4K out of my ass.
I feel like the healthcare system in this country is entirely designed to kill people. I don’t qualify for Medicaid or ACA subsidies because I make too much money (25-30k per year... yeah, I’m rolling in money over here).
I just don’t know what to do anymore. Pain killers are losing their effectiveness and I can’t function at work without them.
I’m probably quitting the job I’ve worked at for nearly 8 years now to top it off (business nearly doubled along with the workload but we’re working with half of the checkout lanes we used to in order to social distance and were recently told by management that they’re cutting out a third of our breaks despite rapidly rising turnover and team members breaking down and crying in the bathrooms almost weekly). Nobody in management has the slightest idea what we have to deal with and yet they’ll think we’re just being entitled or whining.
And what happens when I quit? No more health insurance. Good ol’ USA. Republicans sit idle complaining about deep state conspiracies to distract from their pockets full of corporate money as those same corporations fuck us over until we literally die. Can anyone tell I’m angry?
~~~~~| TLDR: I’m a broken mess of a person and need medical and psychological help but don’t know how to afford any of it.
**And yes, I’ve seen chiropractors and it’s an expensive strategy that I stopped doing because it sometimes made my back pain significantly worse while usually having no noticeable impact on my level of pain.
April 16, 2021 at 06:53PM
