On Being a Patient Patient with a Broken Spine

No Calling Card

On 28 April at around 5 pm in my car park at home, pain pierced my middle back and gut, taking my breath away for what seemed like forever. I was scared. I had just removed my car keys from the ignition and turned to open my car door, and that was enough to cause a crush fracture in my thoracic spine. Despite the cold, I sat on the edge of the seat, legs outside, for a long time before I could draw breath enough to go inside.

The next morning, although a bit shaky from the pain, I thought I was OK. Not wanting to miss my annual flu shot, I drove to my doctor’s surgery, where socially distant seats were set up in the car park for collective COVID jabs and flu shots. The charge nurse said I looked ill and booked a GP appointment for me at 4 pm, at which time my doctor insisted that I take myself to Flinders Emergency Department. Dutifully, I drove home, packed a small bag and called a cab.

Please note, I wrote Post-op a couple of years ago after hip replacement surgery. Now, on the contrary, I have decided that compliance and patience are more suited to the sort of pain a crush fracture brings that eventually made me too befuddled to think for myself. It became easier to give in. But it took a while.

The Saga

At 5 pm on 29 April, 24 hours after my injury, I arrived at Flinders. The emergency room was crowded, and the seats hard. I sat next to a woman in my age group whose husband sat beside her in his wheelchair, looking extremely ill. He had been rushed to hospital by ambulance, arriving an hour or so earlier than me, but the ramping was so bad, the ambos had advised him to present at the walk-in emergency department.

As compatriots in patience, our grizzles and moans were interspersed with moments of laughter about the idiocy of getting old. By midnight we were starving. None of us had eaten since breakfast. So, when my new friend asked for a sandwich for her diabetic husband, I took courage and asked for one too. Thank goodness the hospital does a good sandwich because the machines stock only chips, chocolate and junk. The coffee machine wasn’t too bad.

Hour after hour, we watched people come and go. It was 2 am by the time the emergency room had emptied and, only then were we called to see a doctor in the corridor for hard chair consultations. Notwithstanding triage for the neediest, it seemed strange that we, as the oldest patients in the room all night — except for one woman who left hours earlier, not wanting to wait — were attended to last.

The hospital took blood and ushered me back and forth from my corridor chair for x-rays. Tests revealed nothing. The young registrar advised me that my pain was probably musculoskeletal, whatever that means in the wee hours of the morning when you are alone, sleep-deprived, hungry, sorry for yourself and in pain. I was discharged from the corridor to the emergency room at 5 am to call a taxi, taking my pain and confusion home.

Gaslighting

Flinders Medical Centre let me go with no pills, no potions, no plans and no idea what was going on. I felt like a waste of space; worse, it reduced me to the ten-year-old girl I once was whose father said, ‘What would you know? You’re only a little girl.’ It seemed that my pain was not serious enough for further exploration. I felt gaslighted.

That I lost confidence in myself that night is evidenced by the fact that it took me ten days to summon the will to consult a GP on 8 May. I was not right. By this time, in addition to unremitting pain, my legs and abdomen were swollen from sitting all day and sleeping at night in an armchair (which continued for three weeks till pain diminished enough for me to lie down). Not knowing what to do with myself, I was like an automaton

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Unfortunately, my regular GP only consults two days a week, but I saw a registrar who, bless him, ordered a CT scan that showed a 40% crush fracture of the T7 vertebrae. He armed me with opioids which I soon dumped in favour of Panadol Osteo. I don’t do well with heavy meds.

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Complications and Absent Mothers

The registrar offered follow-up, but I opted to wait to see my regular GP as I had a forward booking for 15 June. (I failed to notice that the appointment was a month away.) In the meantime, I developed a nasty exacerbation of my lung condition.

While mine was not the worst spinal injury, the ensuing coughing spasms caused lightning explosions of pain to shoot across my back, jar my ribs and grip my chest, bringing me to a full stop till it passed. Each spasm took my breath away, which is frightening. After a while, I felt a little better and visited my daughter in Encounter Bay, only to end up in Victor Harbor Hospital with pain and severe breathlessness.

I was diagnosed — you might say scolded as not having managed earlier pain better (with opioids) — medical gaslighting again. Although the doctor offered admission, I chose discharge to the comfort of my daughter’s home. The opioids did help me be more patient, in loving respite with my wonderful daughter.

When I finally got home, my first response after tapering off the opioids as fast as I could, was to realise that I’d lost faith both in Flinders and our medical system. If I may confide in my weakness, I realised that I felt abandoned when my regular GP was unavailable. I wanted mummy!

Flinders’ failed diagnosis made me doubt my injury, as I have said. This was compounded by being chided by a snippy doctor at Victor for not managing my pain with opioids (like a good girl should!). It was all a bit much when I was already missing my GP. I truly felt like the little girl I once was, whose mother drank and was not always there when I needed her.

Who would guess my ‘broken back’ saga would see me revert to childhood. Old patterns die hard. Fortunately, that is the only dying happening for now.

On Death

Someone I know with lung disease more advanced than me recently spoke of her condition as terminal. I’ve never thought of my lung problems that way because, well, life is terminal, and I would find it tiring to experience the slow degeneration of chronic disease as the path to death. That notorious bus could always run me down first. But, having a broken back, well, the symbolism is there. Isn’t it?

In Buddhism, we’re taught not to pay so much attention to the externals like the body parts we paint and primp because our insides – everybody’s – are essentially a gurgle of ghastliness. But, what I’ve learned from this experience is that being in physical pain is one of the best meditation lessons we can have if only we take note.

Curiosity Returns

There is a lingering sense that I shouldn’t tell this story because it’s hardly a fun read. Yet, it is essential that we open to our experience, explore it and find understanding. What I write about, ladies and gents, is getting old. It creeps up slowly then, bang, it’s there, just like my fracture. Death remains a mystery, and yet, there are Hansel and Gretel signposts along the way.

I seem to have had an injury every three years, starting in 2015 with a fall and a broken shoulder, followed by hip replacement in 2018 and now in 2021, a broken back. Hmm. They say you don’t have to worry too much until hospital admissions get close together. So, I look like being around for a little while yet.

Getting my curiosity back is a delight and a blessing. I hope I never lose interest in life so profoundly ever again. A wise friend told me quite a while ago, when bad things happen, all we can do is bring our curiosity to them. It’s all part of being alive.

TIP

I used to say this to students years ago. The time to be thinking is not while you are dancing under strobe lights, but afterwards. Afterwards, we find our stories as I have here.

It’s hard to go back into physical pain when it’s no longer present. In this way, physical pain differs from emotional pain. But, we can go back into the emotional pain which will affect you as though it still existed. The trick is to write it out and find the patterns.

We learn about things when we reflect upon them. If we are honest with ourselves, insight will come. Every experience is a lesson if we dare to know.

So, think of an experience that knocked you off track. Examine all its annoying or upsetting details. Include who was there, what happened and how you felt or feel in retrospect. Write about all this uninterrupted as a stream of consciousness till you run out of things to say.

What do you see?  What does it tell you about yourself? How can you use your experience in your writing?

Happy Writing

Wattletales