I saw my pain clinic doc on Thursday. I’ve been sitting on it for a couple days, just sort of soaking it in.
There’s inflammation in all the discs in my back. Arthritis, technically, though it could be several causes, even the hEDS.
But it’s REAL. I’ve been telling doctors for YEARS that I don’t take Tylenol because it doesn’t work on my pain - that I go for NSAIDS because taking 4 ibuprofen at once actually does something besides make my blood so thin I could get bruises from bugs landing on me.
For YEARS I’ve been telling doctors that inflammation causes my pain, not my nerves.
He PROVED it. He PROVED IT.
My injections were steroids, which I knew. But he explained that if it were nerve pain, he’d be doing a different procedure. But because the steroids almost completely erased my back pain (!!!) and my MRI clearly showed thinning in my discs and inflammation between them and bone, he can confirm it’s my joints.
It’s my joints. It’s damage to my joints. It’s real, visible damage. If I wasn’t back on my antidepressants and still in disbelief I’d fucking cry, dude. I’m not fucking bonkers! It’s REAL. It’s THERE. I’m not making it up, I was never making it up!!
I’m just. I don’t even care that I have limited treatment options and almost all of them involve steroids. It’s real, and you can see it, and he believes me, and I wasn’t lying. It’s there. It’s been five fucking years but it’s there and someone finally found it.