I’m part of a writing group every week. I love my writing group. We meet at my kitchen table, read a poem aloud, then write about whatever comes for 30 minutes, then share. Today, a story about my health came out. And everyone made me promise to post it on Chronic Twenties. So, here it is. No edits, no polish. Just what came flowing out of me.

The needle pierced my skin, and I felt it sinking through my flesh. Biting through the layers of fat along my lower back and deep down, toward the spine. I tried not to flinch, tried to stay still. But my head swam; my body broke out in a cold sweat. “I don’t feel so good” I said hazily to the nurse. And then I puked. All over the floor, splattering as I was laying a good 3.5 feet up on a table, my back bare, draped as if for surgery. The nurses were unfazed, they were used to patients’ bodily fluids. “Sorry.” I was mortified. I rarely threw up, and never in front of people. The doctor seemed annoyed. “We’ll have to stop,” she said, and began drawing the other needles out of my back. I was supposed to be getting six shots of cortisone along my spine, four needles were already in place, but the fifth had sent my blood pressure plummeting, hence the vomit.

I remember the night when I finally understood why people became drug addicts. Sitting in my apartment at night, the pain so pervasive that I wanted to crawl into a cave and hide, if only that would make it lessen. I understood, for the first time in my control freak life, why someone would lose their grip, if not to feel pain. I had been raised on Echinacea and Goldenseal, long before you could find them in your local pharmacy or grocery store. But fearing an unmanaged, uncommon chronic illness, I had turned to Western medicine a few years before for my answers and once you are in, it’s like the mob, you’re family, and the only way out is the grave. So when the miracle cure, for the pain in my back and hips that had plagued me since I was 12, presented itself, there was no question for me, give me the needles. Give me the drugs. I cannot do this anymore.

I went back to the doctor. This time zenned out on Valium. This time there was no twitching, no accidental hitting of the vegus nerve (that’s what a EMT friend of my told me is what probably happened the last time). All 6 needles in, six injections of cortisone, six needles out. With a promise of being pain free for at least 6 months. Pain free? After over a decade, I was going to be pain free? I felt like dancing the jig, clicking my heals in the air, but I had just had 6 very long needles very close to my spine, so I went home to rest instead. Actually, I went home to direct the movers who were moving me out of my apartment into a storage unit. But that is a story for another time. Or perhaps it isn’t. It is all the same story, of Boston ejecting me from its grip, of Western medicine injecting me and then me finally breaking free, in witness protection in Vermont.

They had told me 6 months. 6 months to be free of pain. 5 weeks later, through frustrated tears, I admitted to my soon-to-be step-mom that the pain was back. I had asked for her advice, pre-injections. Saying that I knew it wasn’t a permanent fix, but maybe it would give me the space to make some changes in my life. Knowing her as I do now, 2.5 years later, I’m astonished at how much room she gave me to find my own path, to go on my own journey of healing, rather than beating me over the head saying: Stupid! No! But we didn’t know each other as well then as we do now.

I was still popping handfuls of pills every day, not the herbs and vitamins and probiotics and fish oils that she doles out for me each morning now, no these were straight up pharmaceuticals – designed to make me just better enough to believe they are working, and to keep me just sick enough to keep needing to buy them. Do other people look at their daily dose of meds and feel loathing? I did, three times a day. I hated taking pills, hated putting chemicals into my body, hated that I needed them to get through the day. I was 25 and was supposed to be invincible. Isn’t’ that how the story is supposed to go? I was overweight, under nourished, and miserable. And the entire system was created to keep me that way, while selling me diet pills and McDonald’s and telling me its perfectly ok, not just ok, but normal, to be on anti-depressants (half of adults in America are not on some form of anti-depressant or anti-anxiety medication. 50%!).  But it’s the mob out there, so how is a single girl, far from family, with no community, supposed to stay standing in the raging waters of American culture?

So, I joined witness protection. Or at least that’s how it feels sometimes. Urban Maria with her fabulous shoe collection became a hermit in the sticks of Vermont and is…*gasp!* happy. Pause for shock and awe. My sister asked me a few months ago what I did to lose weight (I’ve lost 35 lbs since leaving the big city) and the only answer I could give her was: I got happy.

And while that is a little tongue in cheek, it’s the truth. Yes, I do yoga most mornings now. Yes, I take my dog for a walk in the woods (a few times a week even a long one) almost every day now. Yes, I pretty much only eat organic and whenever possible local (especially meat). Yes, all these changes are true. But the only purest answer I could give to her question was, I got happy.

Do you think it’s possible for a person to hit a sort of medical bad luck quota?

So far this year, I’ve sprained an ankle–with a torn ligament, had a questionable mole removed, and racked up a fair share of pre-deductible medical expenses for my RA.  Basically, I’m klutz with bad luck to boot.

Every little medical bump in the road, I think to myself, “Really? Now, what?”

It’s a crummy mindset for sure. But when you’re feeling down, there’s always a reason to stay there.

Point is, I want to be healthy!

Always a frustrating situation.  The meds I’m on compromise my immune system. So if I happen to get sick, it sticks with me longer than it would for others.  If I get a cold sore, I have to go off one of my RA meds or the damn thing will never clear up.

It’s a constant balancing act.  Medicine versus health.  Oh, what an odd series of compromises we make in one lifetime.

Around this time last year, I took a juice cleanse at my yoga studio.  At the beginning of the class, they said take what you like and leave the rest — talking about food related things seems to polarize people and they wanted everyone to feel comfortable.  The folks running the cleanse are raw vegans and talked a lot about what that diet means to them physically, emotionally, spiritually.

Raw vegan sounds really intense.  It’s a huge lifestyle shift for many people–one that I have no intention of making at this point in my life.  But there’s a lot to learn about food and eating from our vegan friends.

During the cleanse, we discussed a book called The Anti-Inflammation Zone: Reversing the Silent Epidemic That’s Destroying Our Health.  The premise is that certain foods raise the level of inflammation in our bodies, everyone’s bodies — even our non-chronic friends.  I’ve definitely experienced swelling after consuming certain kinds of foods and beverages.  Alcohol, dairy leaves me feeling terrible the next day, not just that hang-over or that over full feeling, but swollen and in pain.  It’s part of the reason I no longer drink.

I have the book.  So I’ll be purusing it a reporting back.  For now, I’d say try to notice how you feel after you eat specific foods, grains, vegetables, and drink certain drinks.  Try to isolate what leaves you feeling crumby the next day, and what you don’t feel in your system the next day!

I have health insurance and I’m grateful for that.  Right now, I’m grateful that health insurance providers, among others, cannot discriminate based on genetics.  What the LA Times called the “most sweeping federal anti-discrimination law in nearly 20 years,” went into effect this past Saturday.  Knowledge of the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act could probably have stopped me from putting up with a very inappropriate situation.

Rheumatoid arthritis is a genetic condition. As a consequence of it, I have a lot of doctors’ appointments…  When I first started work at this shiny, new exciting firm, I let my manager know that I had a couple doc visits coming up.  She flipped, escalated it to the HR, who implied that I was faking it and required that I document everything (this is the situation outlined in our privacy policy).   Of course, this situation was probably a violation of my rights under previous regulations and legislation, but I am grateful that I am very clearly protected now.