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The original was posted on /r/twoxchromosomes by /u/Tygress23 on 2023-08-03 19:43:25.
I am a 42 year old woman who is obese. I’ve been in increasing pain in my lower back and SI joint for about 14 years. I’ve been to doctors, chiropractors, and physical therapists. I was told repeatedly that nothing physical was really wrong because I didn’t meet the criteria for a slipped disc. No one did any x rays. I asked for them a few times and everyone said my symptoms didn’t warrant them. I finally got my primary care doctor about a year and a half ago to order a scan of my lower back but she didn’t even listen to where it hurt and they scanned too high up. When we met for the results (normal) I said, wait you didn’t scan the SI joint. She basically shrugged and told me that I should go to physical therapy again and if it didn’t work she would order them lower.
I went to physical therapy for so long they started doing the same promotions again. I won the same raffle twice. The food drive was back on. I had been going for over a year. And I was worse, not better. I can’t walk as far as a year ago, I can’t stand, I can’t bend, I can’t sit for too long and sometimes I’m in so much pain I can’t stand up from laying or sitting and I literally start to cry it’s so painful.
My physical therapist casually remarked one day that it might be my hips, not my back. She emailed me the name of an orthopedic doctor she knows and suggested I see him. I had put it off for a few months because I had no hope for anything and I didn’t want to have to fight with another person who couldn’t help.
I went on Monday and he did an x ray of my lower back and hips. In the appointment he said the x ray shows there might be a slipped disc and all the people who said I didn’t meet the criteria for a slipped disc don’t know what they’re talking about. I cried immediately when he said I should have an MRI because he is the first doctor to believe me which then made him comfort me and he forgot to open the x rays they took of my hips.
He called me at 8pm from what sounded like his car and said he wanted to talk about my hip x rays so I didn’t see the info on the MyChart before speaking to a human. He said my left hip has no joint space (“obliterated” is the official term) and the whole thing is deformed and full of spurs. The right hip is similar but not quite as bad. He said I have the hips of a 90 year old. I’m 42. He said he has rarely seen this in someone my age and couldn’t imagine the pain I’m in. He referred me to a hip specialist but it is fairly obvious I will need two new hips.
This sounds like good news in a lot of ways but I keep cycling over and over how hard it was for someone to pay attention. I’m not a meek pushover, but I can only plead my case so much. But I’m a woman, I dress in t shirts and leggings and sneakers (crocs now because it’s hard for my to put shoes on and tie them since I can’t bend), I don’t wear makeup, and I’m fat. So I guess they don’t respect me at all. Or my pain isn’t real? I don’t know if this is because I’m a woman or because I’m fat.
I have been thinking for the last year that I am heading to needing a wheelchair. I have been imagining my life after the point where I “give up” and what that will look like. My husband fights with me over my inability to do things like load the dishwasher or move the laundry from the washer to the dryer. He carries things up/down the stairs for me but I don’t think he is thrilled about it. My husband’s attitude and my doctors’ attitudes have all led me to question whether the pain is in my head. If I’m blowing it out of proportion. If I’m just fat and lazy. If I’m weak. I think that’s the narrative that I have believed deep down because this news should be so jubilant - I will be out of pain eventually! I will be able to go up the stairs again! I will be able to get off of the floor if I need to sit on the floor! I will be able to have sex without pain again! But instead I’m just feeling lost and confused. How much of my life in the past 5+ years has been in pain because of this? How much has my relationship suffered with my husband because of this? Will I be able to work again? I guess I don’t need to buy a different car because the seat won’t bother me after this. Am I allowed to use the motorized carts at Walmart and Meijer now without feeling like a fraud and guilty? I have been avoiding so much because I physically can’t walk that far. I can get from the front of Target to the back and then I am done. Getting back to the front takes all my energy and then I can’t go anywhere else, I’m totally done. I tried to go to the mall and I had to lean on my friend to get out after we went to the one store we wanted to go to.
I should be happy but I’m not. I’m just confused. I’m unsettled. Why didn’t anyone take my pain seriously? Why didn’t I take my pain seriously? What is my life going to look like afterwards? What would life be like without pain anyway? It’s so ever-present I can’t conceive of a world where it isn’t there. My identity includes it and now it won’t. I’m just reeling. I keep wondering what it would have been like if I were a man instead, or if I had been hotter or thinner.
TL;DR: Someone finally paid attention to my pain and diagnosed what was wrong and my pain is real.