#spinal surgery

I will never know the honored dead whose bones were ground to slurry to replace the shattered remains of my vertebrae when I was a broken child, my lower back peeled open on the cold metal slab so the shards of my shattered bones could be plucked out & discarded. Their bodies were recycled, & from their dust, a lattice was formed, on which my own anorectic body could rebuild.

I now wish the surgeons, the cutters, had left me with simple human blood & bone, & not the ladder of titanium screws & rods, that within 2 short years would snap in half & embed themselves in my spine, causing endless, unimaginable torment. For 22 years, I have suffered, while doctors & nurses have looked at my X-rays, & not said a damn word about the obviously broken metal rods.

Now, I'm just over a week away from freedom. There's no guarantee that this surgery will make anything better. It might even make things worse. But the metal rods & screws have started shifting, moving around inside my body. I have rolling blackouts like a low income city. I lose feeling in a few toes, my flanks, my thighs, my belly. One day it won't come back. It's time for the metal to go. My body wants it gone. I take an astronomical quantity of opiates every day just to stay sane. The alternative is opening an artery. I wouldn't last a single minute without them. I wear the scars to prove it.

My partner, 5'6, autistic, awkward, wears their scars on the inside, from having stopped me. From laying on top of me, holding me down while I screamed, begged them to please, just... let me die. Nothing was worth living a single second longer. I still don't know how the nurses & doctors failed to find the broken hardware in the ER that night. They had X-rays. They were looking at my guts. My spine was right there. 6 more years of pain they could have saved me.

...But I'm not going to sue anyone for malpractice. What's the point. They tried. They were kind. Even if they didn't listen.