I'm old now, but when I was a new mom for the first time in 1999, my eldest daughter (now 30) decided she NEEDED a pink plastic glitter wand at a local fair from a vendor. She NEEDED IT. I was the big bad mommy and said no. This child's face turned the brightest red I've ever seen on a human being. She THREW herself down into the dust and mud at the base of a steep hill, wearing a pretty yellow summer dress I made for her. She screamed at the literal top of her lungs. I bent down to pick her up and that's when I heard CARRACK!

Still, I picked her up and strapped her into her stroller with the 5 point harness in the middle of the biggest tantrum I have ever experienced with any of my 4 children. It was like wrestling an octopus on Speed. I finally got her secured and began to push the stroller up a nearly 90 degree incline. I got to the top, sat down on a bench, and couldn't get back up. My whole left leg refused to lift or even move. My husband had to come get our daughter and strap her in her car seat, then carry me to the car. We went to the hospital where they injected morphine into my spine.

And that was the very last day my back felt normal. Of course I refused to have surgery. I was 25 years old. I worked full time teaching. And it was the 1990s. Back surgery that actually worked was decades away from being good.

So I lived 20 years with a bad back, in and out of physical therapy of all kinds during those years. I finally allowed a spine specialist to open me up in 2019. It took him 5 hours to dig arthritis out of my spine. He put a 4 inch titanium plate and 6 screws to stabilize my spine. It didn't work. I can walk and bend, but there are okay days and days when I wish the hand of God would appear and carry me off.

This wasn't the most traumatic medical experience I have had, but it sucked that I was so young when it began.