My Achilles

I was always hurting myself, dislocating my kneecaps, hyper-extending my joints, dislocating my shoulder, and I was always sick with some sort of tummy issue.

I was told I was making it up most of the time.  "You look fine to me," I was told, as we shuffled off to our next home, in yet another town where I didn't know anyone.

If I took sick and couldn't go to school my parents would leave me with random neighbors... people they didn't really know and never really talked to.

From as far back as I can recall, as a tiny little girl - doctors experimented on me - only to tell my mom and dad there was nothing wrong with me - horrible, painful, extremely invasive experiments.

I was always throwing up, always too sick to participate in my own life... but somehow, if you asked my family, my doctors, my teachers, and even my friends... I was just a hypochondriac.

So, when my Achilles tendon snapped and I was rushed to the hospital, I wasn't shocked when I was berated for being in "too much pain" in the ER.  All that prior neglect and abuse had conditioned me to think I was only worthy of sub-standard care.

That's why I didn't call the state medical board when my surgeon and my anesthesiologists made fun of me when I told them I wake up early from anesthesia - which I did, in the surgical theater, while they were making jokes about it.  

As it turned out, I didn't just snap my Achilles - I had torn over six-inches of it in half, because I have a genetic condition that causes me to make faulty collagen.  So, half of my Achilles had gotten stuck to the massive amounts of scar tissues I had built up over the years.  I had to get a new Achilles from a cadaver donor. 

As it turns out - It was hypermobile Elhers-Danlos Syndrome that had caused all of my symptoms all along, and that's why I was always sick as a child.

Sadly, it would be another five years before I would finally learn about hEDS and seven before I got the official diagnosis.

You see, as it turns out, I have always had clear markers for my genetic condition, I have always showed the proper symptoms that should have given any trained doctor enough to make a diagnosis, and yet, they were always over-looked and brushed off as inconsequential, even by a plastic surgeon who should have her licensed revoked for how much pain and suffering she caused in my life by simply being unaware of a disorder 2% of the population share.

But the sad truth is, I have been treated with almost zero professionalism from the healthcare industry because I have always been the odd one, the one that didn't fit neatly into their college text-book descriptions, and... because - as we are all finding out now - I am a woman, and according to traditional healthcare knowledge - women are known to make up their suffering in order to get attention.

After I tore my Achilles I had no idea how I was going to fight back enough health to be able to take care of my basic survival needs, because I had already, for months, been dealing with other severe connective tissue issues, other injuries and infections that threatened my life over the entirety of 2018.

I was always terrified, always in survival mode, because I had no idea how I was going to surmount my growing injuries that were simply being ignored and brushed off by medical professionals who were clearly empowered to do so.

Every day I was in incredible pain, and desperate to hide it, because pain is so very unpalatable, especially if you are trying to make money.  And especially if you are trying to fit in.

But trying to fake normalcy while not having enough money for water, or propane, or food, while stuck in a body that won't help, is nearly impossible.

So, I tried my best to smile, to cheer, to pretend, and then a new body part would fail.

The medical industry hasn't just failed me, and people like me.  It's been failing all of us - our entire lives.

Personally, I have over a dozen mortifying stories about gross malpractice and worse, that I have endured while being a zebra in a world that only recognizes horses.

And I know there are millions and millions of other women out there with similar stories, of being harmed, intentionally, by the folks who are supposed to heal us, but instead laughed in our faces, ridiculed us, and in every way made our health an even bigger problem for us to deal with.

There are so many of us who have witnessed firsthand the absolute banality of evil that resides in the heart of too many healthcare professionals, those on the floor, and those behind desks.

There's is a world built almost entirely on lies and ego, and resembles almost nothing of what a healing attitude should look like.

And they know it.

Right now, healthcare industry leaders know theirs is a charlatan industry that has relied upon false information and science to the detriment of their customers, and that one day those customers might join together in class action lawsuits.

I have suffered ENORMOUSLY my entire life because of incompetent, lazy, and greedy people who were handed too much power and too little information.  People who more closely resembled the test subjects in the Stanford Prison Experiment than they did members of a healing profession - whose motto is "First - do no harm".

I have lost more than words will ever be able to express, more than could ever be rectified - at the hands of greedy, lazy, inept and incompetent people, who wore the title 'healer' as if it was a title from God Himself.

And I am not the only one.

The tide is rising, the banks are over-run.

The time for humanity has begun.

Consider joining a class action lawsuit if you have also been harmed by the medical-industrial-complex.



Namaste
The Storyteller

“Scars have the strange power to remind us that our past is real.”

Cormac McCarthy

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