One year ago today . . . I wasn't mourning 9/11, I was dodging a bullet.

One year ago today I was sitting in a level 3 hospital, on the Western outskirts of Oklahoma City, awaiting a surgery that was supposed to "fix" me, relieve my pain, and set me about on a new path of life that might just be better. That's right, a surgery scheduled for 9/11/12 at 11:00AM on the 11th anniversary of America's largest civilian tragedy. . .and that surgery, thanks to God and all the Angels and Saints in Heaven: never happened. And because it never happened? My life has changed so dramatically, and frankly "for the better", that 9/11 has a whole new meaning for me.

You see, I have what's officially diagnosed as "Adolescent-Onset Idiopathic Scoliosis with a Double-Major Curve, 60-Degree Opposing Curvatures of the Thoracic and Lumbar Spine with Resulting Degenerative Disc Disease and Arthritis". That's a mouthful, innit?

This X-ray is a little old. My lumbar spine is even more twisty now. Oh joy.

It's a back-full of excrutiating, constant pain, a literal pain in the ass.

So what happened? Well being a person of faith I call it a "Divine Intervention". For those of you without faith, I'm sure you'd call it a series of very fortunate coincidences. Whatever, let's not split hairs, this isn't a debate of faith. It is a story of my very own little, life-saving miracle, though. . .

A few years ago I started to feel "down". Super down. My back has always hurt, hell, it looks like something from a horror film -- you can imagine how it feels. But my lower back had never hurt like this before. I figured it out in the middle of the night, after realizing I had spent months being awake in the middle of the night, rolling my pelvis around to make my hips pop to relieve some pressure. It was an "aha!" moment: shit, it's my lower back. When you're in constant back pain, new pain doesn't often register.

My children were in a state of dismay, their normally active mom who always found stuff to do with them wasn't doing anything but sitting around playing on the computer or laying around reading books. I was cranky. I was impatient. I was short tempered. Hell, I was MISERABLE.

And my life was starting to fall down around me. My house looked like shit. My spouse dug in his heels and refused to pick up my slack. Refused to help at all, really. He was angry all the time. Apparently he didn't mean that part about "in sickness and in health" he said in his vows. That made me angry. Of course it did. Some resentment I could accept. That'd be natural. This wasn't some "resentment" -- my marriage became all-out war from his side, begging and pleading for some understanding, a bit of attention, a picking up of slack and some kindness, on mine. I warned him he was crossing a line of no-return for me. I explained I knew that he was sorely incapable of showing love on even his best days, and I didn't resent that -- as that would be like having anger towards a leopard for having spots. However, and this is important -- "you need to do something, stop ignoring me, stop ignoring this problem, HELP ME get help for this, be my friend, please, just HELP ME, help me with the kids, help me with the house, please . . ." 

And all this time I had been trying to find medical help. I went to one pain "specialist" who wanted to do surgical nerve blocks on my lower spine. I said "aren't you curious at all, as a doctor, as to WHY I am all-of-a-sudden hurting this badly?". "No, we'll just try this."  Right but the pain is so bad, I can't even walk, can you give me something other than these nerve blocks? "Nope.". My family doctor was intermittently prescribing Percocet and other pain killers as he could, but as the whole country is on a serious opiate pain killer crack-down, he could only prescribe very little. That's not his fault.

I eventually, on the advice of the National Scoiosis Foundation went to Dr. Michael Wright, an orthopedic surgeon *supposedly* specializing in adult scoliosis. I should have KNOWN this was a very bad choice the first five minutes of my first appointment. His PA told me to ignore everything my previous neurosurgeon told me, as "whatever, neurosurgeons think they know everything, they're all so arrogant" which I should have heard as "RUN! RUN AWAY FAST!".

He ordered MRI's. We finally found out what the problem was, the source of the pain. ALL of my lumbar spine discs had died into flat little black pancakes, or were very close to death. No blood flow. No springy-cushy stuff. Just the nerves serving my whole entire lower body being ground between my twisted verterbre.  The PA seemed a little mad. Like he was angry I was telling the truth about how much pain I was in, and here was the evidence, and that just pissed him OFF for some reason. And here I am, kinda wondering why he was so mad and then being all obvious and saying: "Oh GREAT! Now we KNOW! Now can you treat my pain please?"

"Nope. But I'll send you to a pain specialist."

6 months later, countless phone calls . . . nothing. No referral. No appointment for a pain specialist. Pain grew to the point where I literally could not walk more than twenty-thirty steps at a time. I was begged to be seen again. Dr. Wright, who by the way, has the personality of a rock-star-Tom-Cruise-Olympian-Gold-Medalist-Quarterback-Surgeon. His head is so big they have extra wide doors in his practice, and I'm sure it has NOTHING to do with wheelchairs, it's just so he can fit his huge head through them to grace us plebians with his presence. You may think I am confusing "ego" with "personality" but this guy has no personality, he runs on pure ego, all the time. I swear I heard him say "I AM THE GOD OF ALL SURGEONS NOW BOW TO ME, OH YOU ARE BOWING BECAUSE YOU'RE IN PAIN, BUT I WILL FIX THAT! AS THE GOD OF ALL SURGEONS! BWAHAHAHAHA!" but I think he really just said "Oh I am going to fix that." I had no choice but to wait.

I met Pedro last sumer, online. In a private facebook group that was based on art and humor. We became fast friends. We talked about movies, watched movies at the same time and then reviewed them with each other. We talked about our kids. About life (and my lack of one). He messaged me often to ask how I was doing, or how I was feeling. I reached out to him. He says he still feels guilty he didn't do more to help me then. "Just being my friend was help-enough," I reply. It was all in due-time. I KNEW what he was worth, and I planned to pursue it if I made it out of this crap alive. But up until last fall, we were completely platonic. Pedro is fussy. I like fussy. I also like not being a deceptive or dishonest wife, so I did not betray my own vows. I just waited.

And by the end of that (last) summer I was not only thinking about suicide everyday, it was like every moment of every single day. I couldn't walk, I couldn't take the pain, my spouse hated me, my eldest was out of patience or concern . . but Pippi and my boys would hang out with me in my room. Keep me company while playing video games and stuff. And yet I just wished for death. I prayed for it. Just to be out of this pain and to quit making those I love suffer, too. I kept a smile on my public face as best I could. I didn't want to spread my misery on others.

Here's what I tried to keep presenting to the world. 

Here is the daily reality of how I lived. I just found this photo now, I didn't even know it existed. Pippi playing in my room, on Photo Booth. Me, in my usual place, unable to move much. Good Lord that's hard to even look at.

 My children were the only things that I lived for. I knew a girl whose mother committed suicide. I wouldn't wish that on anyone's children, certainly not my own. I just waited.

Dash's little popsicle face, hanging out with me in my room.

So a week before this magic-surgery that was supposed to deliver me from pain (the surgery was supposed to be a full lumbar spine discectomy & fusion the first day, where they would remove the discs then use bone from my pelvis to fuse the lumbar spine together, followed by another surgery days later where they would flip me over- open me neck to pelvis, use titanium rods to brace my lumbar spine to my thoracic spine and attempt to straighten the curves a bit) I went for my pre-op physical.

This is what WOULD have happened last year. If I had survived. NOT my spine, just an example.

I learned I had a heart attack sometime in the recent past (Wait. Wut?). But what I didn't learn, until 9/11/12 an hour after the scheduled start time of that surgery? I had a raging kidney infection. You see, for some reason, there was a mix up with my cell phone bill and our phones were turned off. I didn't turn them on until the night before the surgery -- because I didn't realize it -- so out of communication was I with the rest of the world. Dr. Wright's office left messages, to pick up antibiotics, and to have it treated or they wouldn't be able to perform the surgery. I didn't get the messages. They never called my house. The pharmacy called to tell me to pick up my antibiotics. They too left messages. And for the first time ever: they never called my house.

So I was pissed last 9/11. Beyond pissed. Upset beyond belief. Even angrier to look over and see my spouse so engrossed in whatever paperback he was reading he hadn't even bothered to look up or hear what was happening. Dr. Wright explained that the infection could kill me. I could only hear "and I'm still not treating your pain". So we left the surgery center and all I could do was bawl at this senseless life of unending, mind blowing: pain. I really believed, truly believed that the surgery would help. Turns out I was wrong. . .

Dead wrong.

And had I gone through with it? Even WITHOUT that kidney infection? I probably, most-likely, would have died this day, last year.

So what happened after 9/11? My spouse had popped-off on Dr. Wright's surgery scheduler, and so I was fired as his patient. That's so funny to me, even to this day. Thank you Lord for that -- best "firing" I ever had in my life! Oh and apparently me being angry over not having my pain treated was offensive. Oh so soz, Surgeon God, I did not mean to emote in your presence or dare suggest you are doing your surgeon-God stuff incorrectly.

My dad bought my ticket to Oregon, I packed one suitcase, told my spouse that when I left I would never return to him, and boarded a plane. To my entire new life. I was finally done waiting. That was October 5th, 2012. I moved in with my sister, an amazing woman and an amazing nurse, and we set about finally getting me treated. I stopped with the wanting-to-die crap. I really, really wanted to live.

So at the end of October -- I did see a VERY GOOD spine specialist and orthopedic surgeon in Southern Oregon (who did his residency under one of the nation's top experts in adult scoliosis, but for realsy this time), my sister tagging along and asking all the right questions. Here's what we learned: 

*The surgery that was scheduled for 9/11/12 was NEVER meant to relieve pain. It wouldn't. It would make my life so much more full of pain, I'd wish I had died.

*The surgery has an extremely high fatality rate. Should never be performed outside a level 1 trauma unit hospital with one full time pulminary and cardioligist on call, 24 hours a day.





*The surgery should only be done as a last resort on people whose scoliosis has suddenly started to curve rapidly and whose lungs/other vital organs are being crushed and will die if the spine's curving is not stopped.

*That not having the surgery meant I most likely dodged a bullet, and that I must have someone looking out for me, because NOT having the surgery was the luckiest windfall of my lifetime.

*And yes, of course I'll send you to a pain specialist -- right away! You shouldn't be made to suffer like this. I can't believe you suffered for as long as you have.

As for Dr. Wright in OKC? It seems I'm not the only one to have these views --as you can see for yourself by the first review left here. My heart and prayers go out to the woman who suffered this at his hands. I'm sorry you didn't have a kidney infection or some other sort of thing that would have spared you this suffering. I'm glad you found help elsewhere. I did, too.

So as it happens, I was fianlly treated. I have quality of life. I can walk. I can do stuff with my kids, whom are all with me now. I finally convinced Pedro to take a chance on me late last October, and by December he had decided to leave Massachuesettes and join me on the West Coast. He arrived January 1st. With the help of my friend Serena, whom provided us a place to live for a good 6 months, we were able to start a new life together, along with our children, here in the outskirts of Spokane. Sure it was fast, but I waited enough in this lifetime, and I wasn't ABOUT to let a good thing pass by.

So here it is September 11th, a day of mourning for the majority of this country, and I am over-whelmingly filled with the gratitude of not dying myself on 9/11/12 just one short year ago today. Of not only being alive, but being fully alive, and happy, and grateful and above all -- so very blessed! AND MY PAIN IS FINALLY UNDER CONTROL! Sure, I still hurt and I have physical limitations, but I can cook dinner and go grocery shopping and do laundry and PLAY WITH MY KIDS.


I'll return to Southern Oregon at some point this fall for my yearly spine check-up and X-ray. I think I am going to hug that doctor when I see him.

And if you suffer chronic pain? Keep going. Keep fighting. There are specialists and doctors out there who WILL treat you. Don't give up. Just don't give up!

I know this was long, so thanks for reading.