Walking Medical Mistake
It’s 5am, I woke up angry and couldn’t get back to sleep. I can’t shake this anger towards the medical community. Friday I had an appointment with a specialist who was supposed to be helping me deal with chronic pain. After being kept waiting over an hour for my appointment and being called in once prematurely (my first appointment they made mistakes too, this doesn’t bode well in the confidence department for them) I come to find a chart hanging on the wall, it’s a chart of spinal diseases.... copyright 1984-1986... hmmmmm coincidence? The one disease missing from the chart... SCHEUERMANNS! I take note of this and when the doctor finally arrives, I make a joke about this chart being outdated and that scheuermanns isn’t listed. The response i was met with was unbelievable. The specialist sees nothing wrong with the chart as “nothing has changed since then”.... REALLY??? nothing has changed? so my disease doesn’t exist then? I don’t have chronic pain all day ever day, I don’t have searing pain in my spine after short activities like walking to the bathroom and/or showering. I must sleep so soundly and comfortably, I don’t have constant nausea, and I certainly don’t lose sensation to my legs. Nope, none of that must happen because scheuermanns doesn’t exist.
Perhaps you are wondering WHY this makes me so bloody angry.... well... the truth is that my mum ASKED the doctor why my spine was curving when I was 7... she was told that I was too fat. Plain and simple. Lose weight and the spine will straighten. To satisfy my mums questions, they screened me for scoliosis and called it a day. “Don’t worry, your daughter will be fine, she’s just too fat”... Now if that in itself doesn’t anger you, how about being told the SAME thing, that you are just too fat and have bad posture from a SPECIALIST! 23 years later, telling me the SAME answer when in fact, I have been tested prior and indeed have scheuermanns.
Riddle me this: How many people fought to the death that the world was flat???
I am a walking medical mistake. The doctors didn’t know what to look for and by the time they did (and only because I kept pressing for answers at age 26) it was too late. I have a severe spinal deformity that causes me increasingly horrible pain each and every day. The doctors don’t want to admit they were wrong, they also don’t want to admit they know NOTHING of this disease!!! GET EDUCATED THEN! This IS a real disease! You have NO RIGHT to tell me that I am not in pain, that there’s nothing wrong with me. YOU fucked up! The medical community fucked up and now I am the one who pays the price.
I research every day on this disease, there isn’t much information out there which is one of the most disheartening parts of all of this. Of course the medical community has no idea about this disease, I am one of the few who have it! To be classified as having scheuermanns, you have to have both the kyphosis of the upper spine and lordosis of the lower spine. I have both, with prominent disfiguration. I also have schmorls nodes on my vertebrae, meaning that I have little boney nubbins on my spine where there shouldn’t be. So combine that with vertebrae that are shaped like a door wedge instead of a square. Now imagine that the door wedges are formed into a C shape (my upper spine) and try to straighten those out... you’re running into a problem right? all the ends of the wide side are touching and the thin ends are pulled right apart right??? Now imagine that happening INSIDE my body each time I try to have “good posture”... I can’t even begin to tell you the pain it causes.
*sigh* I am frustrated.