By Kai Curry
NORTHWEST ASIAN WEEKLY
It’s 1995. I’m walking on an abandoned runway at Goodfellow Air Force Base in San Angelo, Texas. I feel a sting in my right hip. I note it. I wonder why. I am at the peak of health, two years into military training, with 10 more to go. Even so, I am already failing the weight test, which results in being measured each time. It occurs to me that, unconsciously, I’ve found a duplicate of the situation I’ve been living in since puberty—figures of authority criticizing my body.
“You would be so much prettier if you just lost 10 pounds.”
These types of comments stay with a person. In the military, I am active, I work out daily. I note that my foot falls asleep when I use the machines at the gym. I experience knee problems. I fall down the stairs. I fall while running and a doctor sends me to work after prescribing a motor-skills-inhibiting drug. I am told, “It is all in your head” by a doctor that runs marathons. I receive the punitive measure of group exercise and overhear my supervisor say, “She has no willpower.”
It is not a coincidence all of these comments are from men.
Eventually, towards the end of my contract, I fail the weight and measure test. I recognize I am legitimately gaining weight by then. I also know it is an act of lashing out. My husband, who has also gained weight, tells me, “I can lose it anytime I want. I’m just waiting for you.” When we divorce, he says, “We’d still be together if you’d become vegan earlier” (i.e. lost weight).
“Being a man or a woman has a significant impact on health, as a result of both biological and gender-related differences. The health of women and girls is of particular concern because, in many societies, they are disadvantaged by discrimination rooted in sociocultural factors,” says the World Health Organization. This does not just happen in other countries. It happens here.
During my out-processing, a doctor assures me I will receive disability for my knees. When his report comes out, he says nothing about it. I am denied. I appeal multiple times, including here in Seattle, and I am denied every time. After my divorce, I am again in great condition, I exercise daily, and for the first time even, I think I look great. Nevertheless, I have chronic hip pain on both sides now. I can’t stand for long periods. When I drive, I have to shift to the least painful side.
I start to think, “There is something wrong with me.” Nobody believes me.
“Doctors perceive women’s pain as hysteria, not chronic pain,” says the Women’s Health Innovation Coalition. Unfortunately, women also fall under the spell. A female vocational rehabilitation doctor tells me I’m just “stressed out.” Yes, I am stressed out. But it’s not creating this. Multiple doctors insist, “lose weight” or “work on your core” or “drink more water.” All those are good things, I agree. But they will not fix this problem. I find no validation.
After the 2019 “snowpocalypse,” I go for a run and my left leg bursts into flame. I amp up my requests. Can I get an MRI? The response: How about multiple x-rays instead? How about painkillers? How about a chiropractor? PT? Yoga? How about…how about…? I’m grateful for all of these, but they are only maintenance. No one and nothing is addressing the root problem. Add to this that I don’t have health insurance, can’t afford it, and so I don’t have a lot of choices.
Throughout all of this, there are angels that keep me going—keep me believing I am not hysterical, I am not just stressed out, I don’t just need to lose weight. A massage therapist tells me I am experiencing “way too much” inflammation for my age. In 2021, I interview Dr. Philip Louie for the Northwest Asian Weekly. He is a spine surgeon at Virginia Mason Franciscan Health (VMFH) Neuroscience Institute in Seattle and VMFH spine clinic in Federal Way. What he says stands out: “As I get older, my legs and arms are going to hurt, I might lose my balance, I might get some tingling in my legs and arms. That’s not normal. Normal aging doesn’t involve a deterioration like that.”
I can’t afford to see him, though. I start working on financial assistance from Virginia Mason. I keep asking my primary care doctor to order an MRI.
“Take PT for six months,” she prescribes, “then we’ll see.” I am definitely overweight by now, COVID-19 and all that—fear of going out lest I get spit in the face for wearing a mask, fear of catching the disease with an immune-compromised person at home. The pain makes it hard to sleep, hard to walk—every step hurts. I can’t tell if exercising makes it better or worse anymore. I purchase an elliptical. I take yoga. My legs fall asleep during stretches. The yoga instructor simply says, “Interesting.”
“Fat people are helpless babies enslaved by their most capricious cravings. Fat people don’t know what’s best for them. Fat people need to be guided and scolded like children,” observes our own native daughter, Lindy West, of how some perceive those they deem as “fat.” I gain strength that other women are experiencing similar rejection and challenge—but it also increases my despair. Six months pass and my doctor finally—grudgingly—orders an MRI, while saying, “Keep in mind it might not find anything.”
At this point, though, I am married and, at long last, I have health insurance. I contact Dr. Louie immediately. Of course, he has to do some groundwork. I get that. He orders an x-ray. I go in and experience the fastest doctor’s appointment I’ve ever had. Where before x-rays had been interpreted as showing “nothing,” Dr. Louie reviews the spinal image and says, “You have compression here and here.” He points at the exact correct spot on my leg, “I bet you feel tingling here.” For the first time in my life, I am being diagnosed versus self-diagnosing. For the first time in decades, a doctor is telling me, this is not normal. We can do something about this.
“Let’s order an MRI.”
I do the MRI with VMFH. There is no way I’m letting my prior doctor work on me now. Compression in my lower spine is verified by the MRI and by VMFH’s Pain Clinic in Seattle. I’m terrified the whole time they will tell me, “it’s nothing, lose weight, exercise.” But they don’t.
Finally, I get what I want. I get what I knew I needed. I have surgery. The next day, already, that overriding pain is gone. Yes, I am sore. But now I can say I’m sore because I slept on the sofa, or I’m sore because of x, y, z, instead of THERE IS SOMETHING WRONG WITH ME.
In the operating room, one of the attendants says, “You have the heart rate of an athlete.”
I always did, you know.
Kai can be reached at info@nwasianweekly.com.