raw&real pain pt. 1

I’ve been thinking about starting a “blog” for a while now.  I am a dancer, or at least I used to be… its been a year since I’ve started to have debilitating pain in my left hip.  Still no answers on that yet… I am most definitely not a writer, though, that’s for damn sure. I have a degree in physics, and didn’t discover that I am dyslexic until my senior year of college when I was unable to see a pattern of numbers in a quantum number chart on a problem set. It was literally 3 or so hours of physics to fill in the chart and the homework question was to identify the number pattern in the chart and I just could NOT see anything in that damn chart.  A fellow physics peer came up to me and was like “Oh yeah don’t worry, I can’t see it either.  It’s because I’m dyslexic.” That was when it all clicked. It made so much sense. I used to act out while I was studying for spelling tests in elementary school, but my parents thought I just had behavioral issues, because I was so advanced in math and science afterall. So, of course, the only answer was to send me to a behavioral therapist… instead of learning how to control my anxiety (which was actually my learning disorder) I learned how to do and say exactly what I needed to in order to be what everyone (all the adults) wanted me to be.

…anyways that was a bit of a tangent… moral of that story is I’m not good with words. Languages don’t click in my brain unless its math. So this is a big step for me coming here to write about my life. But I’m desperate.  I need some way of letting go of all my stress and anxiety of life and dance just isn’t something that is feasible for me at this moment. So here I am.

The pain started a year ago, after I was sick with a virus for a week. I have a history of rheumatic fever so sometimes when I get sick, I have remnants of arthritis in my joints.  I was sick and my hip hurt a lot.  I thought it was just the swollen joints thing. And that the night before I woke up with a mild fever, I was attempting to learn how to do a side flip to surprise my boyfriend.  (He does parkour and that’s his favorite move) I wanted to surprise him by learning it but that whole situation backfired for other reasons I won’t go into here… So whatever, I was doing some intense physical activity and was getting sick at the same time, I thought I was just a little extra sore in my dominate hip that morning.  I called my boyfriend when I woke up… “Let’s go out to dinner, I’m bored being sick and in bed… I want to do something!!!” So being the great boyfriend he is… he took me out to dinner… I wanted to look extra cute for him, show off my legs… the weather was finally nice again! I decided to wear little booties with about an inch and a half heel… no big deal. My legs looked damn good though. We took the T and walked around Back Bay… my hip was hurting, but I was just sick.

I could barely get through dinner without looking like I got hit by a bus… Travis knew I wanted to stay out later for ice cream and more drinks, but could tell I was not feeling so hot.  We took the T back to his apartment and he put me to bed.  I woke up the next morning and couldn’t pick up my leg without using my arm. Hmm… “Could you help me get my shoes on, honey?” I was trying to be cutesy… but it really fucking hurt. He helped me get my shoes and and picked me up off the floor. “We should keep an eye on that if it doesn’t get better” But I couldn’t tell him the intense workout I had done the night before… the flip was supposed to be a surprise!

A week later, the pain hadn’t subsided but I did get over the virus… so I figured I should get it checked out.  I kept telling people that it just felt like my hip was dislocated or in the socket wrong. I dislocate joints all the time: fingers, knee caps, ribs. It seemed normal still, but the pain never lasted this long before.  So I went to urgent care. “You just pulled your hamstring… it’s not a big deal” No matter how much I explained to the doctor that “I am a dancer and I KNOW what my hamstring feels like” she just wouldn’t listen to me.  “Well I could give you an x-ray if you really insist, but it would likely be a waste of our time” I didn’t get the x-ray.

As much as that pissed me off I’m sure as hell glad I did not get that xray.  I was under my dad’s insurance at the time, but little did I know that he just got a new job with different insurance and I actually wasn’t covered in Boston at all. I ended up having to pay $200 out of pocket for that Urgent Care visit.

….Then came the fights with my father. He had texted me asking if I needed to be on his new insurance… uhm yes… Travis and I went home Memorial Day weekend.  It was my little sister’s (and my old home) dance studio’s recital.  I was supposed to dance. I knew the choreo, I had spots, I just couldn’t actually do the moves full out. It was the first studio recital I hadn’t danced in since I was 2 years old. That stung quite a bit.

Both my parents looked at my hip.  My dad’s a cardiologist, my mom’s a Physician’s Assistant… my mom was very concerned with the amount of pain i was in, but my dad shrugged me off.  Nothing was wrong. I was being dramatic.

We came back to Boston.  Maybe I was being dramatic.  Maybe it was still residual arthritis pain from the virus.

Three week’s passed. Still in pain.  I tried to see if I could get my own health insurance through work, but I was a temp worker and I wouldn’t qualify for benefits with the agency until mid-October. I couldn’t wait that long.  This had to be something serious. I’ve never been in this much pain for this long before. And I sure as HELL have never been in enough pain to not dance.  ***side story: In 9th grade, I sprained my ankle on a trampoline the night before leaving for nationals.  I danced for 6 days on a sprained ankle. It was the size of my knee, and rainbow colored… I didn’t care. I wrapped it up and danced my fucking heart out. It healed afterwords.  I did the same thing in college… and danced with a huge ass boot on my foot until the swelling went down enough to put a mini air cast on.  I’ve dislocated my rib and still will run around doing front walk overs because its fun… I don’t stop dancing for anything***

I asked the company that I was temping for if they would consider hiring me full time so that I could get the benefits. They said no.  I had to find a new job, but I couldn’t sit around and wait for that I also had to call my father and ask for help.  I couldn’t’ afford to fly home again, I just paid for mine and Travis’s ticket home in May.  He said “no it’s not important enough” and also refused to give me his new insurance information… I had to call the insurance company myself to figure out if the plan had some kinda of loop hole where I could somehow get coverage out of network… it didn’t.  Also BIG SURPRISE i didn’t qualify for Obama Care because I technically did have coverage (no “qualifying life event”) … whoop whoop.

So after lots of crying phone calls with my dad and my mom… They’re recently divorced by the way and had been fighting over who pays for what for all 4 kids as it is anyways…  I FINALLY convinced my father to fly me home and get me into a hip specialist… 1 month of misery and I was finally going to get some answers and start treatment plans, or so I thought…

My dad had a friend of a friend hip doctor apparently… he was able to sneak me into the schedule without needing the whole PCP visit and referral beforehand. It was a good thing, I thought. I went in for my consultation, got some x-rays done, have the doctor do the physical examination… limped around the office for him to see. And the doctor said, although all my x-rays looked completely normal it looked like a labral tear. Something I had actually been happy to hear after doing hours of research on my own, and talking to other people who had similar issues, I had kinda figured that it was an issue like that.

He explained that the x-rays looked completely normal with no signs of impingement, but a tear can occur for other reasons.  He ordered an MRI  with a joint dye injection (luckily my father already had one scheduled) and explained that surgery was a possibility. I asked what the recovery time was for the surgery and he said 6 months.  I started to cry.  That’s a long time to be out of dance. The doctor responded “Honey… don’t cry, it’s not like you have cancer.” I wanted to punch him. My dad nodded his head.

The doctor also sent me for some blood work because he was concerned about the issue starting while I was sick and for my history of rheumatic fever.   I got the blood work and the MRI and flew back to Boston.  Not before being lectured by my father about how I needed to move back home in order to figure all this out… Oh also that I need to bring back his car from Boston because I’m not responsible enough to keep up with it because its getting old… I had already been saving for a down payment on a new car… he didn’t listen.  I wasn’t responsible enough to make it on my own in Boston.  My dad told me I should re-consider my life choices as he dropped me off at the airport.  “It’s not guaranteed that you’ll get into Architecture school anyways, Nicole.  You were already rejected by 4 different schools the last time you applied.  You should be smarter about your finances and life choices.  Saving money should be you’re priority.”  

Sorry Dad, you’re wife divorced you because you had an affair and you don’t have a relationship with your children… but that’s not my fault.  I’m not letting you manipulate me into moving back home in your house because you’re lonely due to the life mistakes that you made…. I wouldn’t want to live with you anyways.  If I did move back to Buffalo, I’d get my own apartment.  They’re half the price of Boston’s apartments anyways…

So I waited for the results to come in.  Called the doctor’s office after a week…. he had gone on a week vacation though, it was 4th of July week.  I called every fucking day. My blood work was posted to my patient portal account, everything looked normal excepted a positive ANA (anti-nuclear antibodies) reading.  I called my mom to ask what that meant.  She said it’s nothing since everything else in the report was normal.

Sometimes healthy people have a positive ANA, sometimes it means there’s an autoimmune disease.  I wasn’t too worried yet. My blood work has been abnormal since I had rheumatic fever when I was 10. But the MRI results still hadn’t come back.  It had been 2 weeks now.  I was in a lot of pain.

My mom got worried and made her own phone calls.  She called the imaging lab where I got the MRI done and had the report sent to her office.  She called me in disbelief… “Nicole… I think there was a mistake. The report says the MRI was completely normal.” I cried at work when she called me.  She said to wait until the doctor called and explained the results to me before getting too upset.  Maybe he had a plan.

I kept calling the doctor to get his response.  I had a message taken 3 times. He was back from his vacation and it took him still an extra week to call me back.  It was mid-July now. When he finally called me back, he explained that he couldn’t do anything for me until I was cleared by a rheumatologist because of the positive ANA in my blood work. I begged him for more help… “I’m a professional dancer, and I’m not able to dance.  My quality of life has gone from a 10 to a 3.” “Sorry, you’re just going to have to deal with it hun. It’s not in my realm of work anymore.”   God I wanted to hurt that man. I’m not some dumb bitch looking for attention from my father with this… I’m hurt and need help.  Believe me I would have avoided going to my father if I could have…

My mom knew I was in a lot of pain, she saw how miserable I was after sitting on the planes for what felt like 20 hours. She called my dad, despite not wanting him in her life anymore to try to figure out a plan.  My dad had to call the hip doctor himself now and hear the story… another few days. Finally my parents decided that I should go on an arthritis medicine meloxicam, which is basically a prescription dose NSAID for people with Rheumatoid Arthritis.  I wasn’t happy to hear this, I couldn’t go back to home to see a rheumatologist, so I had no choice but to start taking it and see if it helped.  I also started the frantic search for a new job.  A job with benefits.

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Relationships are hard....

July 16th, my 24th birthday: I had friends in from all over the world visiting.  One of my best friends from college who’s attending Med School in France, was here! I hadn’t seen her in a year, and before that hadn’t seen her since graduation (2 years).  I was so excited to see everyone!! But I was also in a lot of pain.  I couldn’t keep up with everyone as we walked to dinner, I was in pain while we were grilling and eating together, I went to bed at 9pm the night before my birthday.  And I didn’t sleep more than 3 or 4 hours that night.  I was having sharp pains in my stomach… what the fuck is going on now???

I went to the bathroom and it was extremely painful.  I’ll save you from all the grossness, but it was not the right color.  I looked up the side effects of meloxicam… “STOP TAKING IMMEDIATELY AND SEEK MEDICAL ATTENTION” I called my mother in tears.  “Happy Birthday, Sweetie!!… what’s wrong? why are you crying? Is it your hip?”  … It sounded like a stomach ulcer… but guess what… you still don’t have health coverage in Boston!! Here’s a big huge fuck you for a birthday present.

I stayed in bed most of the day.  Travis was wonderful and went to the grocery store and bought everything ginger, aloe, and soothing for a stomach ulcer.  I was able to eat some yogurt. We were going to concert that night.  I wasn’t going to let this ruin my birthday, I was still going.  

I was lucky.  I was able to get a new job in less than 3 weeks.  I started August 1st, my benefits would kick in September 1st and it was in the industry I was trying to get into anyways! It would look great on my grad school applications, and I would have construction knowledge from the construction site I’d be working on! It would be a huge advantage for when I finally become an architect.  I was still in a lot of pain, but at least it helped me make an important life move! Gotta count the blessings as they come.

That’s about when my support system of friends started to fall apart… The doctor said nothing was wrong with me, I started to think maybe he was right, maybe I was going insane. And I guess my friends didn’t know how to handle me like that… I was always the one who would help them talk through their own problems. But now I had my own, and I was trying to quiet myself from talking about the pain.  Because no one believed me that I was in pain.  Or maybe I just didn’t believe myself. I didn’t want to be annoying about it…

It started with Travis.  And I’m sure as hell not blaming it on him or anyone else that I’m about to talk about for that matter. It’s not his fault, it’s not their fault, it’s not at all. But Travis saw me in real pain, heard the doctor’s say nothing was wrong, and could clearly see the internal struggle that I was having. He’s quite the brilliant man. He knows me more than anyone else in the world.

After all my birthday festivities ended, Travis and I had a LONG talk.  We collectively decided that it’s possible that this pain is all in my head.  I was stressed out about life as it was happening, I had a bad relationship with my father, and it was all manifesting itself in my hip.  I do hold my emotions in my hips… I do know that as a dancer… So maybe I just needed to go back to dancing.  It would make me feel better, I was only holding myself back because I was in emotional pain… right?

I went to rehearsal the next day, DETERMINED to dance.  I had no fears. I was just going to do it.  I got to rehearsal did a little slow warm up, it had after all been a few months since I danced anyways… had to ease back into it.  The FIRST move I did… I felt a click and the pain was still there.  I tried to ignore it and keep going, but it was there.  It wasn’t in my head.  It was real pain.

Of course Travis wasn’t there for the rehearsal, he wasn’t in my body. So when I came back to him with this information he didn’t see it the way I did.  To him, I was being emotionally weak.  He didn’t understand my pain.  But how could I expect him to understand it? He wasn’t in my body… I didn’t even understand it, god dammit.

The next few months were filled with fights and crying and silences and sleepless nights.  The two of us were miserable, but at least we were miserable together.  I thought it was my fault.  I felt myself slipping into a depression.  I tried talking to him about it, but he dismissed me more than not.  And in some ways he tried to make me feel like I was the reason he was also depressed.  I wasn’t there to hold us both up anymore.

I begged him to get back into parkour, to go to his parkour gym that be built from the bottom up.  But he started complaining about shoulder pain, and I didn’t want to push it. Maybe he was in physical pain too the same way I was. But I started to get angry… why couldn’t he use the tools that he had… the ones that I didn’t? He could go work out and get rid of his depressed energy.  I couldn’t.

But I sure as hell fucking tried.   Every morning I would wake up determined to overcome the physical pain and just dance like normal.  My dance company started rehearsals again, we were getting more members! Lisa and I were teaching classes to raise funds for evolve rehearsal space.  I even took a Saturday children’s dance teacher gig to try to fill my time up and keep me busy and happy.  I was trying so so hard to dance, but I would always feel terrible and in even more pain afterwords.  And to be fair to Travis, he only got to “enjoy” my company after I was trying to do all these dance things.  So by the time of day when I would get to him, I was drained both physically and emotionally.

And you betcha, Travis called me out for this… he told me I was spending all my time dancing and not enough time with him. He wasn’t wrong… but I thought he was still under the impression that the pain was all in my head? Wasn’t I doing what he wanted me to do in the first place? Trying to ignore that pain?  It was quite apparent that our communication skills were not really working that well…

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...Even when its your best friend....

And then there was Lisa.  Lisa and I co-founded Evolve Dyanmicz. She is my business partner, dance partner, soulmate, and another one of my very best friends.  The first few months of the hip pain, she was truely amazing.  She would go out of her way to make sure I was eating meals and doing happy things besides dancing.  One day her and Kelley (Lisa’s best friend since childhood and now one of my close friends too) came to my apartment with beer and a SHIT ton of food for grilling.  They were taking care of me.  Lisa knew I had a hard time eating when I was stressed out.  She even made me a video of her dancing for my birthday to “Keeping your Head Up” by Birdy.  I cried the whole time while watching it, it was one of the most special gifts anyone has ever gotten me.  🙂 A truly heart felt gift.

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/007443_49b0bf4533ab4513b6bc4578fc174524/480p/mp4/file.mp4

…And again, I’m not blaming Lisa for anything I’m about to type… I was going insane myself. She wasn’t used to seeing me like that and it had been 4 months of unsolvable hip pain… it did seem as if I were starting to just be dramatic about it…

But one week at rehearsals and classes, Lisa just started ignoring me and getting super short with me.  I had no idea why.  I thought she was upset that my best friends from college Natalie and Melissa were visiting… I didn’t know what was going on.  I tried calling her one afternoon because I knew things felt weird, but she ignored it and told me she was very busy with errands in a text response. The next day we had an evovle meeting, which seemed like everything was going fine… I tried to explain to her what I had been going through and I why I was a little crazy, not so sure I did the best job at that, but I tried. At the end of the meeting things seemed a little better, so I went over to her house and we played corn hole with Kelley.  They started talking about how fucked up they were the night before… drinking… she wasn’t “busy with errands,” she purposely ignored my phone call.  That really fucking hurt me. I didn’t know what to say… so I didn’t say anything. Something I will later learn not to do again.

Around the same time Lisa was also having some health issues.  She felt something weird in her stomach one day and went to the ER that night.  They immediately did some imaging and found a ovarian cyst the size of a golf ball… that’s pretty fucking huge and gross to think about… so I tried in every way I could to help in classes and at rehearsals because I knew what pain was and how draining it can be.  I gave her the benefit of the doubt, maybe she was ignoring me just because she was in pain and didn’t know how to deal.  But part of me was also angry, she’d show up to classes already determined not to dance and wouldn’t let me know that or ask me to run warm ups until there were students in the room… so I couldn’t say no. I just did it through the pain… and I guess I was sucking some energy out of classes with my bad attitude about my own pain.  Didn’t help the situation with Travis though, that’s for sure. I was drained after those classes.

Part of me was also a bit jealous of Lisa.  She felt pain and the SAME DAY she was able to go to the doctor, get imaging done, and get a diagnosis.  She had no questions left unanswered.  She got exactly what I couldn’t have.  Not saying it was healthy of me to feel this.  But I’m not ignoring it either.

Finally one day, Lisa sent me an email.  She was ignoring me because she was getting “sucked into” my negative energy and she was upset that I wasn’t trying to be positive for her sake. Not a completely outrageous thing for her to  be feeling.  But in that email she also said that my energy included me “not wanting to do anything” which was probably in reference to my sucked out energy in rehearsals…. and I was incredibly taken aback… I was trying with EVERYTHING I had to do EVERYTHING that I couldn’t do…. I wasn’t “wanting to not do anything”… I was just in a SHIT TON of pain and trying to pretend that I wasn’t.  I was trying to do everything I used to be able to … it hurt me that she didn’t see that. But then again, how could she know that if I didn’t tell her?

So I answered the email, and started by defending myself and explaining my situation… which was exhausting in and of itself.  I felt like I was always defending myself, with her and with Travis. Why couldn’t they see how much pain I was in? … well I was trying to hide it from myself… that’s really why… But I could also see that she was in some emotional pain and reaching out for help in the only way she knew how.  And her way of doing that before was ignoring me and blaming me for it.  The same way Travis did. It was my fault she was having a hard time because I was an easy target, I was telling everyone how I was having a hard time.  I was admitting to my depression… so in a way I don’t blame her or Travis for doing that.

Anyways… In my email response I explained that if she is having a hard time, then she has to tell me that, otherwise I have no idea of knowing. My time has been sucked by my own life pains. I used to be good at picking up on others life struggles and helping them talk through it in a way that they felt comfortable with… but I didn’t have that space anymore… so of course it felt like it was my fault that I wasn’t asking Lisa how she was feeling all the time.  Of course she was blaming me. It makes sense. But I couldn’t let her do that to me, if she was going to heal herself, she needed to take some responsibility.

The email response was received well, she admitted that shes not good at talking about feelings because it feels so much more vulnerable that when she’s on stage dancing and expressing feelings.  And we talked for a few hours that night (no one showed up to class luckily).

And then everyday for a week or two, I sent her an inspirational email. Dancing videos, quotes, reminders of the great friends we have… none of them got a response. That’s okay that didn’t make me mad. But she asked me for attention, and I gave it to her. So I was not expecting what happened next… she made a post on her tumblr

“Self-Lit

I may have gone through a dark time but don’t hold me to my words. I’m dramatic. I exaggerate everything. A helping hand is great but a thousand helping hands is smothering. I’m aware of my actions, my career, and my choices. I’m a hard worker. Sometimes times are tough and it seems as though the opposite is true. It’s not. I chose this path because I want to work for it. At times, though, I need to be the one to light my own path. I’m building the fire, let me burn it.”

I was so taken aback… I thought she wanted my help… she sent me an email not too long ago basically telling me I wasn’t trying hard enough to be there for her…. what the serious fuck. I drove over after work that day and confronted her about it… we sat in my car and she basically screamed at me for 20 minutes saying the same things that the post said… I cried and tried to further explain my situation and struggles. At this point, I was convinced I had lupus or something… I was afraid I couldn’t have babies after it… I was scared for my life…

But you know what, so was she.  The doctor’s had just found a cyst the size of a golf ball on her ovary! She was scared about having kids too! So I let her scream at me, I let it be. I said what I needed to say about my own struggles.  It ended on the meh side for me. I felt like I was still the one who had to understand instead of the one who was trying to be understood. And again, I felt it was my fault that Lisa had gone through the dark period.  Because I wasn’t there enough to help her talk through it out loud.

I went to Travis’s that night and I walked in the door crying.  Travis saw my tears and walked away from me. He was drunk.  Zack (Travis’s best friend and roommate, and now Natalie’s boyfriend!!… and also one of my best friends) held me as I cried and collapsed to the ground.  He brought me back up to my feet, walked me into Travis’s room, and laid me on his bed… I watched them drink the rest of the night, sing songs to me, and I did some doodling to get my mind off things.

The next day Travis told me all I ever do these days is cry.