I have a spinal disease; actually a host of them. Most people are afflicted with my spinal issues, but not until they are over 60 normally. In fact, I was my surgeon's youngest spinal patient, who hadn't been a car accident to cause it. Mine could have been partially caused by a fall I took the day before the disease was discovered, or at least part of the damage could have been caused by the fall, but the disease hit me early, because I have scoliosis and lived my life as a normal, very energetic, overly active woman. I was told to stay active to keep my spine working right, and that very activity cause things to increase dramatically. Talk about a catch 22!
From the pain, I was placed on pain meds. Percocet and morphine specifically. I was on steroids to help reduce swelling, and those literally took my appetite away completely, and I was in danger of being placed on weight gainer shakes, due to the drastic weight loss. The pain meds messed with my mind and the way I thought, my emotions, everything. Due to this I almost lost my husband and family. I had literally gone from working and raising a family, going full speed from morning to night, to not being allowed to do anything for myself overnight.
After my second spinal surgery, the doctor discovered (because I was in more pain than before the surgery) that I was part of 30% of spinal patients in that, my surgery not only didn't help, but it made things worse!! I am now headed for a wheelchair soon, according to my doctors.
People have come to me and told me how sorry they are, that my life has changed so drastically for the worse. But I look at them odd when they say this to me, because I'm not sorry at all. This is just how life goes sometimes is all. I went through the "why me" phase, my anger with God, why wasn't I worthy enough to be protected from this, but I realized it's just life (the sun rises and sets on the righteous and unrighteous alike).
Through this experience, my relationship with God has changed from my asking Him for things to my asking Him what I can do for Him today; my relationship with my husband is stronger, because we learned a lot about each other through all of this (both good and bad); my children's relationship with their daddy is stronger, because they didn't have me as the buffer for a long time. And the best part to me is it made my husband and I act on our 20 plus year long dream of being self sufficient, because we lost my income and had to sell our house and start over financially.
The world is so deceiving it makes people, even many Christians, think that I lost something, because I can't work outside the house 60 hours a week, or because I can't hike as far as I used to, or because we lost our big house, or even because I have pain still daily. But I truly can't see where I've lost anything?