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misses-bee · 3 years

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Thoughts #2

I’ve had chronic pain behind both my knees for 21 years.

The story goes, when I was 2 years old I got sick with Lyme symptoms but tested negative for the disease. According to my mother “you wouldn’t walk”. I went to the hospital and no one could figure out what it was, so I was sent home without answers.

As a kid I would complain about my knees hurting, especially when on long car rides. Other things that would make my legs were walking up hill, walking up the stairs, and kneeling when sitting back on my heels. It was a burning kind of pain, not so much as aching. I always in pain, all the time, only sometimes it would get better or worse. I felt like I needed to stretch my hamstrings all the time. Whenever I was in pain my mom would tell me to stretch and other times she would remind me that it wouldn’t hurt if I stretched every day. So whenever I was in pain it was fault for my keeping up with stretching. Even now I can feel them burning and I almost instinctively want to stretch my muscles.

I eventually stopped complaining about the pain. No one cared and no one could help me so why would I talk about it?

I was raised by strict Evangelical parents, so I attended church every Sunday and went to youth group every Monday. I loved youth group, it was fun and cool and loud and silly. I never quite fit in there, I never felt like i had a true friend there but I wanted to be friends with everyone so bad. I yearned to be friends with the cool kids. But I digress. That’s a story for another time.

I was all in on Jesus. I was completely brainwashed by my church and my parents. I mean really and truly brainwashed. I was On Fire (tm) for the LORD and I was always feeling ashamed about something. I cried so much around the other kids in my youth group. Evangelicalism is very good at emotional manipulation through friendship, music, art, and even fun. It’s all about making people feel a specific way.

Every year the youth group would take a weekend trip to Lake Champion. It was a Young Life camp and I looked forward to going every year. It was 80% fun and 20% Jesus time and that was on purpose. The whole point of Young Life is to be so fun that kids want to come but while they are here let’s convert them. I think three time a day we had “Club” where the entire camp of maybe 200 kids would pack into a room and there would be a funny sketch, pop music, a short sermon or demonstration, then worship music, then pop music. Or some combination of those things. By the end of the weekend they would tell the story of Jesus dying for our sins and coming back to life and all that jazz. After the Club we would go back to our room that was shared by all the girls from our youth group and we would discuss the sermon.

There was one night, after we heard about Jesus suffering for our sake, that everyone was supposed to find a spot by themselves throughout the campground and pray. I prayed for God to take my leg pain away. I think I was 14, so this had been 12 years of constant pain. At the time I was extremely depressed, suicidal, self harming, super emo ya know. And a good chunk of that was caused by always being in pain and no one being able to help me with it.

While praying I felt the pain from my knees subside, they relaxed for just a moment. It felt like I was floating. Relief swept over my body and for the first time I wasn’t in pain. Even on the walk back to the cabin they didn’t hurt. Not when I went up the hill, not when I went up the stairs.

When I arrived at the room I was looking through my bag on the ground and decided to test if this pain free thing was real. Did God really heal me? I wanted to be sure so that I could tell the other girls about it. So I knelt down and then sat back on my knees and you know what? It hurt. When I moved postures it burned like it always did. God took away this gift because I dared to test him. I should have been more thankful. I shouldn’t have shoved this gift in his face like I’d done by being a sinner. I felt my heart sink as a wave of guilt tried to tear it apart. I had proof that God did miracles but because of my pride be took it away.

Pretty fucked right? I’m definitely going to write several very long posts about my terrible experience with Evangelicalism, but there’s a lot of material to cover so I’ll do it another time. Suffice it to say I’m an atheist now lol.

I can’t remember if I told anyone about the miracle or not, I think I did. But anyway, we’re gonna time jump a little here.

Cut to October 2020, I’m living with my wonderful and supportive fiancé in a three story walk up. Since lockdown started I really hadn’t been exercising. Our dog was also on exercise restriction from March to August due to heart worms (another story for another time) so we went getting out for walks to often at all.

Three to four times a day I have to carry my now 18 lb dog (he was 14 before all this, poor guy) up and down 4 flights of stairs because while it’s only 3 stories on our side of the building we have to take him out the back door to avoid other dogs. Every trip up the stairs was harder than the last. Before March I only had to use one flight of stairs and even that hurt to do. It October I had the realization that my knee pain is probably going to get worse as I get older and I need to get ahead of this. I had to take breaks halfway up the stairs every time, even when I wasn’t carrying Ralphie. So when I had a med check with my primary care doctor I asked her what she would recommend for the knee pain. She recommended physical therapy. I had never thought about doing physical therapy or really anything for the pain. I just thought j was stuck with it.

So now every Tuesday I have a telehealth call with my PT. In our first meeting he told me exactly what the problem was. I had tendinitis! From stretching my fucking hamstrings every day of my life! The stretching is what made it so bad! I thought it was the only solution to the pain but it was the exact thing that was causing it. The PT says he sees this most often in women that dance or do yoga (that’s me!) and he actually offered me solutions! The problem was stemming from my lumbar, not my hamstrings. In fact it was never the hamstring that was the problem. So he has me strengthening my core, he adjusted the way I stand and I can’t believe it but it’s actually helping! I’m still in pain, but at least I have something to do about it. He told me to stop stretching my hamstrings and to squat instead of bend from the waist and now I’m seeing the results.

My entire life I followed my parents’ orders thinking they knew what was best. I gave up on getting help because those two couldn’t help me. But there was a fix this whole time. All I needed was someone knowledgeable to believe me. I’m so thankful to live in a state where I feel listened to. I’m very thankful for my PT as well.

#thoughts

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