After watching Mike Wesch’s talk “Why We Need a Why” in Kim Jaxon’s grad class, Kim challenged us to think about why we chose to pursue higher education. Why grad school? Why pay all this money and put ourselves through all this stress? What’s the point, again?
My “why” began when I was nineteen. It was like one day I was just a “normal” college student and the next day, I woke up in pain and I had no idea why. To be honest, I don’t remember the day it began. It was just there. I was sitting in a cultural anthropology lecture and there was this awful pain shooting up my leg. It felt like something invisible was grabbing my calf and every few seconds whatever was holding me would squeeze so tight, it sent waves of pain racing up my leg. Eventually, I began imagining the pain as a monster with long, sharp claws that dug in to my skin and muscle.
I thought the pain would go away, so I waited it out for a few weeks before I talked to a doctor (I’ve always been a rather stubborn child). A few months, three specialists, a chiropractor, an untrasound technician, and my primary physician later, and I had a diagnosis. Degenerative disc disease isn’t really a disease. I honestly have no idea why they call it that. It’s a genetic condition that no one else in my family has (that dang mailman strikes again). In a nutshell, the discs in my spine aren’t healthy. Three of them are herniated, which means they are bulging and, every time they compress (AKA every time I sit down), they spit acidic fluid onto my nerves. Not cool.
“Degenerative Disc Disease Dani.” That’s what I called myself. For the first few months, it was a dirty secret. I didn’t want anyone to know I was different. Telling my professors on the first day of school felt like confessing a sin. I hated having to explain why I was constantly shifting in my seat, why I couldn’t sit still for longer than a few minutes, why I would have to leave for a few minutes every class period to walk off the pain.
I have written so many creative nonfiction pieces about the negative ways in which this has affected my life, but somehow I seem to avoid talking about the best thing that this weird, incredibly painful disease has done for me. The traumatizing hospital scenes and the miraculous surgery drama are, in many ways, more interesting for a very young and inexperienced writer. But after watching “Why We Need a Why” and talking to Kim, I now know that “Degenerative Disc Disease Dani” is my “why.”
After my diagnosis, I was advised to drop out of school in favor of a treatment offered to me by a chiropractor that would require me to come in to his office three times a week to be hooked up to a machine that would slowly stretch my spine. No matter how gently he described the process to me, it still sounded like a particularly cruel kind of torture. In his defense, he was probably right. When my discs are spitting out fluid that is causing permanent nerve damage every time I sit down, and all you do as a student is sit down, staying in school isn’t exactly a smart move. I told him I’d think about it. When my mom and I got home from his office, I walked into my room, sat on my bed, and let the tears fall. Because even then, in my moment of silent crisis, the pain was there and it was never going away.
That realization was all it took. I wasn’t going to move back home with my parents and have my mother drive me to the doctor’s office three times a week. I sure as hell wasn’t going to be strapped to some high tech torture device for a treatment that probably wouldn’t even work since my discs are in such bad shape. And I wasn’t going to stop living my life just because a few doctors with fancy degrees told me I’m a little different.
So “Degenerative Disc Disease Dani” became my “why.” I’ve always been stubborn and willful and I knew in that moment that I wanted this life more than I wanted to breathe. More than I wanted to live a life without pain. I could deal with pain. At that point, I was in pain every single day. Within ten minutes of sitting down, that monster’s hand was grabbing my leg again. So I stayed in school. I graduated with a bachelor’s degree in four years and I will graduate with a master’s this May. Woot woot!
I imagine that most people’s “why” has probably changed over the years. I think the core of mine may always be the same. This disease is never going away. It will only get worse and I’ve accepted that. But I have never once regretted my choice to stay in school. Not even when, three months after that chiropractor asked me to consider dropping out of school, pieces of one of my herniated discs broke off and tangled themselves in my nerves, putting me in a kind of pain that was so excruciating, so mind numbing, there are no words to describe it. And believe me, I’ve tried (remember the creative nonfiction?).
So here I am, post-surgery, soft-core traumatized by my hospital experience, and more driven than ever to stay in school. Most days, I feel very little pain. Some days (like Monday), it takes me 45 minutes to maneuver myself out of bed. Some days, just putting on socks and shoes is a challenge (I’d like to take this moment to point out that I am twenty-three years old and putting on socks and shoes should never be that difficult). I love and hate those days. They remind me that I am not invincible and they are my body’s way of telling me, “For the love of God, woman, SLOW DOWN.” Nearly having this college experience ripped away from me has led to a “do all the things” mentality and sometimes I need to be reminded that I’m only human. And I’m not even a fully functioning human. I’m a little different. And that’s why I’m here.
