(Image from The Tao Oracle)
I met a friend for drink the other night and we were having an innocuous conversation with a girl at the bar. She was telling us that she had been going to a pole class for exercise and how amazing that has been. She was encouraging both of us to check it out. Now I could have just said “yeah, that sounds really cool. I’ll check it out.” But one of my many flaws is that I just don’t lie, even when it would have made zero difference if I did. Like to the point where when the checker at the grocery store asks how I’m doing… I tell them. I told her that it sounds amazing and that I’ve been curious about it in the past but I’m still recovering from four years of chronic illness and have a lot of fitness that I need to build back. I shared that I recently went to an hour long gentle yoga class and couldn’t make it through the whole class. Her reply was to tell me they have a class that is a combination yoga and pole. At first I thought that sounded cool. Then she elaborated, you start out doing yoga, then you do 30-40 minutes on the pole, and then you finish with more yoga. Ummmm… nope. Right now I’m really pushing myself so I do 20 minutes on the treadmill and walk a little bit more than a mile twice a week. And it has taken several weeks for me to be able to do more than a mile. It is so much more than the nothing I was doing but I still have a ways to go before I’m trying to support myself on a pole.
Just like it would have been so easy for me to say I was going to check it out, it would have been so easy for her to believe me. It would have been very simple to say “that sounds really hard, I’m glad you’re doing better. Pole classes will be there when you feel ready.” I also think that part of the reason it really rubbed me the wrong way is because of reading so many stories about how women aren’t believed when they talk about their own experience with their bodies. I’m not male so I cannot speak to the male experience in medical settings but the horror stories you hear about women who have awful things happening medically being told they’re hormonal or that it’s just a bad period and they need to suck it up. We know our bodies and all we want is for someone to believe us. A few years back I had a flareup that no one could diagnose. It was most likely something called trigeminal neuralgia. I had such severe paid on the left side of my face that I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t eat, when it got really bad I would either walk in circles or cry. I genuinely do not have words for how bad this pain was. I was taking ibuprofen ten at a time and it wasn’t even touching the pain. I thought that it was dental because I don’t have the best teeth and I’ve had jaw infections from dental issues so I know what that feels like. I went in to my dentist and they couldn’t find anything. Finally I ended up in urgent care because I didn’t know what else to do. There was no sign of infection or anything they could see. (They were thinking sinus infection at first.) The doctor I saw was kind and compassionate but the second I asked about pain killers I was treated like I was drug seeking. I just wanted to sleep because I hadn’t for days.
I haven’t been living under a rock, I am fully cognizant of the fact that we are living in an opioid crisis. I don’t have the answer for that. All I can speak to is how it felt for me to be asking for help and treated like a criminal. I ultimately got the pain meds, they helped but not as much as I would have hoped. The pain died down and though I have had moments when it seems like it could come back I haven’t had anything major like that was. I hate the feeling of having to fight to be believed. The reality is that this is just one small story. With my other health issues it took months to find a doctor who believed me. I literally had one doctor, after running some basic labs, tell me “on paper you’re in perfect health.” That was when I was throwing up every day and couldn’t get out of bed at least five days a week. At that moment I didn’t give a flying fuck what I was on paper I needed someone to believe me and be willing to do what it takes to find an answer.
Screaming in the Dark 