Relaunch and Bio!

I have decided to begin the journey of reviving this blog once again. I really am astonished by my thoughts at the young age of 15, in a good way. I hope this can once more serve the same purpose of a sounding board for my thoughts, some ideas on apologetics, lessons I've learned from daily life, and hopefully eventually my dream of having posts from each of my mission trip, finishing my story of my journey of healing, and maybe even my pipe dream of an advice column. But for now I will start with one post, and a tentative relaunch date of one month away, posting once weekly or so to start.

Since I chose to simplify my bio on Blogger as a whole, I decided to make this post an introduction and a brief overview of my skills, passions, and story, although of course it is far from extensive.

Girl loves God. Girl loves you. Girl learns to love herself.

A little more about me: I specialize in Vector Illustration, and hand-drawn linework, inking, and lettering. I also love to work with traditional collage when doing children’s book Illustration. I love both leading worship and serving in houses of prayer.

I often joke that I’m a jack of all trades, master of some.

In reality, I just desire to know enough to serve wherever I’m needed. I became a believer at a young age, and started this blog at the age of 15. I worked on it for a bit at the age of 24. About 3 years before my second reboot of the blog in 2019 (at which point I never got through finishing all my backdated, partially finished posts to write something actually current) I totally dedicated my entire life to Christ, selling my house, my car, and becoming a missionary. I was somewhere around 26 then. Since then I have served in about ten nations. I focus on using the arts to uplift the spirit, bring breakthrough, and spread the gospel. In addition I’m learning to use art and my testimony to be a part of God’s healing (both physically and in the spirit). Now I’m finally far enough in my own physical and emotional healing journey to get out the old keyboard again.

I want to always be prepared to give a reason, to those who ask it of me, for the hope that I have.
Perhaps that single line would make a good bio in it's own right.

Education History:
Bachelors in Writing and Rhetoric from Syracuse University
Concentration in Fashion Design from Syracuse University
Certification in Illustration from The University of the Nations

Certification in Worship from The University of the Nations

The Irony isn't lost on me. Medical History: Part Three.

Sorry for the drier than usual writing style, I promise the humor will pick up later in the blog.
Strictly speaking, this background isn't even necessary for the rest of the blog, but I find the context is important. The regular text is my physical health. I have some notes on my mental and emotional health in italics. Read only if you wish. I am going to break this up into a few posts, if you are going to read them, it is important to read them in order. This is the third.

At the end of our last episode I was starting to lose hope I would ever be free of pain, and I was wondering what on earth was next.

I think we all felt that way a little bit. Like...."what now?" Because our cure-all had proven itself to be....well... not snake oil, I mean it solved a very dangerous problem, but certainly not the miracle cure we had all put our hope in. 
It was after this that my family physician performed the physical test for a condition called fibromyalgia. Guess what...I have it. I have a severe case. Of course. Some of you may have heard of it. Most of you are misinformed about it. I am going to massively oversimplify fibromyalgia. 

There are two kinds of fibromyalgia. Real fibromyalgia, and leaky gut syndrome misdiagnosed as fibromyalgia. Both have very similar symptoms: easy bruising, all over pain, nerve pain, numbness, tingling, more severe localized pain, slower healing. We think I have real fibromyalgia based on how my pain level has not responded to diet change. With Leaky Gut Syndrome your symptoms can be treated and all but eliminated with diet control to help heal the lining of the stomach, preventing the leaking through the lining of the gut. People with real fibromyalgia also show an excess of AV shunts in their blood when tested, but they do not yet know if that is causal (the reason for the pain) or correlational (just happens alongside the pain).

In addition to this, until the proof of a physical symptom in fibromyalgia (the AV shunt studies as an excellent example) after 2010, many psychologists claimed fibromyalgia was completely psycho-somatic (all in your head.) Now how people all over the world could have nearly identical symptoms and trigger points (ugh just look that one up on google) without knowing each other, many of them, like me, never having heard of the condition is beyond me. But thanks to studies in more recent years this has been proven to be a false accusation. But a lot of false information was disseminated during this theory and remains available, confusing many who do a cursory search about the condition. But unfortunately there is still a stigma about fibromyalgia to many who are not up to date on their research.

Fibromyalgia is thought to be genetic, or otherwise with you from birth, but the symptoms do not begin until you have an "extreme pain event." This is when your pain system is overloaded by something, in my case a spinal fusion, and afterward (again to massively oversimplify) your pain system never resets to "0". Your new normal is a.....1, or a 3, or in my unfortunate case a 7.

Oh. I graduated Valedictorian. A sad life it is when that is just a footnote. 

I wasn't able to sing (properly) much during the 6 months before and the year after my surgery. Apparently those muscles are important to proper singing (who knew? - everyone who sings actually, I don't know why I didn't see it coming ahead of time) and I wasn't able to project properly or train. But by the time I was in college I was singing more. I took part sporadically in the worship team at my university's Campus Crusade (Cru). I also pursued some books and Bible study times hoping they would bring me peace. But peace was still a tenuous concept. 

Over the next 4 years fibromyalgia systematically destroyed all of my dreams. Yes, I know, melodramatic. I had once dreamed of becoming a vocal performer. I had to quit singing for two years because of the surgery. I also dreamed of becoming a fashion designer, so I chose to pursue that dream at college. And I had always wanted to write novels as a side gig. I got in to a prestigious (then top 40) university with the Founder's Scholarship, and I began my college career at Syracuse University with a dual major in Fashion Design and Writing and Rhetoric. After over two years of training in Fashion Design, my body just couldn't keep up with the strain. The 4 hour nights of sleep, lifting mannequins, bending and kneeling while pinning hems, and long hours bent over sewing machines began to take their toll. In addition a wide, spread-out university campus which required an unhealthy (for me, not in general) amount of stairs each day was a real problem. So I took a gap year to do physical therapy and focus on my health. 

I worked on a med-x machine for a year, which is essentially a torture machine where they strap every part of your body down so that they can isolate (as much as possible, no muscle is truly isolated) the area that needs the most work. 

The therapy was pretty successful actually, and while my pain didn't decrease, my functionality and ease of movement improved vastly. This paired with a new partnership with Syracuse's amazing Disabilities Services department to help reduce my stair walking made me confident to return to school...but not to Fashion Design. Through a lot of talks and tears we decided that Fashion Design was not the best choice for my health and I switched to a single major in Writing and Rhetoric. 

And another one bites the dust.

It was after my return to the school that I was introduced to what is still one of my favorite songs by a friend from Cru. The song is The Hurt and the Healer by MercyMe. To this day I think the song describes the walk of a broken person through their faith in a way so many songs seem almost afraid to address. I think that so many songs gloss over the part that happens before healing. So many speakers and books do as well. I knew my biggest struggle was a heart issue. I knew in my head why bad things happen to good people. I knew about how sin entered the world, I knew the principle of entropy and the concept of dominion (which we often call free-will). But I also knew that God does miracles and that God intervenes. I guess then my heart kept asking... then why not in this case?

I haven't seen the movie breakthrough yet, but just from the trailer I know that "Why you?" is a question a lot of people had trouble with during the real-life events that transpired. I immediately think "Why You?" is selfish. We should take joy in others' healings. I think "Why not me too?" is more where I was at the time. But while perhaps that isn't selfish, it is certainly selfcentered.

I graduated in 2013, one year late because of my gap year. I had to carefully pace the rest of my college experience, only taking 12 credits a semester and taking the expedited "Maymesters" (one month intensive semesters with 6 hour classes daily) and online summer credits. But it was wise and helped keep my health in check. 

During my gap year I had met someone. By the time I graduated we had already been dating for awhile, and he was from back in Michigan. After I graduated, I had looked into areas that were good for writing jobs (at the time the Carolinas for example) and good for my fibromyalgia (Maui and San Diego). During a family vacation to Maui we had discovered that the reports that climate massively affect fibromyalgia were not exaggerated. Maui has one of the best climates in the world for inflammation and nerve pain. San Diego is the closest on the mainland but not quite as good. It has to do with the following negative factors: 1) high humidity, 2) fluctuations in humidity, 3) extreme temperatures, 4) sudden and significant changes in temperature, 5) either extreme in barometric pressure (high or low), and 6) dramatic changes in barometric pressure. Unfortunately all six of these factors are bad in Michigan. 

The man I was dating had not yet graduated university and I decided to wait until he graduated to move with him, either getting married before moving and living together, or getting engaged before moving and living apart for a time. But it became increasingly obvious that he was unwilling to move away from his family. Because of this I got involved in a job with Michaels, which I loved in principle. I ran the events program and did crafting spots on TV. But eventually it was almost like I was stuck in a job that didn't use my degree and in a relationship that was never going to allow me to work in my degree. 

Watch one of my DIY Video Spots. It's not one of my best ones, but it was one I could find.

And so my dreams of being a writer slowly died. Three down. If you count how I wanted to be a dancer when I was younger, that's four. (The dreams of being a dancer morphed into dreams of musical theatre and broadway, so I personally still count it. Sure as heck couldn't have danced on broadway during that time in my life).

It was actually for other significant reasons we ultimately broke up. There was a lot of toxicity that I had to work through after. Now I wish him the best, he is happily married now. 

During this time, even with the help of my boyfriend, my family, and family friends it became clear that I just couldn't live a normal life. Working used up all of my energy as well as all of my pain tolerance, when I came home I was incapable of basic chores like washing dishes, cooking, and doing laundry. And I don't mean I dislike those chores. Cooking especially I adore, I meant I literally could not physically accomplish them. Grocery shopping was a nightmare. I couldn't carry the groceries inside. It was too painful. I eventually started separating my groceries into frozens, refridgerate-ables, and non perishables. I would carry the frozens in, rest for a little, carry in the things for the fridge, and then rest 2 hours before carrying in the rest in two increments. I had to plan every bit of my life in order to even accomplish basic tasks. My living situation became messy and unhealthy. It was clear that living on my own in Michigan's climate was untenable. 

Shortly after breaking up with my boyfriend of over 3 years an opportunity popped up to go to Hawaii. 

I'm sorry this chapter was a bit shorter, but if I continued, there isn't a good stopping point for three years. :)

The Irony isn't lost on me. Medical History: Part Two.

Sorry for the drier than usual writing style, I promise the humor will pick up later in the blog.
Strictly speaking, this background isn't even necessary for the rest of the blog, but I find the context is important. The regular text is my physical health. I have some notes on my mental and emotional health in italics. Read only if you wish. I am going to break this up into a few posts, if you are going to read them, it is important to read them in order. This is the second.

At the end of last episode, an unfortunate meeting between an elbow and a volleyball lead to me seeing a spine specialist. We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.

The timing was good, because the Spondylolisthesis had progressed. Remember, Spondylolysis is the initial fracture, and Spondylolisthesis is a progression of Spondylolysis. It is when the vertebral disc begins to degrade and the pieces of broken bone begin to move. During that summer I began to have short moments of paralysis. I would be walking and suddenly my legs would go numb and go out from under me. I would collapse to the ground, sometimes multiple times a day. This was because the shifting of the broken pieces of bone had become severe enough it was affecting my spinal cord.

During this period of my life I was still struggling with my relationship with God. I took comfort in times of worship. During this struggle and all the way into college this was the only time I felt close to God, although I progressively began seeking Him more and hoping to get answers for my questions, I still only felt close to Him during worship. I even participated in my small school's worship team in high school.

And in the middle of deciding the future of  her 16 year old eldest child, my mother gave birth to her youngest (13 years younger than my brother).  Obviously there was some concern about how this would all work out. But she was an absolute miracle on so many levels. We had been worried about how to care for a baby and an almost-adult baby at the same time. But God provided a caretaker in the form of my cousin, who was an EMT and even later removed my staples for me so I didn't have to go in to the hospital to have them done.

It became clear in discussions with the new spine specialist that the surgery had become a necessity. They told me if I had the surgery, I would have no pain after three months. They also explained the risks of paralysis and death associated with the surgery because it was close to the spinal cord. I was so scared, but we decided to do the surgery December of 2006. Despite my struggles I was a straight A student, a shoe-in for Valedictorian. So my parents weren't worried about me missing school, they were more worried about me missing summer, which they knew was an important time for my psyche. So we scheduled it so I could recover over winter break and miss maybe 4 weeks of school. We had disabilities accommodation with the school, and had permission in advance.

This is what a spinal fusion entailed in my case. They would put two screws, spaced apart with a metal rod, into each side of the vertebrae fusing the vertebrae in place and apart, in place of the broken wings. There is also a small, hard to see cage in the space between the vertebrae because the disc spacing them apart had become so degraded.

Here's a view of something similar to my surgery. This is as minimally gross as I could find. Bear with me. 

I wondered and feared what would happen when I died. I was mad at God. I mean, I still believed in God, and I still believed Jesus was my savior. But just like a child who still believes in their earthly father, I was angry. I wondered if I went to heaven if I was angry. I wondered how much unresolved anger equated to intentionally walking away from God. Remember these were the somewhat irrational thoughts of a teenager facing death.

I remember waking up from the surgery. My parents were supposed to be there but the nurse had sent them to my room. I was annoyed by this. I was also glad to be alive, and also very excited that it was the beginning of the end of my chronic pain. The nurse gave me a funny look and didn't say anything for a moment. Then, almost hesitantly she said, "You're in a level 10 of pain right now, this is worse than a gunshot wound, worse than childbirth. You can start the morphine drip with the pump by your left hand." And it was at that moment that I realized that the pain I had been living in for the last few years, the pain the doctors belittled and called small, had been a level 8. Every single day. For years. The nurse had been waiting for a reaction to the pain, or at least for it to register on my face. It wasn't likely to do so. I had been hiding a 8 from the world for years, I could handle a 10.

At least, that was what I thought until the gurney went over its first bump on the way to my room. Then I realized that a level 11 existed.

I always hated that pain scale. I was like...what the heck? There's 10 emojis here, and the last one is sobbing. I'm not sobbing. In fact the first one is smiling. I'm smiling. Until that day I usually gave the docs an answer of something below 6.

Stupid pain scale.

I got to see my parents in the room. There was a lot that happened in the 3 days I was at the hospital. The nurses were blown away with how much I was able to move and help them right away. They said I progressed unusually fast. I learned how frustrating it is to be stuck in a painful position and not be able to move on your own. And there were so very many painful positions. So many. I had a drain in my back, which is interesting. It proved to me I'm not squeamish about blood. I had so very many staples holding me together. 

I had a nurse forget to bring me my medication, and I was reminded what a 10 feels like when you're not laying completely still on a gurney. And yes, a 10 is a heck of a lot worse than an 8. But it's still a heck of a lot easier to deal with when you can handle an 8. My dad sat up with me and watched Mars Attacks, which was the only movie on TV at 2 am (remember those days before DirecTV guys?) and is also quite possibly the most ludicrous movie ever made. Even more so when your LorTab is kicking in.  (I do not promote the taking of pain medication to improve movie viewing experience, I do not condone taking medication in any way other than prescribed by a doctor.) 

I also learned that the doctors had somewhat minimized what the recovery process would look like. They now explained that because the structure of my spine had been compensating for issues for almost 6 years, its correct structure would feel very foreign to me. I had to re-learn how to walk. Like a toddler. I would have to use a walker until I became familiar with my own body again. Which was unpleasant. 

I was finally able to leave the hospital at the end of the 3 days. I got to ride in a wheelchair to the car. The ride in the car was pure torture. I hadn't realized how much we rely on our back muscles to stabilize ourselves in life. These muscles in my back had been surgically cut through all the way to the bone to allow for the surgery so those muscles wouldn't be stabilizing anything for awhile.

I had to sleep on the couch downstairs for awhile because I had a hard time shifting myself. I had to use the back of the couch to turn my body when I needed to shift for sleep, and rely on my arms to move myself instead of my lumbar, glute (gluteal), and leg muscles. At first I would wake up screaming from pain in the middle of the night. But the younger of our two family dogs, Phoenix, started sleeping at my feet. It was a comforting presence. I also started sleeping with my childhood stuffed animal again. If I woke up I would clutch the stuffed animal, and turn myself, instead of waking the whole house.

This is my actual x-ray. Those screws are over 2 inches long. 

During this time my whole family was amazing, but I really want to give a shout-out to my brother Nate. He was only 13 at the time. This is a time when you should not spend Christmas break helping your big sister get to the bathroom, or bringing her her meals because she couldn't walk to the kitchen yet (a mere 20 foot journey) or watching her stupid shows because she was in charge of the TV. But he was such a trooper. He didn't go through his iffy phase until 15, so we were in the clear. ;) Love ya bro!

We slowly began to realize that recovery would not be as simple as the doctors had made it sound. To gloss over the next period of time, I wasn't able to go back to school quite as soon as we had hoped. I went back for half days and then full days, and I was still loaded up on prescription painkillers. I even went to my junior formal with a cane and still on prescription painkillers. I caught up on my work shortly after the semester was over and got grades similar to what I normally got. This was because of my parents amazing dedication, my mom going over chemistry and my dad teaching me pre-calc to catch up. We started decreasing the painkillers as soon as possible, but this also meant the progression of pain relief was slow, and eventually by summer we realized that I was not going to be pain-free in 3 months. The docs said, "It's not abnormal for it to take 6 months."

My mobility had improved and by the time I was starting the next year I was off of the narcotic painkillers and on a more stable regimen. But my pain level had plateaued. It was not gone. In fact, it was not much better than it had been before the surgery. Don't get me wrong, I wasn't experiencing the partial paralysis anymore. Which is good because it could have lead to full lower paralysis eventually, but the promised pain relief had not arrived.

And I had put on a ton of weight. From when I had to start being more sedentary that summer because of the paralysis symptoms to the following summer when I had been frequently sedentary post surgery I had massive weight gain of several sizes. I went from just barely the plump side of curvy to massively overweight in just over a year.

Needless to say this was a challenging time in my life. It was a time where my spirits were pretty down, with the shining light of my baby sister's smile keeping me going. But when the pain plateaued I became very very worried. And when the doctors said it might take 6 months for my pain level to go down I had a deep sense of foreboding. And my self image totally tanked. I had already been a kind of awkward teen, with unstylish hair. And my body type had never fit our school uniform well. But this was a whole 'nother thing. I didn't even recognize myself. 

When 6 months passed the doctors said that in some patients, particularly those who had been dealing with the condition a long time, it could take up to a year for the pain from Spondylolisthesis to go away. I was not amused. That should have been in the file. I'm just saying, I would have appreciated a memo: "You may be free of your lifelong pain in 3 months, or it could take 6, or sometimes a year." I still would have signed up. Ya don't need to fib to get me on board to not be paralyzed for life. It's not a hard sell!

But when a year passed with no change in the plateau, we knew something else was wrong.

The Irony isn't lost on me. Medical History: Part One.

Normally I try to write with a little perk and some irony, even when addressing dark times in my life. But the only way I was able to keep this "short" (comparatively) and also get through it, was by being rational and a little drier than normal. I'm sorry for this. Strictly speaking, this background isn't even necessary for the rest of the blog, but I find the context is important. The regular text is my physical health. I have some notes on my mental and emotional health in italics, so you can place the progression on the timeline. My apologies in advance, as much of this is from the viewpoint of my young self, which could allow for inaccurate understanding of some events or causation/vs/correlation issues. I also included over-simplified medical information. My apologies to all spinal specialists for my elementary explanation. Read only if you wish. I am going to break this up into a few posts, if you are going to read them, it is important to read them in order. This is the first.


When I was young, really young, age 10 and below, I was pretty athletic. Unfortunately I was sporadically motivated. For example, kindergarten soccer saw me picking dandelions almost as frequently as preventing goals. Still; I dabbled in soccer, dance, gymnastics, tae-kwon-do, horseback riding, tennis (which stuck more or less), and swimming (which stuck for real).

I was also in a very strong place in my faith at this early age. I was already serving on a worship team in the youth service at my church, and God was very very real to me. For those of you who don't know me, I am a crazy, missional, all in, bible-thumping Jesus Freak, and proud of it. Also, for those of you who don't know me, I take Jesus practice of loving everyone and judging no one very seriously. Please never hesitate to ask me questions.

I was taking private lessons as an equestrian (English style) when I was 11, so I was excited when I heard our summer vacation was to a horse ranch. I enjoyed the trip. I got my first taste for archery, which I still love, although I'm only adequate at it. I played in their awesome pool/mini water park. And I even rode a bull. Although it was a sad pansy of a bull. And I rode horseback. My favorite horse was called Thunder....or Thunder-something. I mean I was 11, this is pretty good memory. But on a trail-ride later in the trip I qualified for a cantering ride. For liability reasons they test riders before allowing them to trot, and canter. That day I rode a horse called Nelly. Irony not lost.

There was an incident. I was, of course, on a ranch. This means I was riding Western, when I had been trained English. Normally this would not be much of a distinction on a leisurely trail ride.

This is an English saddle. This image is head left, rump right. Meaning the left side of the image would be closest to the horse's neck. The part on the right which goes up is called a cantle.

This is a Western Saddle. As you can see, there is another protrusion on the "front" of the saddle. This is called a "horn" and cattle ranchers could tie off a lasso here back in the day. As you can see the cantle (back part) on a Western saddle is harder and taller. It was easy for a cattle rancher to lean back against it when pulling on a stubborn head of cattle, or a cowboy could lean against it on a long day.

Yes, this annoying aside does serve a purpose. Because Nelly got a little frisky and I got tossed upward a bit. I was just experienced enough to keep my seat (not fall off) but I was unused to the higher cantle. I slammed down on the cantle in such a way that my tailbone made contact with the wood. We wouldn't be sure until a while later, but I fractured my spine in four places.

This is not my x-ray. As you can see, the little scotty dog in the picture has a broken neck. That is where the fractures occur in Spondylolysis. The difference in mine was that both scotty dogs had broken necks. What this represents is a fracture in an attachment for the vertebrae. Mine was fractured at two vertebrae and on both sides. 4 fractures.

The diagram below shows Spondylolysis. Spondylolysis is the initial condition of the fracture. Again mine was fractured at more than one vertebrae. 

Spondylolisthesis is a progression of Spondylolysis. It is when the vertebral disc begins to degrade and the pieces of broken bone begin to move. It has a progression and is numbered by severity.

Between when I was 11 and when I was in middle school the doctors told us I maybe had a mild slipped disc. They said my increasing pain was all in my head, and that I was exaggerating it. After middle school we became aware of the severity of the situation, but were put off by a doctor suggesting we "throw a few screws in there," especially given my young age, and decided to pursue other options.  By the time I was 13 I was in pain every second of every day.

My mood, attitude, and faith began to suffer. I wondered how I could be such a wuss? I mean the doctors said the mild slipped disc doesn't even usually cause pain, and they said when it does it's mild. I struggled with self-doubt over the pain. I considered myself to be the wussiest of the wusses. The worst sort of pansy. I tried to train myself to never talk about what I was going through.

We tried everything to avoid surgery. I did three rounds of physical therapy, I tried nerve deadening injections, deep tissue massage. I tried to remain physically active, tennis was the last of my initial team sports to die. I ran cross-country in middle school, which is an impact sport and is one of the things they highly recommend you avoid. But remember, in middle school we didn't know the severity of my condition. Running cross-country caused me extreme pain, but trying to explain that to my parents when doctors were telling them it was the opposite was difficult.

My health continued to deteriorate. At this point I got my hips (puberty...what can ya do?) but went up two sizes instead of one. I believe I gained extra weight due to the decrease in my physical activity and the fall in my spirits.

My mood tanked. I lost friends because of my pain. I lost a dear family member at the same time. I started to become so very angry with God. "God, I was your most faithful little Jesus Freak, why did you allow this to happen to me?" But at the same time I was afraid to be honest with God about how I was hurting. I had seen God's power all my life, I had felt His presence and His love. But it seemed like He had abandoned me.

By high school I was discouraged and in severe pain. I had learned that being honest in my health struggles would cost me friends, so I hid the majority of what I was going through. I also began to have occasional panic attacks when I was stuck in a desk at school and the pain became severe. That feeling of being trapped and in pain was a trigger.

My school accommodated my needs readily. A parent note allowed me to pace the hallways for a few minutes and stretch when the panic attack seemed imminent. I had permission to get up and move during class if necessary. I attended a very small private school, and the girls who didn't participate in sports got left out, so I played basketball (badly) and volleyball (adequately with occasional bouts of competence).  The one thing I had going for me in basketball was endless hustle and an unbeatable pain tolerance. Again, later I discovered that both of these sports are highly discouraged for back patients. Again, the irony isn't lost on me.

I was a broken person even then. I was being treated for depression. Later we discovered it was actually a severe vitamin D deficiency causing low mood, exhaustion, lack of motivation, and lack of focus. But the feelings were so real, and the pain was so real, both physical and emotional. And I no longer had a close relationship with God to lean on. My relationship with my friends was 50% focused on hiding my pain. Unfortunately this lead to being mocked and picked on sometimes when I needed accommodations for the issue, because I had made it seem less severe than it was. 

During high school my parents and I became separately and quietly aware that my condition was more severe than our early doctors, and even the doctor recommending surgery had made it sound. My pain level became incredibly severe.

People who I now love and respect were downright cruel. A girl told me I lied about my condition, because I called it something different the two times she asked me, when really she couldn't remember what I had said the first time. I attended a sleepover on my parent's condition that I be allowed to sleep on a couch or a bed, but after the girl's parents went to bed, one student took the only couch and wouldn't allow me to sleep on it, even when I explained. I was in such pain the next day my parents scolded me and forbade me to attend another sleepover. They said I should have called them and gone home. And they were right. 

My sophomore year season of volleyball, the last practice of the season (preceding the last two games of the season) I had a volleyball served, overhand, point-blank into the tip of my right elbow by the most powerful server on the team. It hurt like the dickens, but less than my back, so I shook it off and figured it was ok. I had a bad rep with the coach, because I had a doctor's note that forced me to replace some of the warm-ups. I couldn't do suicides for example, so she put me on wall-squats. (I am proud to say at that time in my life I could do a 7 minute wall squat.)

I played in the final two games of the season. In the last game of the season, my elbow was hurting BAD. The pain was closely approaching the pain in my back but it was more acute. But I was serving. We were behind, and I had served 7 aces in a row. I had to keep it together. They got a hand on the 8th ball, but it still dropped to the floor. After 4 more aces I whiffed, but now we were tied at 21. It was a final game miracle. It was also the only time in my entire sports history that the entire crowd was chanting my name. Coach pulled me because I had begun to cry from the elbow pain, and my team got the two points necessary to win. And coach STILL rolled her eyes at me, even though I had won us the game. Which is honestly the first time I had been particularly useful all season. I'm not bitter.

My mom took one look at my face and took me to the hospital. The doctor took one look at the x-ray and said "What did you do?" Which is never a good sign. Apparently I had fractured my elbow. There was marrow bleeding from the fracture, so he couldn't see how badly I had fractured it clearly. I had to have it in a splint and ice it for a few days before they could get a clear x-ray. It was pretty bad, and I had to have a cast from my third knuckles up to my arm-pit.

When I came to the after-season party, I have to say I enjoyed the look on Coach's face when she saw the cast. She said "It was broken," and I replied, "Yeah," and gave her the gory details. Juvenile, I know. We have to take our moments when we can. It was a strange sort of vindication for the borderline verbal-abuse I had taken from her all season.

I mention this incident for an important reason. That badly fractured elbow had hurt less than my low back until I literally beat it against a ball 13 times consecutively. Not to mention all the bumping and spiking of the rest of the game. My family realized how severe my pain actually was and we got a referral from my family doctor to a spinal specialist.