Recently, my grandfather passed away. Since then, we have been sorting old pictures that we found in his house, pictures of my childhood that hide this dysfunction and show the mask. Was I really wearing the mask at the age of 7? I can't help but think to myself, "How the hell did it get this way?" When did everything change? How did it change? How did I go from...
To the chronically ill person I am today? Who do you blame for that? How did that little girl grow up to have hundreds of papers and documents in hospital basements, psychiatrist offices, and therapists' offices? Who fucked her up? Was it you or was it me?
When I was fourteen, I started going to my pediatrician for pain. This wasn't the beginning of everything, but it was the beginning as I knew it at the time. You're growing. It's just growing pains. Yeah, right. I hadn't grown in two years, so that was ruled out. A few months later, I saw the same pediatrician. Tendonitis. Your tendons are just sore; take Tylenol. Okay. No luck. Again and again and again until that doctor got the idea that I should probably see someone more specialized. So then came the orthopedic appointments. Jumper's Knee. Right, because I jump all the time... Wrong. Tendonitis. Still not that... Arthritis. I'm fourteen! Juvenile Rheumatoid Arthritis. Wrong again. Torn meniscus. Nope. Broken patella. Nope. Synovitis? Well sorta. But your medication didn't help. X-rays, nuclear medicine tests, MRIs, you name it. I was given some test for it. This lasted until I was about seventeen. Eventually with the orthopedic it got to three phases of not knowing what was wrong. Phase 1: Cortisone shots! That made things worse. Phase 2: Let's just open your knee up and look at this! Phase 3: Call you a hypochondriac. So then came the new doctor, a sports medicine doctor. Mind you, I sucked at sports. My sports career had ended when everyone else became the same height as me. He said I had arthritis, and I was put on an Asprin regimen. He then referred me to a fellow at Vanderbilt who specialized in rheumatology. I swear, she and her supervisor were bound and determined to diagnose me is PsA. They failed. June 1st 2009, I was diagnosed with Fibromyalgia.
And that was it. Life = altered. Welcome to the world of being "chronic", the world of pain medications, and the world of being an invisible sufferer (though I was already used to that). I did my research. I saw some clips from doctors. I heard some podcasts. Something about all of my research stuck out. The most common thought surrounding the onset of Fibromyalgia is severe emotional or physical trauma. Let's see, I was 14 when I started complaining of pain... and I was 14 when fit hit the shan with my grandmother... Hm. Common denominator, anyone? And with that, the blame began.
Along with being diagnosed with Fibromyalgia, in one singular doctor's appointment I was also diagnosed with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, Generalized Anxiety Disorder, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, and Attention Deficit Disorder. So, I'd like to say a big ole thanks to whoever gave me all that crap.
As I grew older, so did my list of medications. Exactly two years after being diagnosed with Fibromyalgia, I was diagnosed with Anorexia Nervosa. It was one of those times where I kept saying, "But this is how I've been my entire life!" A few days after being told I needed inpatient treatment, I weighed myself after a heavy restriction period followed by binge drinking. I was a little under 70% of my suggested body weight, and I was 9 lbs away from my goal weight. I think it was at that moment, knees shaking, on the scale that I realized I had been this way my entire life...
Good food. Bad food. Eat this. Not that. You have to fit into size 0 jeans. You can't even try on those jeans. Buy everything in an extra small. Breakfast is unnecessary. You're not hungry. You're just a picky eater. On and on and on and on and on. Whoever says "I wonder where Ann got that from?" obviously doesn't know me or my story very well.
I was anorexic at the age of four, actively restricting by five, eating normally but purging by thirteen, back to restriction throughout high school and college, and once I started working it was a new beast of restriction, bingeing, and purging.
Who does that to themselves? See that girl up there? I did that to her.
When I went into treatment, there was a list of words and acronyms underneath MEDICAL/PSYCHOLOGICAL that made me realized how I was nothing more than a few really shitty diagnoses. ED: NOS, GAD, CFS, OCD, Depressive Disorder, Fibromyalgia, Potential for electrolyte imbalance, Hematemesis, Hypokalemia, Osteopenia, Chronic Vitamin D Deficiency, and that one I didn't expect PTSD. What?!?! You mean, that thing that all those soldiers at Ft. Campbell have when they come home from Iraq? No. Not me. What?!? Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder?! These words and acronyms brought something new to my life I had never truly understood. I narrowed it down to one of three options...
1. I fucked myself up hardcore.
2. Someone else fucked me up hardcore.
3. God made me this way.
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This was originally going to be a blog post about some anger I have towards people and some shame I have towards myself. How did I get to where I am now? Is it my fault or is it yours? I think I stayed from the path somewhere in there, and I ask your forgiveness for that. All I know is that right now I have no idea on how to express the shame and responsibility I feel for taking that little girl and causing her muscles to atrophy, starving her, forcing her to expel nutrients from her body. I cut her. I bruised her. I deprived her. I gave her scars. I gave her the bones of a woman 50 years her elder. I put her into chronic pain. I am the reason why she has to take a handful of pills in the morning to function, some throughout the day so she doesn't fall over from intestinal pain, and a handful at night so she can sleep and the noises of her perpetrators (those people I let get to her) will quiet down just for a little while.
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