My Back, The Windshield Wiper
June, 2T8 MAM
Artist’s Statement: Navigating the medical system personally while also training to become part of it has been a humbling and motivating journey. This work is my reflection on being a young woman in pain in today’s healthcare climate.
My back pain is like a squeaky windshield wiper.
It’s not a problem most of the time. And when it is a problem, it is the biggest problem. It takes away all of my attention and makes every mile miserable.
A rainy day rolls in with the clouds. I don’t do anything wrong—I push the lever and rotate the dial to increase the wiper’s speed. Completely innocent, I swear. For five minutes, I drive without issue, watching the raindrops accumulate and be whisked away. And then—I swear I didn’t do anything wrong—an ear-piercing, gut-curdling squeak erupts into the air around me like nails scratching on a chalkboard. I can’t help but physically recoil, scrunching my shoulders up into my neck. I brace myself with each cycle of the wipers’ movements. And then, eventually, without even realizing it really, my shoulders have dropped frommy ears and I’ve counted ten cycles without that nauseating squeak. ‘Thank goodness’ is my first thought. Then, ‘I should really get that checked out.’
I don’t.
You see, the difference between a squeaky windshield wiper and my back pain is that people tend to believe you when you say you have a squeaky windshield wiper (because … why would you lie about that?) Oh, and a squeaky windshield wiper has a pretty easy fix: you get a new wiper. I’ve never seen “New Backs on Sale!” ads, but maybe I just haven’t paid enough attention.
Ah, there’s another difference. You usually don’t blame yourself for your squeaky windshield wiper. You also don’t typically say you might just be imagining it, that maybe the squeaking will go away if you just stop thinking about it. But I did all of that with my back pain. I did that for eight whole years.
I took my wiper (my back) to the mechanic (the doctor) and told them, “hey, this thing randomly gets pretty squeaky—you got any recommendations?” Translation: “I am in pain can you please tell me why, can you please make it stop?” I am not exaggerating when I say they took a one-minute (and that’s being generous) look at this thing and said, “ah, it’s probably just that the rubber got stuck (it’s a muscle strain). It’ll go away on its own.” And here’s the kicker: “I’m not worried about it.”
Oh! Wonderful! You’re not worried! Yeah, that’s probably because you’re not in the car with the squeaky freaking windshield wiper! I control myself. I refuse to be seen as a hysterical woman at the mechanic (doctor’s office—actually, both would be pretty bad). That will get me nowhere. They said it will go away. It will. I need to believe them.
And it kind of does. It doesn’t rain for two whole weeks. But when it does, the squeak returns, vengeful and angry. I don’t bother going back to the mechanic (the doctor). I have a pretty good feeling that the rubber didn’t just happen to get stuck again (it’s not a muscle strain), but who am I to doubt an expert? I’m just being dramatic. It will go away for good this time.
It does. And then it doesn’t. It returns, back again. Maybe this is just my life? A continuous cycle of bracing myself for the rain and hoping tomorrow will be better? Do I even deserve to figure out what is going on? Does my pain even matter?
A version of this continues for years. Four physiotherapists, four chiropractors, two family doctors, and absolutely no change. One road trip where the windshield wiper became so squeaky (I was in so much pain), I begged to be drugged. One formal nearly ruined by the squeakiness (pain) stuck in my head all night, drowning out the music and swiping away the joy and fun I had looked forward to.
I finally hit a brick wall. I booked an appointment and went to my doctor with a plan: Do not leave without getting a valid reason why this shouldn’t be investigated.
The appointment went like the ones before it. A dismissal of my concerns followed by that phenomenal less than sixty-second exam. The cherry on top was: “yeah, it’s just a muscle strain.”
This is where the story I tell differs from the truth. When I tell the story, I say I was strategic in that moment. I weighed the risks of being seen as an emotional hormonal out-of-control woman dissolving into a puddle of tears with the risk of walking out utterly hopeless yet again. I chose to whip out my acting training, forcing the tears to fall dramatically. But what really happened was that when I heard those words, my mind went blank. There was no mental math, no strategizing. Merely an all-consuming sense of hopelessness.
I cried because I had nothing left.
I left with a requisition for an MRI.
The poetic reason I want to be a radiologist is because they were the first ones to see the pain I had silently experienced for nearly a decade. Finally, reduced to voxels and greyscale, I was believed.
It turns out that the squeaky windshield wiper is a herniated disc.
The ironic part of this story is that there still is no “50% off New Backs!” deal at Walmart. My pain cannot be fixed as easily as windshield wipers. But perhaps that’s another point where my analogy crumbles. Just watching someone read the imaging report that contained the pain and frustration and struggle that I could never describe was remarkably cathartic. Having someone look me in the eyes and say “I’m so sorry this took so long. But I promise you, your pain is real, and I’m here to help,” somehow made that stubborn squeak more bearable.
I guess, sometimes, you can’t get rid of discomfort all that easily. Sometimes, windshield wipers just squeak. But, with good company and a good team to support you, you can drown out the sound with some laughter, some music, and some hope that there are sunny days on the road ahead.
