My friends, family, doctors, and myself joke about the fact I have the injuries of an elderly person. These jokes don’t bother me because I mean…yeah, I’m 25 and ache every day. I have to make light of my situation in order to survive it.

For 4 years, I’ve suffered through severe bone pain and joint aches. It wasn’t until recently I knew why.
My military career was cut short not only due to mental illness but, physical injuries as well.
The pain onset was gradual until I eventually crashed.

My first injury was a broken fibula. The doctors asked me “how do you even break a fibula without an accident? Did you fall?”
How did basic running hurt me so badly? I healed from the broken fibula and worked myself back up to running. I made the mistake of going airborne and somehow ended up with 10 stress injuries. My femurs were bilaterally fractured along with my shins, feet, and hips. I can’t really remember all of the others. My bone scan lit up like a Christmas tree. “You’re too young to have these injuries.” “You look fine.”

When I arrived to my first duty station, I was in constant pain. My legs swelled along with my ankles and my knees were screaming. Why? My bones healed? The doctors had no answers. I couldn’t take a PT test to save my life because my body would just stop moving after half a mile of running.

I’m a civilian now with handicap placards in my cars. I can’t run. I can’t walk up steps quickly like others on campus. Some nights, I can’t sleep. My knees and spine pop. My neck stiffens. If it’s going to rain, I feel it 2 days in advance and can barely walk. I can’t carry heavy things and I can’t get myself up off of the floor if I have to kneel. The VA in Baltimore was the first facility to take me seriously. After an MRI on my entire body, I learned all of the discs in my lower back are bulging, one of my vertebra is too far forward, my neck stiffens from bone spurs (osteoarthritis) and my knees have severe arthritis. I need knee surgery at 25.

I can’t do what “normal” 25 year old girls do. I can’t wear heels. I can’t go on hikes without hurting for days after. When I was dating, I had to explain not being able to participate in certain activities. Somedays, I can’t even have sex.

If you were to look at me, you wouldn’t believe me when I tell you if I stand for more than 15 minutes, I lock up. You wouldn’t believe I have to use the railing to pull myself up the steps some days. A lot of my pain is dealt with in my home. After being ignored by doctors because I didn’t fit an image of a person who experiences chronic pain, I began isolating. Gaslighting myself that I made it up and the pain isn’t that bad.

Anything can happen to ANY body regardless of age or gender. It took me a long time but, I realized my pain is valid. It is real. And it is no one else’s right to tell me what I experience isn’t “bad enough” because it is bad to me. This body is mine. Regardless of the fact there is no true explanation yet as to how I’ve received all of these injuries, I’m the one who has to live with it. Maybe it’s genetics and the military took something I had no idea about and exacerbated it. I’m 25 and disabled.

I grew up with perfect parents in my eyes. My mother stayed home with us while my dad worked constantly. We went to Disney World every year. We went to Las Vegas. Mom got the cars she wanted. I had new (to me) clothes every year. We weren’t wealthy- everything was used/ handed down. I had three younger brothers. Everyone in my family had multiple kids, happy marriages, and we saw each other often. At a very young age, I was taught my purpose in life is to get married, stay with that man forever, and reproduce. I saw my mother stay home and was basically shown “this is the correct way to be.” The father provides, the mother tends the home and the children.

My mother was raised in the church although she strayed from it often. We literally lived around the corner from a church and she has us tag along with the older couple a few homes down and their grandchildren to the summer bible camps.

She pushed religion on me even harder when I was 12 and showing clear signs of mental illness. Instead of therapy, I was to get confirmed in the Lutheran church. When I asked why, her response was “you need the presence of christ in you.” I had to attend confirmation classes every week and bible school every Sunday. I didn’t even fit in in a church which made my mental struggles worse. I was the little emo kid in a class of blondes with bright blue eyes. The boys and girls were separated. Their moms drove new Mercedes SUVs and were always there to pick them up on time while I sat in the parking lot for an extra hour. The town the church was in (Bel Air) was uppity and the town I came from (Aberdeen) was viewed as “ghetto” to them.

After suffering through the confirmation, I was finally free! No. I began to feel guilt. At 14, I became obsessed. I felt so wrong for disregarding what I was being forced in to.

During the years I was in church, divorce ran rampant through all of my family. I was so confused because isn’t divorce….forbidden? A sin? The divorces were messy and full of hatred. I didn’t know my family was next in line.

At 14, my mom left my dad for another man and became an alcoholic. My life was shattered. I felt everything was a lie, I saw the damage in my siblings, my father, and myself. I decided then and there, I did not want children and the faith pushed on me was fraudulent. I didn’t even want marriage. I saw how hard it was for my father and decided I don’t ever want to risk becoming a single parent.

At 17, I was certain I didn’t want children. I wanted school and a career, I wanted it to be me and only me. My mother didn’t have a career, and education, a skill, or anything marketable. She struggled to find a job when she was on her own and not just because of her drinking. She struggled more because she never had her own income, never managed finances, and never paid a bill. I refused to be my mother.

At 19, I told my mother when she got clean that I was not going to make her a grandmother. She actually sobbed and told me my purpose was to have children as a woman on this earth, to make her a grandmother, and I will change my mind.
Screw that- I joined the Army.

At 24, I began dating a woman.

At 25, my decision still stands and I’ve gone as far as scheduling a tubule salpingectomy.

Our purpose as women on the earth is not to produce children and tend a home and serve a spouse. Our sole purpose is to be happy with what WE want- not what others project on to us. Gender roles give me the ick now and I’m still working to eliminate the guilt of leaving an idea that was drilled in to me my entire life until I left home.

In the past three years, every Papanicolaou test (Pap test, Pap smear) I’ve received has flagged as “abnormal.” A pap smear is a method to screen the cervix for potentially precancerous or cancerous cells in the cervix. The first time you hear/read something in your body is abnormal, you go in to a minor shock. What does this mean? What will this abnormality yield in the future? When a woman gets a Pap smear, it already feels extremely invasive. You lay half naked, with your vagina nearly hanging off of a table, and cold instruments being inserted by a stranger. You don’t know how to comfort yourself through the exam so you spark awkward conversation and drown in anxiety.

Once the Pap smear results return from pathology, you’re either labeled as normal, or abnormal meaning there are cells (lesions) on your cervix that need further examination. The abnormal lesions can either be low-grade squamous intraepithelial lesions (LSIL) or high-grade (HSIL)- a result of the Human Papillomavirus (HPV). HPV is the leading cause of cervical cancer in women. The different strains are classified by the type of mRNA present in the cervical cells. The strains of HPV are then compartmentalized into high-risk (more likely to evolve into cervical cancer within 5-10 years) or low-risk (may revert back to normal cells over time). The strains are identified with numerical indicators- examples would be a high-risk strain type 16 or low-risk strain type 6.

After three abnormal Pap smears back to back, you’re sent for a Colposcopy. A Colposcopy is an exam performed in the doctors office with a colposcope, which is just an inserted microscope. Two solutions are then placed on the lesion: 3-5% dilute acetic acid, and Lugol’s iodine solution. A biopsy is then completed, meaning a piece of your cervix is CUT OUT and placed in a jar. In a doctor’s office. Although the cervix doesn’t possess many nerve endings, the metal instruments feel like you’re being dissected. After the piece of your cervix is removed, a large metal rod is inserted above your cervix and into the uterus to swab for more cells. That was the worst part. Instantly, I cramped and almost threw up. I actually shed a tear and begged the doctor to stop. When the procedure was complete, she told me “you actually handled that very well. Like, wow.” I immediately questioned to myself “how do other women react to this?!” I’ve always managed pain well but, I know others don’t. I feel like a cervical biopsy is….torture? I was then left in a cold room, with one wipe, and a maxi-pad. Go home, everything is fine, you may have some spotting and cramping. After the procedure, I went to class because it was mandatory attendance wise and that was a huge mistake. I sat in the UMBC parking lot for an hour, trying not to vomit.

When I got home, I curled up in bed and couldn’t move. I had a severe panic attack before the procedure. The way the chair sat in the room, the color of the room, the consent form, the doctor. It was all extremely uncomfortable- constantly asking me if I was ready for the procedure as if it was a major surgery only to know there was no anesthesia, no pain medication, no in-depth explanation as to what was about to happen to me…terrifying. I was in the most vulnerable position. My vagina was exposed to three strangers, watching me as if my body were a specimen in a science class.

Women who visit the doctor are often minimized and the procedures we’re expected to endure from strangers are shrugged off. No one acknowledges the elephant in the room- vulnerability. Men go for a colonoscopy to have their prostate examined and receive twilight sedation, are told to have someone drive them, and understand exactly what is happening to them. Women are viewed differently. Maybe it’s due to our child bearing abilities. If we can push out a child, we can be dissected. A woman’s body isn’t viewed with sensitivity and I could tell even as another woman dug out the lining of my uterus.

The anxiety attack lowered my immune system enough to spiral directly in to a flu. I haven’t been sick in 5 years. The procedure was so painful, it induced my period. And not only a period but THE most painful period I have ever endured. Everything after that procedure knocked me down for an entire week and some change. The way a woman’s body is viewed in healthcare has to change.