“The Weight I Carry” by Nayah Dela Cruz, 16

One day out of 365. One hour of exercise. One second for a disk to slip. All it took for my life to change was one day, one hour, and one second. More than half of my high school career will be spent with chronic back pain, the years in which I'm supposed to fight for my spot on a varsity soccer team and sit in a classroom for hours. Navigating the life of someone with chronic pain is heavy, from fighting to get a diagnosis to overcoming something you never would have thought you would be able to, it is truly an experience.

Before the pain began, it was January, and the week leading up to a soccer tournament in Colorado, one that I always looked forward to. For the past two months, I had spent every Monday night at a weight gym with my 17 teammates, working on our squats and deadlifts to prepare us to be safely knocked down and improve our physical health as athletes. I was always the one to show my team how to execute a lift with good form, demonstrating to each of them that good form always equals a safe lift that prevents injury. I walked up to the bar after being guided to my group's rack, holding a weight plate in my hands. After loading it onto the bar, I stood behind a friend to give them the confidence I had when I lifted. After her lift, I helped the bar back on the hooks. I stepped in front of the bar, feeling the weight on my shoulders. I hinged and brought myself back up, unaware of the pain that would soon follow. As we finally finished, I was acutely aware of the pressure in my back, only feeling like I needed to lean forward and pop it. The second it took to lean forward was a preview of what I would be feeling for the next years.

It took me two months to decide that the pain wasn't worth bearing through and that I wanted help. The first visit to the doctor was a fight. She was an older lady, different than my normal physician, but easier to schedule time with. Sitting in that cold room, being told to move in all the ways that hurt me, and describing when and where I felt the pain was exhausting and, in some way, invalidating. After all of the questions and positions I bent in, I was told that because I was young, healthy, and athletic, my injury wasn't serious, so I was sent home with two weeks' worth of Ibuprofen and a referral for PT that would only be activated if the pain didn't subside. It was easy to tell my affliction wasn't going away. Three weeks after the initial appointment, I was sitting in a different cold room with my shoes off and bent down with my fingertips barely able to touch the top of my knees. This place became part of my new routine, replacing my weight training with stretches, dry needling, and cupping. I was willing to do anything to get rid of this pain. After so much time complaining about my hurt and not going to soccer practices because of it, even my parents became desperate. My performance on the field declined, and so did my playing time, something my father was not happy with. I could tell that my pain and discomfort were becoming an annoying hindrance to my parents.

Six months after the accident, I was back in my doctor's office with a note from my PT stating that I would like a referral for an MRI. The doctor was my original physician, a man who had previously undermined my need to see a pulmonologist for my asthma, something he dismissed after a brief description of my symptoms. I was anxious to go and be denied the scan, not only because I was desperate to be rid of the pain that was limiting me from enjoying life, but also because my parents were beginning to assume that my injury was just an excuse to get

out of soccer. My biggest supporters began to stop believing me. For the third time, I was in a cold room with silly giraffee socks that I decided were better than my plain black ones, a choice I made when my counselor told me to bring bits of joy into my life after struggling with a constant dim weighing me down. The appointment dragged on with me having to fight to prove through nothing but my words that my pain was real, and in the end, I had a date on my calendar for my first MRI.

My fourth cold white room with flamingo socks, the only difference was the paper scrubs. I was molded in the best way the nurse could manage for the scan and put in a white machine that too closely resembled what I imagine being buried alive felt like. I stuck it through, anxious to have a diagnosis that could explain the invisible pain I was feeling. Days later, I was driving home with my dad from soccer when, three blocks before my address appeared, he told me the doctors had found something. He seemed melancholic and slightly remorseful when he told me I had a bulging disk. It was a bittersweet type of news; on one hand, it was real and I wasn't somehow lying and making it up to myself in my head, but on the other hand, I knew nothing would change. I would still be in pain, I would still see my PT every week, and I would continue to fall farther and farther behind athletically. It was so frustrating to know that I was the one in the group who got hurt, that it was I, the person who was the most careful, who got hurt. I had coaches come up to me constantly asking me to join their team, and now I was spending my time on the bench watching as my teammates slowly passed me in progress.

One year after the accident, I went to see an orthopedic doctor, someone whom I was hoping could finally get rid of all the pain and put my life back to where it was. Even after a year, I was still in denial about how this pain would follow me around for so long. The fifth and final time I went to see a doctor was this time, with a lovely doctor, where, for the first time since I was injured, I felt heard. She complimented my honey bee socks and told me she understood what I was going through. I went home that day with the knowledge that there was no cure and that the pain I was feeling would get better and worse depending on the day, but it wasn't as bitter as the news used to be; it was something I was able to come to peace with. She gave me advice that carries me through each throb, stab, and ache I feel; she told me that something along the lines of “you can't get rid of your pain, but you can learn to be stronger than it”. Each time that I arrive earlier than the rest of my teammates to warm up or spend time in physical therapy, I remind myself that I would have never worked as hard or been as strong if I hadn't been injured. I will spend more of my life working harder than everyone else to simply live comfortably, but that keeps me strong. If I could go back to when I first got injured, I would tell myself that people will always learn to overcome and adapt to any challenges thrown at them, and while it hurts more than just physically now, it won't forever.

It's been one year and 7 months since I was injured, and while my pain may feel the same, I am in no way the person I was at the beginning. I will always be the person with every type of pain medication you could think of in my bag, and a basket in my room for days when it gets to be too much. I’ve been taught many lessons in my time with chronic pain, but the two most important are that you never know what invisible injury someone else may have weighing them down, and that you will always be stronger than when you started.

I never would have guessed that one day, out of a year, and one squat could change my life forever. My high school life is filled with heating pads, pain killers, and stretching, but it is also full of things like a spot on the varsity team, and teachers who let me take breaks to stand

in the back of class to alleviate my pain. Experiencing what it is like to be in constant pain is the biggest challenge I have ever faced, and yet I have finally come to find that it has allowed me an insight into a world of empathy and courage.