I was hit by a couple of SUV’s in a crash while riding a bicycle to work 2/26/14. I have chronic spinal issues. I haven’t really allowed hope to know me since 2017. A lot happened then. I kinda fell apart and had to come to terms with my limitations and disappointments from people I really needed to rely on. Hope became a destabilizing force; a danger I needed to protect myself from.

I’ve seen over a dozen neurosurgeons, and several pain management specialists. I’ve had physical therapy until I was broke. Never once did a doctor actually try to break down the problems or recommend someone who would. I complained about how I could be in tremendous pain just before a MRI but within a few minutes of lying flat, I felt fine. No MRI has ever shown anything major wrong with me. I even went as far as bribing the tech and radiologist with coffee shop gift cards and stuff to try and get them to take extra time and effort. Still nothing ever helped.

Today, I put on a corset thing for the first time. I haven’t been able to turn my head left in over 10 years. As soon as I tightened this thing, I can turn my head left again and there is no restriction that I can feel. I haven’t sat upright at a table in a straight chair in over 10 years, but I did so today. I was so elated about sitting there I wrote this stupid long reply to someone. I didn’t know what to do with myself. Normally the pain would kick in and stop me, but I just kept going.

I’m laying in bed now out of habit and caution, but for the first time in many years I feel anxious about staying here, capable, like I could get up and do something without the punishment of major pain.

I feel like a scared abused animal nearly unable to move out of this mental space; to allow hope a place in my mind. I have no idea where this ultimately leads. My inner cynic wants to laugh at the ten years of my life wasted when all I needed was a simple brace; all those reputable doctors failing at something so fundamentally simple; that my own uneducated intuition eventually lead me here on my own.

I asked here when the idea to try this first crossed my mind. Y’all pushed me to try it. Thanks. I still hesitated for whatever reason, but now I’m trying it. I’m scared to even admit it, but this feels different, it feels like hope, and that is something I really needed.