Chronically Unnormal: The beginning of the beginning of... what?

Chronically Unnormal: The beginning of the beginning of... what?

First year of secondary school was a particularly happy time for Natalie, life was good she had grown out of her asthma (no more seal impressions). No one had realised that she was dyslexic but the teachers didn’t treat her like a simpleton. Good friends, happy days.

Then disaster, a new foe arose to challenge asthma for the title of most annoying aliment. This foe was lower back pain well not quite more like mid back pain. This stumped Natalie doctor’s as they could find no reason for her nemesis. After a couple of weeks in hospital the evil ones plan was still not discovered so the consultant gave Natalie’s parents the old excuse it was all in her head and she was making it up because she didn’t want to go to school. Well this was all news to Natalie as she is a geek and will readily admit to adoring secondary school.

I did love secondary school I finally got to do what I’m good at - science. Science has always been a big part of my life, even extending to a love of science fiction but biology is what I enjoy the most and I have quite the menagerie at home 2 dogs, 2 chinchillas and 2 bearded dragons.

Natalie got into school as often as she could but her clumsiness didn’t help matters. On the first day she managed to get back she had gym. Everything was fine until the teacher decided it was a good idea to tell the class that there had never been a single accident in the hall. Well most people know that saying something like that is a bad idea and well it’s not often that people get to say that they were the first ever to do something. So Natalie’s body decided that it was going to be first and with one step off a bench her ankle broke.

Things carried on in this fashion, the story that Natalie’s friends are most fond of is the one with the Christmas carol. The Christmas holidays filled with noise, cold and the need to wander around the shops for hours on end. All these things decided to collide. Natalie was walking around town with friends at the weekend in the manner which is normal for teenagers when entering a department store to escape the cold, one of the twins shut the large heavy glass doors on her fingers. This isn’t very odd for Natalie but the cry she gave out was the exact pitch, tune and harmony with the Christmas carol (more of a hymn really) playing inside.

Throughout her school years one thing remains the same, Natalie’s unrivalled absentee record. Thankfully by the age of 14 her foe was given a name (a name which I cannot spell for love nor money) and its name was Scheuermann’s Disease. She was subsequently diagnosed with hypermobility syndrome and scoliosis in the years that followed…

I guess I should start the real story, the part my friends wanted me to tell you about. I have tried many times to write this and found that I was having great difficultly. Just the idea of writing this down terrifies me. I struggle with my feelings - just explaining them is hard never mind writing them down. You may have noticed that I like to keep things light and impersonal. I really didn’t like primary school, may have even hated it but I didn’t say that in my story except for the wee dig about my dyslexia. But I realise that if writing this is going to do me any good I have to actually have to try to be honest with myself and maybe even moan a little.

From the age of 14 onwards I have been shoved from pillar to post. I have been on hundreds of different kinds on medications from the mundane to the horse tranquillisers, been to at least 7 different hospitals in 3 counties. It all started with a believed bout of shingles that my doctor failed to treat and leads me to where I am now.

The reason I am the way I am is due to the combination of disorders I suffer from. The Scheuermann’s Disease is a wedging of the spine which in my case was caused by half of my disc dying and the other over compensate becoming larger giving me a rounded back. In most cases Scheuermann’s Disease only affects teenagers and the pain subsides when they stop growing. As I have hypermobility my spine did not have the stability to cope with the wedging so my spine continued to change and developed into a scoliosis this in turn caused my neck and lower back to corkscrew and some vertebrae to become misaligned. These physical changes cause severe chronic pain which cannot be controlled by medication.

Medications and me have never got on anyway .I’m lucky that I don’t tend to have side effects but unlucky as they usually don’t work and even if they do they only work for a couple of weeks. I have had many kinds of treatment the standard stuff like physiotherapy and others including two kinds of acupuncture, TENS machines and an epidural in my spine, these don’t work and in some cases made me worse.

As always my body is determined to be as unnormal as possible.