The Broken Body

Do you remember when your body broke?

I do.

Thursday, January 26, 2017. 9:30 am. It was the day I had my first child. It was the moment I had the epidural that went too far.

Sure, that’s a common occurrence. Countless women experience it. The needle penetrates too far into the dura that surrounds the spinal cord and causes spinal fluid to leak out from around your brain. Excruciating headaches ensue. Sometimes the body heals itself before the new mother even notices. Other times, the skull crushing pain lingers for weeks or even months afterwards.

The good news is doctors can fix this. All they have to do is patch the leak, which is not much different than having the epidural itself. Leak patched and the patient is free to go home and rest for a few days.

The bad news is, the more you tamper with your system, the more damage you can cause.

And this is how my body broke.

My epidural went wrong, and my body never healed itself. I went in for the patch and left without ever realizing how big of a mistake I had just made. Instead, I thought I was cured.

For months I lived with that foolish belief. I ignorantly disregarded the recurring headaches and every new symptom that stacked. I optimistically trusted the doctors’ words that it was probably just allergies, something I had never had before. After all, they were the experts in this field, and I was not.

But then one day, the headaches fell in sync with tremendous pain in my back, pulsing with such intensity that I thought I would pass out. My mind raced back to the beginning, to the epidural, to the needle in my back that caused such severe pain in my head. This was not allergies. This was not normal. Something was so very wrong.

All the medications, test after test, from the specialists to the ER and over and over again, I couldn’t escape the pain. Yet, still I had no answers.

But I knew when this started. I knew that having those needles in my back were the cause of whatever was ruining my health. I just had to find a doctor who knew why.

And I did.

October 17, 2017

I had my first spinal tap. My opening pressure was 32, much higher than the average person. And it wasn’t even my worst day. But that is when my answer was revealed. That is when I found proof that it was not all in my head.

Intracranial Hypertension. While my spinal fluid had once been too low from a leak, it was now too high. My body had rebounded. I had tampered too much with such a sensitive system, and now that system was completely off balance. The mistake had been made, and now it was too late. My body would never be the same. I was now considered chronically ill.

Nobody wants to be sick. Nobody wants to accept that as an answer. I remember not even wanting the medicine my doctor first wanted to prescribe. Like any other sickness I had ever had, I planned on treating it with natural remedies and let my body heal on its own.

But I will never forget the doctor’s words, “Sometimes when you have a condition, you have no choice but to take something for it.”

Oh, to be chronically ill. That wasn’t me. I wasn’t born this way. I wasn’t struck by a freak accident. I looked perfectly fine. Therefore, I had to be perfectly fine.

A diagnosis is only the first step to admitting you have a problem.

It’s not the answer to that problem. It’s not the cure.

Even when my sickness had me in and out the hospital, constantly in bed, constantly in pain, I still refused to believe my life had changed. 

I tried to work and failed.  I tried to care for my child alone and failed. I tried to eat the way I used to and failed. Normal every day activities were stripped from me, but I refused to believe I was chronically ill.

If it was invisible, then it must not exist. After all, nothing but a spinal tap could ever prove it, and I didn’t plan on having those regularly. 

But as my doctor said, when you’re sick, sometimes you just don’t have a choice.

Except I do.

I can choose to accept what happened. I can choose to accept that this is who I am. I can choose to pick up this broken body and search for the pieces that will put it back together.

I can choose to believe that if this condition is so rare, then maybe I am the body that was broken so that man could find a cure.

I might never forget the day my body broke, but I will spend every day forward claiming to be made whole again.

“In God I have put my trust; I will not fear. What can flesh do to me?” – Psalm 56:4