GLAMOUR

What Are You Doing Right Now? I’m in Chronic Pain

One day I was a runner and business owner, and the next I couldn’t get out of bed.

My chronic pain never stops being interesting to me. If someone were to ask about my health, I could provide them hundreds of updates about today alone. The way my brain felt like it was bouncing in my skull when I walked down the hall to put my dishes away. The way looking down at this computer pulls painfully on my middle back. The way I felt the shower walls sway this morning and crouched on the floor so that I was even lower to the ground than my shower stool, in case I fainted. The way my toddler Khalil, sitting next to me in bed, my left arm wrapped around him, caused shooting electric nerve jolts to run down my body. The way that, while attempting to make it to the car for a 9:30 a.m. appointment, I experienced wave after wave of consuming clamminess, vertigo, and nausea that eventually drove me back inside.

I can’t remember a time without daily pain, but my health worsened dramatically when I was 28. My migraines and back pain, which had been manageable, exploded into volatile neurological symptoms. One day I was a runner and business owner, and the next, August 23, 2011, I couldn’t get out of bed.

I stopped working, went from running most mornings and seeing friends most evenings to barely leaving my bed, and spent months shuttling between dozens of appointments with dismissive doctors. I felt as though my body was disappearing, beholden to chronic pain. keep reading.....