I first injured my neck when I was 20 years old, more than two decades ago.
Last month, I spent two weeks in hospital requiring two surgeries to fix the problems that had been degenerating all that time. One operation at the back of my neck was to remove chunks of vertebrae, whilst the other operation was to reposition the spine and fuse vertebrae together. I am still in pain, and full recuperation will take months.
Why I write this, is because the problems in my neck stemmed from a decades-long problem to do with exercise – and from a decades-long problem to do with my weight and diet. In short, the reason I messed up my neck and required two serious surgeries at the relatively young age of 43 is because, for years, I suffered from an eating disorder, but didn’t think I was important enough or serious enough for it to warrant attention or care.
As written, I am 43 years old. I am a man from England who, since the age of 18, suffered from the firm belief that I was overweight and unattractive, who did an aggressive and damaging form of exercise (think Hindi squats, but very fast and forceful, with sessions lasting for one to two hours at a time) very night, and occasionally in the morning too, to burn off any calories consumed during the day and preferably even more.
I’m writing this because, for those 20+ years, both my eating disorder and neck pain were either ignored or dismissed, the ramifications of which resulted in my neck surgery, which if continued to be ignored, would’ve led to years of degenerative pain and eventually paralysis.
What I can write now unreservedly is that the cause of all this were several eating disorders; body dysmorphia a key culprit. As a child, I’d always been very thin and short, to the point that when I changed secondary schools at the end of year nine, the other children in my new school thought I was in year seven! However, the problem was my childhood dream was to be a professional wrestler! I knew I had to grow, but I had no idea how to do so safely and responsibly, so I spent the ages of 14 to 18 gorging on food in order to get bigger. I didn’t grow, but I did gain weight – a lot of it.
By the time I was 18, the wrestling thing was over, and instead I wanted to be in a band (I was a classic case, for sure) and this meant being thin—no problem, as my memories and childhood jibes told me that I already was. Only I wasn’t. At least not to me. At least not compared to the rockstars I saw in magazines.
A few friends mocked me for being a bit fat too, so from the age of 18 I embarked upon an endless diet and exercise routine. Food I loved was no longer eaten. In fact, I cut down to one meal a day; an apple or banana for breakfast (if I even bothered with breakfast- more often than not it was skipped), an apple or banana for lunch, and one main meal for dinner, followed by the aggressive squatting exercise in to sweat excessively every evening. If I drank alcohol, it would be spirits and tonic water. I avoided mirrors and photographs, convinced I was hideous to look at, to the point where photos of me in my 20s or 30s are very hard to come by.
And I did become thin—very thin. 10 stone (140 lbs) by age 20, able to fit into size 28 jeans, all within a 5 foot 9 frame. However, even then, I was never thin enough. I remember wanting to lose more weight. I still saw myself as fat. After every meal, I imagined appearing fatter, asking friends and family, “do I look fatter?” as if I could instantly gain weight like this.
So I continued the exercise. If I ever ventured to eat something highly calorific – if it was a birthday and I had cake or a burger for example – I would double the exercise to burn it off and ensure I would fast for the next day or two. I have subsequently learned that these are forms of bulimia, but had no idea at the time, thinking because I wasn’t vomiting, I was fine. I just saw myself as a fat man trying to get thin.
I was hungry all the time. I thought about food all the time. The commonly noted need for control also played its part, as I knew that if I wasn’t so determined with dieting I would soon lose any semblance of order and gorge on the junk food I so coveted and feared at the same time.
Then, towards my 21st birthday, as I was doing my exercise, I felt a pain in my neck. Over the coming days, the pain got worse. I could not move my head. Laying down was painful, so sleep was incredibly difficult. All the muscles in my neck and shoulders seized. I would have spasms; visible lumps would appear where the muscles were tightening.
I had to spend whole days sitting in one position but even that was difficult if my head wasn’t placed in the right position. Over-the-counter pain medication did not work. As someone who had spent the last few years exercising excessively I had pulled muscles before, but this was deeper. It was sore. It was more debilitating.
Eventually, the pain grew to such an extent that I booked an appointment with the doctor. She looked at me and said there was nothing she could do and told me to leave, all within a minute. The pain continued – it was so bad – so I decided I had no choice but to return to the doctor days later.
This time, though, she was angry with me and told me sternly that there was nothing she could do. I had pulled muscles, that’s all. I needed a massage, that’s it. I remember trying to explain that I knew about pulled muscles and this was more than that. I remember trying to explain that I needed something stronger than the paracetamol and ibuprofen that she recommended but she didn’t listen and pretty much shooed me out of the room.
As a young, impressionable man, I took this to heart. I felt like a malingerer. I felt like I was just weak and a waste of time. I did not seek help for my neck pain from a doctor again until I was in my early 40s, so strong was the belief that to ask for help was just a waste of their time.
The initial injury lasted three months; three months until the pain went away; three months of sitting in a chair all day. After three months, the pain subsided but I would have aches and spasms regularly which I put down to the exercise – and which I continued as soon as I was healthy enough. I just put it down to the regular aches and pains any active person would get from pursuing their goals.
I never became a wrestler or a rock star but I did have regular aches for the next 20 years which I would self-medicate, sometimes with ice, sometimes with a hot water bottle. But when I was 27, 33, and 39 – yes, exactly six years apart, for some odd reason – I would have another terrible episode that would force sleeplessness and non-stop pain for two to three months at a time.
These times, though, I noticed shooting pains down my arms and weakness in my hands too. However, I never saw another doctor; the memory of being told off at 20 was still playing in my head.
I did see massage therapists, which, while appreciated, were ineffective. Then, when I was 33, such was the pain in my arms that I paid for a private physio session. What is crazy to me, knowing what I know now, is that when I told my story to the physio, and when I told them about my neck pain and the shooting pain in my arm specifically, this did not raise any alarms for them. Instead, again, I felt as if I was wasting their time. The physio even said at one point, when I mentioned my arm pain, that they had people in the waiting room who couldn’t even use their arms. They told me at the end to “just go to an osteopath next time” (I did visit several osteopaths subsequently, and again, while appreciated, I now know this was the worst thing to do in my condition, as being “cracked,” as it were, could have been very dangerous for the condition my spine was in).
Of course, here is the dilemma: I was aware, as the physio said, that others were suffering far worse. Yet what I now know, and would like to advise others, is that this does not mean that your condition is less. This goes for my weight issues too. I never took it seriously, and neither I assumed, did friends and family, because others were far worse.
I was not skeletal. Other than my neck, which was dismissed, I had seemingly no health issues concerning my diet, so therefore I assumed this was just how I was and how I had to be.
I do remember friends and family sometimes commenting on how thin I was, though. My mother once said how she could easily wrap her finger and thumb around my wrist. A female friend urged me to eat something. She even said, “you’re a man, not a woman,” continuing that it was not attractive to be so thin. And I had another friend who would invite me for dinner once a month or so and say they did so because it was the only way they could be sure I was eating. What is sad, reflecting on these comments though, is that at the time I took them as a compliment. I felt happy. So therefore, my dieting continued, as did that bloody exercise.
What I now know the exercise was doing was causing a whiplash effect. The velocity at which I was squatting and rising was forcing my spine to bend and snap to a dangerous level. Such was the frequency with which I was completing the exercise that the discs in my neck degenerated to the point that my neck started bending the wrong way. The herniated discs also pressed onto my nerves, causing the arm pain and hand weakness as well. I developed myelopathy – a thinning of my spinal column – meaning there was little space for my spine.
And this all stemmed from my need to stay as thin as I could be, but never as thin as I wanted to be.
About six months ago, the pain in my arms developed to the point that it would not go away. My hands ached too. It hurt to even wash them. Now married, it was my wife who convinced me to finally go back to the doctor, this time in France, where I now live (my wife is French). A subsequent MRI revealed the damage and the surgeries were quickly arranged and performed.
I try not to be bitter, because I am in awe of the work the nurses and surgeons have done on my neck in the last month or two, as well as the fantastic work they do overall. However, when I think back, if I was taken seriously at 20, maybe I would have stopped the exercise. If the physio had listened about my arm pain (a major red flag in terms of neck damage by the way), perhaps I would have saved myself years of pain and further trauma.
All they needed to say was, “Oh, you have neck pain and arm and hand issues – go for a scan,” and I would have. Instead, I was made to feel like someone who was just weak, and I took it upon myself to just rest a bit before continuing the damaging behaviour.
My condition was never serious enough. My neck issues were never serious enough, never severe enough. Someone else always needed help more. That’s how I felt, and if I did seek help, I thought I was taking away care from someone who needed it more. Likewise, someone else was always in more pain than me, so why was my issue important?
However, when I was lying in my hospital bed after my first operation, unable to move for four days, I had a thought: can it be considered important now? When I had to learn to walk again, was it important then? If I had had a minor car accident and suffered whiplash, resulting in paralysis due to my undiagnosed condition, would I and my loved ones have rued not acting sooner? I had 4 screws put into my neck; after surgery, swallowing was difficult and choking was a very possible hazard; when exactly should I have considered my ‘trivial’ issues important?
It was always important, of course. I was always important too. It should never have gone so far.
I write this because I don’t want anyone to go through what I went through. I write this because I want eating disorders to be recognised quicker and dealt with more effectively than what I was offered – or not offered. Because I want someone who is experiencing chronic pain not to be made to feel like they are wasting someone’s time just by bringing it up.
I will always have, even after surgery, pain and weakness in my neck and arms. It should hopefully not get worse, though – that was the purpose of the surgery.
When I was in hospital for two weeks, I lost nearly a stone in weight. And what disturbs me still is that I was happy about this. I nearly lost my ability to walk. I was in enormous pain. I had to leave my wife and two young children for a couple of weeks, and yet I was happy because I thought I might be a bit thinner. So while I am a lot better now in terms of eating, thanks to my wife and children, clearly the body dysmorphia is still there but I am aware of it now in a way I wasn’t two decades ago.
I thank charities like The Laurence Trust for helping bring these issues to light and for working diligently to help those in need. All I needed – and all I ever wanted I suppose with hindsight – was someone to help me find a healthy, balanced lifestyle. One where life, and food, would still be enjoyable. What I needed was someone to help me find exercise routines that weren’t so destructive. I want people to feel that they will be taken seriously, but it shouldn’t have to get to the point of double neck surgery before you are helped.
If you’re reading this, I want this tale to be a cautionary one – a warning of what the effects of seemingly minor disorders can be long-term. If you’ve got chronic pain, if you see yourself as fat, if you can never be thin enough, you are owed the right to seek help and care. If you view yourself as excessively unattractive, if you avoid mirrors and photographs, you deserve help, because your life is precious, as is everyone else’s.
I spent years thinking it wasn’t serious enough to matter; I wasn’t serious enough to matter. But both it and I was. Indeed, if any of this feels familiar, it’s worth being taken seriously – and whether you’re the one suffering or the one those who suffer come to for help, please do just that – and far sooner than I ever allowed myself to be.