Health Update: Exoskeletons, Boxes and, Boundaries (EBB)

"Alternate title: EBB: Extra Big Balls"

Aug 18, 2026

The original intent of this Substack was to summarize and answer questions about my health condition into long form content that I could then have friends and family read to better understand my current life. While I have been able to improve my ability to articulate my health struggles in conversation, I’ve found there are inevitable limits to what impromptu conversations can accomplish. Even when I am able to come up with a decent approximation of my life, there often seems to be a disconnect in how that is received by others, though through absolutely no fault of their own; it’s just so different than what I think most people are used to. As such, I’ve found that essays where I can be very intentional about my wording are the most effective way to help the people in my life understand my new reality.

I wrote all of one article explicitly about that last summer, before transitioning to reviewing music and essentially keeping a silly little diary. It was pretty emotionally painful to delve deep into all the ways my life has diverged from my expected path, so I simply stopped. However, in the year since I wrote that first article, I’ve tried new treatments, failed new treatments, begun the steps for a major, life-altering neurosurgical treatment, and generally converged on more clarity regarding both my medical situation and the structure that I use to keep my life manageable and my sanity (sort of) intact.

After stewing on this for awhile and in honor of my recent 2 year injury-versary on August 10th, I figured it was time to formalize these thoughts into an article so that those around me have a clearer idea of where my life is. Thus, I present the horribly-named structure of EBB: Exoskeletons, Boxes, and Boundaries.

I wrote this over the course of a couple weeks, so it ended up coming out really long. I’ll try to break up things into sections so it stays organized and hopefully makes some semblance of sense, but bear with me here. It would mean a lot for the people in my life to read through this.

Section 0: Background

Before starting, it is probably helpful to read a narrative-based background here. That will cover how I ended up in this spot, and where my headspace is starting from. This article is meant to build off that one.

Quick Injury Primer

At it’s most basic level, craniocervical instability (CCI) can be described as the weakening or severing of the ligaments[1] that attach your head to the rest of your body. That sounds dramatic, but CCI kind of is. As with most conditions, it exists on a spectrum. On one end, the ligaments are entirely intact and there is no pathology. On the other end, the spinal column and the skull base fully separate, literally resulting in what is colloquially known as “internal decapitation” in which the patient has an 85% mortality rate. Somewhere between these two extremes are varying levels of disability that fall under the CCI umbrella. Intuitively, the closer you are towards intact ligaments, the less disabled you are and the closer you move towards internal decapitation, the more disabled you are.

Clearly, I do not have internal decapitation as I would have had immediate surgery 2 years ago. However, I am far enough along the spectrum that I am severely impaired. It’s an odd sensation to explain as it doesn’t fall under the typical spectrum of ailments we are used to describing: localized pain, dizziness, headache, neurological deficits, brain fog, etc. While it includes elements of some of those, the overarching symptom I experience is best categorized as a bobblehead.

When I try to turn my head, lift my head off my pillow, stabilize my head in jarring scenarios (such as riding in a car), or really do anything other than having my head lie supported in a neutral position, it feels like my head is going to slip off[2]. I can literally take my first vertebra and slide it back and forth with my fingers—not good! To make matters worse, your upper cervical spine is where many of the most important neurological structures are located: the brainstem, vertebral arteries, jugular veins, cranial nerves, etc. When there is excessive motion of the bony structures at the top of the neck, these neurologic structures become compressed, irritated, and inflamed—also very much not good!

Primary Effects

The primary effects this are somewhat disastrous. I’ve learned that one of things we take for granted is that our head will stay in place no matter what we do. When reading something, your head must stabilize itself while your eyes change position. When brushing your teeth, your head must not slip side to side as the brush applies pressure to your teeth. When you process the world around you, you assume that your head will be able to move in such a position that you can turn to view the person next to you, pick up an object off the floor, look down to eat/make food, check your mirrors, etc. And while you do these things, you assume that your head will move reliably and smoothly, without compressing the aforementioned vital neurological structures.

When none of these things are a given, imagine how spacey you may feel. I often get the sensation that my head is not attached to the rest of my body, and I am a brain floating in space, entirely disconnected from the tangible world. Or if I try to look down or sideways for longer than ~15 seconds, I begin to pass out from bony structures banging into neurologic structures.

This all works together to create a logical, but utterly ridiculous problem: how can my body balance my head on top of my neck when the attachments are severely weakened? Unfortunately, there is no good solution to that problem.

Treatments

At the lowest level, there is physical therapy to strengthen the muscles and allow them to compensate for the lack of ligamentous stability. This usually only helps for minor cases of CCI.

Past that is the dangerous world of experimental regenerative medicine injections intended to allow your body to naturally heal its own ligaments. This includes things like prolotherapy, PRP (platelet-rich plasma), and stem cells. While promising, this field operates at the frontier of medicine with far more quacks than honest practitioners. Complicating matters is the fact that injecting the ligaments needed to improve CCI involves going through the roof of your mouth and threading a needle carefully through a minefield of all the scary neurological structures talked about previously. As my PCP once bluntly and insensitively put it, “I’m not religious, but that doctor better pray to God before every procedure.”

At the most extreme level is a complex spinal fusion, typically involving skull (C0) to the second vertebrae (C2). A spinal fusion involves permanently placing metal rods between levels of your spine so the bones fuse together and move as one block. I won’t get into all the specifics, but this is a pretty terrifying and life-altering ultra-specialized surgery. Only about 5-6 neurosurgeons in the world do it with any frequency; complications are not possible, they are expected; future surgeries are almost inevitable; head range-of-motion is decreased ~80%; and symptoms are not even guaranteed to be resolved. It’s pretty gnarly shit.

Over the last two years, I’ve moved through the first two levels with no meaningful improvement in symptoms. Although I still do PT, it’s purely for survival and not to make any forward progress. As for regenerative medicine, I picked the least-quack-like quack, forked over stupid amounts of money, went under a nice cocktail of ketamine/fentanyl, and got stem cells injected through the back of my throat twice 5 months apart with no results. As such, I’ve entered the lovely world of neurosurgery! All things considered, due to the particulars of my situation, I’m pretty confident that I will see significant symptom resolution from a fusion, and potentially even a return to a relatively normal life. Despite that, I’m honestly scared shitless, but if there’s one thing I’ve learned from the last couple years, the only way through is through.

Phew, OK. That was a lot of background. The main purpose of this article is to give context to my daily life, however, so we can now move to the structure that I have setup to make my daily living tolerable.

Section 1: Exoskeletons

Who the fuck is Exo?

I was once talking to someone with endometriosis who mentioned that, when they had severe pelvic pain, they imagined it was a little miner banging the inside of their pelvis with a pickaxe. The idea of anthropomorphizing your pain seemed appealing, so I decided to adopt this idea. My exoskeleton is the loving name I have given for the amorphous but ever-present little gremlin that likes to wrap my body in a vice grip.

Often-shortened simply to Exo, I’ve got a soft spot for him. Exo really does think he is doing me a favor. After all, says Exo, “if I didn’t activate every single muscle in your body and try to wrap you into a little ball, your head would fall off!” In that respect, he is sort of right, but in just about every other respect, he is a blithering buffoon.

Exo’s dastardly doings

Exo started off just in my neck and upper back. When my neck was first injured, my neck, upper traps, rhomboids, and other upper back muscles involuntarily and reflexively seized up in order to provide a natural splint for my head. Muscle guarding, similar to swelling or inflammation, can be a natural (and even beneficial) reaction to injuries that cause instability by providing support while the area heals. Well, I toughed out the initial inflammatory and “healing” stage for a few months, and, as you could probably have guessed, my body nowhere near fully healed the initial injury. As the instability lingered, I was left with an involuntary and seemingly permanent muscular “splint” around my head. Good? Eh, kind of but not really.

As time wore on and the instability persisted, however, Exo started to grow this splint. Especially during the frightful early days of my journey when I had no idea what was causing my symptoms, I would try to go on hikes or long car rides to see friends, convinced by arrogant doctors that I was experiencing anxiety and just needed to get my mind off the problem. Each time I did something like this, Exo enveloped more of my body as my nervous system involuntarily tightened the splint around more and more muscles to support my unstable upper neck. My core tightened into a knot, my ribs frozen in place, my diaphragm fully stuck, my pelvis strangled like an anaconda, and my entire body slowly curled into a ball of hypertonic muscles as my nervous system went into neurological overdrive in attempt to keep my head attached. It sounds nutty, but that’s exactly why I’m writing this article: this whole thing is pretty nutty.

Hypertonic muscles are important to mention because, although they started out as normal spasms, the current consistency of my muscles does not resemble the typical muscle spasm that we have all experienced. Instead, it is a constant, abnormally high muscle tone that persists even at rest. In many cases, my muscles have semi-permanently shortened into thick, concrete-esque bands that resemble thick rope. Persisting at rest means that I can lie down and take all the weight off of my body, but my muscles will not relax and continue to be hypertonic, firing as if they are stabilizing me on a rollercoaster. Normal stretching also does not touch hypertonic muscles because stretching simply places the strain on whatever is most pliable. In a normal body that is your muscles. In my case, that is the surrounding ligaments, tendons, and other tissue surround my muscles. It’s hopefully intuitive by now that this a horrible idea: the last thing I need are more soft tissue injuries.

Effects of an Exoskeleton

Though there are downright awful effects of gross instability as discussed in the “background” section above, the effects of a tight Exo are almost worse. While it does stabilize my head and reduce the extreme bobblehead sensation, it also quite literally, in no uncertain terms, strangles me. The fascia around my neck becomes wrapped so tightly that it impedes my airway, sending my already destroyed nervous system into overdrive.[3] This is compounded by having my ribs and diaphragm also locked into place. Both of these areas must expand in order to get a proper breath, but with them compressed, my breathing becomes shallow, labored, and panicky. I have often described it as physical anxiety—before even reaching my conscious brain, my thoughts are already riddled with dread due to the physical mechanisms pushing my body into a constant state of fight or flight.

In addition, my head is constantly being smashed down into the rest of my body, ensuring it stays stable but also kinking my upper neck and restricting most motion. Mr. Exo (or is Exo non-binary?) is not unlike having an internal, 24/7 full body brace that extends from my neck to my toes. To top it off, my pelvis gets squeezed so much that I’m pretty constipated. You probably didn’t need to know that, but I don’t care, I’m going to tell you anyways.

Having experienced both extreme laxity and extreme tightness, I find tightness far more horrible than the bobblehead sensation. When I have a bobblehead, there are steps I can take to get relief: lying down, wearing a hard collar, physically holding my head in place, taking deep breaths to manage the situation, etc. When I’m tight, there isn’t a quick way out of the panic, dread, and pain.

How to get rid of Exo

For the first year-ish of my injury, I was an extreme bobblehead; think “walking on tippy toes to cushion my steps while walking”-bobblehead. Then, I built up into a tightly-bound ball over the course of a few months. Now, I’ve been undoing said ball for the last ~9 months. It’s a slow process and takes pretty stupid amounts of physical therapy—2.5 hours at the gym every other day, 2-3 hours every night of trigger point work with my lovely mother—but ever so gradually, I am able to slowly rip away the thick layers of fascia and beat Exo into submission.

My PT sessions do consist of “exercises,” but they are pretty unintuitive, and I look pretty stupid doing them. This is because the resistance I use is quite low, but the band or weight is really only there to guide the movement. The true resistance comes from the tightly woven fascia of my exoskeleton. Thus, while every other day at about 6pm, I can be found at the Cupertino Sports center grimacing and sticking my tongue out as I lift 7lb on the cable machine, the struggle is really coming from trying to place the thick ropes of fascia under load and rip them apart, not because I struggle to lift 7lb. I swear.

I’ve never been able to properly articulate what the feeling of ripping away my exoskeleton is like. I’ve run lots of ultramarathons, climbed 1000-foot walls, backpacked for weeks at at time, and generally pushed my body pretty hard, but I can confidently say that nothing really compares to ripping my exoskeleton. It’s entirely different from normal muscle fatigue. Instead of leaving the gym thinking “wow, that was a good workout!”, I leave the gym feeling bruised and beat-up, on a good day. On a bad day, I leave feeling like nothing happened. This because the process of getting rid of my exoskeleton is ridiculously slow.

While I am proud to have figured out this entire mechanism on my own and had it confirmed over time by doctors and PTs, fixing the problem is slow. Really slow. I stick to my routine religiously, but I can only move as fast as my body allows. Some days, my body allows a lot of progress (these are called “shedding periods”) and some days it allows none (these are called “horribly fucking bad days that I hate”). It’s agonizing and, these days, patience is probably the hardest part of the process. Though at the end of the day, I can complain and wish all I want for things to change, but that’s not going to help. The only way through is through!

Why do I have to get rid of Exo?

A logical question you may be considering is: “If Exo is caused by instability and surgery will fix the instability, won’t getting surgery now fix Exo? Why are you doing all this work before surgery?” This is a great question, and it’s really the crux of my life right now. Essentially, it’s a bit of a chicken-and-the-egg scenario. Yes, surgery will fix the instability which does indeed cause Exo. However, since my exoskeleton is so out of control, I cannot get surgery while it is so tight. A surgery will fix the instability, but my neck is still just one part of my overall body. Having these extremely tight fascial restrictions and then putting metal rods into my skull on top of that is, according to my neurosurgeon, a terrible idea.

In addition, part of the prerequisites for surgery is reporting significant symptom improvement during a “collar trial”: wearing a hard neck collar for 23 hours a day for 7 days. A year ago, when I was a bobblehead, this would have been easy and I would have loved it. Now that I am a tight ball of fascia, this is impossible. Since my exoskeleton is so tight and jams my head on so stiffly, to have the neck brace do anything more than just rest on my body as an accessory, I have to lengthen it so it applies a small amount of upward pressure to counteract the downward force of my exoskeleton. These opposing forces working in an already-compromised area of my body that contains all kinds of vital neurological components is bad. So bad in fact that if I currently try to wear my collar for longer than 30ish minutes, my vision flickers, and I begin to pass out. Not good! Though all my radiological scans are clearly pathological and indicative of surgery, my neurosurgeon has a hard boundary that no surgery is done without an actual positive collar trial, even though he agrees it is almost a given mine will be positive. Disappointing, but I appreciate the concern. It’s only the rest of my life we are talking about here.

So, as counterintuitive as it seems, I have to slowly remove the tight scaffolding that makes up my exoskeleton, make my head more of a bobblehead, wear my collar for a week, report that immobilizing my head and neck remove the bobblehead sensation, then get surgery. I know this article is way too long, but if you take nothing else from this, know that the previous sentence is essentially the one sentence summary that guides my entire life these days.

However, while I know how to remove fascia that Exo has laid down, there is also the challenge of not doing activities that cause Exo to add more pressure to my full-body torniquet. Unsurprisingly yet frustratingly, these activities include pretty much every a normal person would like to do. Thus, I live in a box.

Section 2: Boxes

Ok, so I’ve laid out the problem (balancing my poorly-attached head on top of my neck), my body’s poor solution (sending me into neurological overdrive with extreme muscle guarding that chokes me), and the real solution (removing my exoskeleton to free up my head then get surgery to reattach it). However, while I know in theory how to move from the poor solution to the real solution, perhaps the hardest part of this whole debacle is actually putting that into practice.

Why do I live my life in a box?

This part of the equation is the hardest for me to put into words, primarily because the restraints this condition has put on my life are so debilitating and all-consuming, but at the same time, I have reduced my life into such a small box that I do not often come upon the painful walls of said box. Essentially, almost every activity that you can think of causes my exoskeleton to become flared up because every single thing we do is predicated on having our head attached. To illustrate this point, let me list some normal activities and how they aggravate my condition:

As you can probably see from this list, a stupidly-high percentage of normal actions will cause my exoskeleton to flare up. If the ultimate goal is to get rid of my exoskeleton, undergo surgery, and resume my life, then you may begin to see why I have to live in a box. While I spend so much of my life trying to get rid of my exoskeleton, if I live outside of my limits, that can just as easily neutralize or set back all the hard I do.

In addition, flaring up by living outside of my box creates a nasty, self-perpetuating feedback loop. When my exoskeleton is exacerbated, it tightens the grip on my ribs, diaphragm, and neck which makes my breathing labored and panicky as described above. In turn, that creates the psychological stress which further tightens my exoskeleton. Without some way to cut in and stop this loop, this can quickly and sneakily set me back really far.

What does living in a box look like?

Living in a box means militantly sticking to a careful routine that is calculated to be as gentle on my neck as possible. Imagine that every single moment is weighted in terms of how jarring it is on my neck. Above some threshold, my exoskeleton tightens. Below some threshold, it remains constant. As time has gone on and I have figured out my triggers, I’ve essentially reduced my life into such a small box that every single moment falls below the tightening threshold.

This means that I follow the exact same routine every day: wake up at the same time, do the same daily activities at mostly the same time, have the same amount of work commitments throughout the week, go to the gym at the same time every other day, and so on. When everything is extremely predictable, it allows me to live below the tightening threshold, which in turns allows me minimize the strangling effect and make forward progress towards surgery.

I can tolerate sporadic disruptions, such as seeing a friend or going to a concert, but everything comes at a cost. Each time I engage in a disruption, I’m conscious that I slightly setting myself back. However, I’m also a human which means I crave connection, novelty, and community. As such, I do make these exceptions because I care about the people in my life, and cannot be an ascetic hermit indefinitely. It’s a very tricky balance.

Some consequences of living in a box

Living in a box is extremely emotionally painful. While it means giving up the obvious things (old hobbies like running or climbing), it also means giving up a lot of the things that make one part of society. I’m an introvert (thank god, I feel sorry for extroverts in my situation), but I like people. I like face-to-face interactions. I like small communities. I like helping people. I being a part of something larger than myself. In essence, I’m just like everybody else: I like the human experience.

Reconciling the human experience with living in a box is agonizing. While the physical challenges of this health journey have been difficult, the isolation and loss of my dreams is probably even harder. My entire life is on hold. College is on pause. Career progression is on pause. Independence is on pause. Everything is on pause. I find this is one the reasons it is so difficult to connect with others my age. Though I’ve come a long way in my acceptance, it’s hard to watch all my peers move through their 20s with a functioning body.

And while I know my disability is not my fault, I’m self-conscious at my lack of independence, ability to pursue long term goals, and capacity to hit regular life milestones. I worry that others will see me as lazy or infantilize me for my lack of current abilities, despite the fact that I am working twice as hard as I did while taking a full course load in college and working 3 jobs. While I’m well aware that my experience as an ambulatory 5’11” (6’ on a good day) white male considerably smoothes out this experience compared to, say, a short woman of color in a wheelchair, I do have these thoughts. I’m hopeful that surgery will give me back some of my life, but I’ve lived with this long enough to know not to expect anything. If it comes, it will come. Not much I can do about it other than keep chugging.

The grief that comes with a disability like this is sort of impossible to articulate to someone that hasn’t experienced it. It’s like mourning your own death of the person you were before becoming disabled. This is a pretty standard experience of acquired disability and much has been written about it by authors far more skilled than I am, so I won’t belabor the point too much more, other than to say it’s fucking hard. I’m massively proud of how much I have overcome, but I struggle everyday. Huge bear hugs to all those out there who can relate.

So, I have an exoskeleton. I live in a box to not flare it up. How do I stay in that box? Enter section three.

Section 3: Boundaries

As a recovering people pleaser, this is a tricky one, but without boundaries, everything falls apart. I want nothing more than to be a regular member of society, but as is hopefully evident from all the previous writing, I really can’t afford that. Especially early on, I was horrible about boundaries. This was for a variety of reasons, not the least of which being I didn’t actually know for sure what was causing my symptoms or what boundaries needed to be set. As time has gone on and I have received solid diagnoses, I’ve gotten a lot better, but it’s always something I have to keep in mind.

Masking

Masking comes far more naturally than being forthcoming and honest. It’s so tantalizing to ignore my reality and put on the costume and personality of an able-bodied person. Especially because I have no outward signs of disability, it’s pretty easy for me to pass as healthy. There are many benefits to this, but it does bring up some difficult situations. Particularly when meeting new people, it’s easy to not mention my disability or brush it off as minor and center the conversation around shared interests or some other safe topics. Often, this is actually preferable as I’m pretty selective with who I actually explain my health issues to since it can be so draining. However, for the people in my life that I do care deeply about, this can make it challenging to be honest about my real life experiences.

Moreso in the early days, but still now, I’m terrified of losing friendships, missing out on experiences, and falling behind in life, so there is constant tension between how much disability I show to others vs. how much I mask and deal with on my own. Intellectually, I can understand the healthiest choice is to own 100% of the disability 100% of the time, but putting that into practice is difficult. I’ve come a long way, but I don’t think I’m there yet. It’s just way too tempting to not imagine I’m healthy for short bits of time. If I put on the mask, I can keep up the ruse of normality for short time, but it inevitably falls apart at some point. If I can’t sustain it for a week, how will I be able to sustain it for a month or longer?

However, while masking has become a useful tool to avoid unnecessarily emotionally-taxing situations, it can also just as easily bring me outside of my box and start to flare up my exoskeleton, setting me further back from surgery. That is why being very intentional about my boundaries is paramount.

What do my boundaries look like?

As my routine has solidified over time and I have accrued more and more data about what works and what doesn’t, I developed a pretty solid idea of what my boundaries are that keep me inside my box. To illustrate that point, here are a few:

Since masking happens so subconsciously, being very intentional about boundaries helps me to make sure that I stay within the limits of my health box.

Effects of boundaries

Boundaries are effective and non-negotiable, so these aren’t really complaints, but more (hopefully) neutral descriptions of reality. When I set these boundaries with those around me, the results are unfortunately mixed. While nobody has been outright mean and I genuinely place absolutely zero judgement on anyone for their response, not everyone is cool with remaining in my life. My circle has shrunk considerably over time. It hurts, but that is OK. Everyone is battling something and I don’t hold any grudges on those that have moved on. There is also no expectation that someone tough out my situation alongside me. People have their own hopes, dreams, and aspirations that do not necessarily align with such a limited person. Many people, especially at this age, are looking for a friend to climb with, go out with, travel with, or generally be active with. That’s not me, but I’ve come to understand this is OK.

In many cases, I have actually been the one to move on from people myself. Masking, setting boundaries, and living within my limited means creates a predictable distance from others, and if, for whatever reason, I can tell there is a considerable disconnect with someone, it’s often easier to just distance myself from them. This is especially true if someone does not seem to want to learn more about my situation to close that distance. I never expect someone to understand right away, but I value those that make an honest attempt to understand, as I hope I do with others’ lives. Healthy me would have not known at all how to interact or treat someone in my current situation, so how can I place blame on others? I can’t, simple as that. There are many, many things others are going through that I am uneducated on and as a result, have definitely not been as supportive of a friend as I could be. All I can hope to do is learn from others and listen to their stories.

It’s hard to overstate how grateful I am for the friendships that have persisted, however. I know it has taken a lot to stand by while I’ve navigated the mess of the last two years. I have definitely placed on undo burden on those around me at times, and for that I am sorry. While most friendships are based around shared activity, common interest, or a product of circumstance, my hope is that the smaller circle of friends I maintain now is based on something a lot deeper. The identities of athlete, student, caretaker, etc. that I held dearly been stripped away, and all that’s left is my love for other people, and a shared sense of humanity. I care about you because you are human, and that’s good enough for me.

Over the last year, I’ve reached a much better mental place where somehow, some way, I kind of feel like things are OK. It’s almost like I’ve gotten a second chance at life. I have such little certainty about where my life will go from here, but each day the sun comes up is a good day. For those that respect my boundaries and stick around, thank you. In theory, one day such restrictive boundaries will be lifted and my box will expand greatly, but until then, humanity is all we’ve got.

Conclusion

Well, that came out to be a lot of words. What started as an attempt to briefly explain the structure that underpins my life quickly ballooned to basically include everything I want others to know about my current life. While I know a lot of it is heavy, I really want to stress that I do not want a pity party. I carry these things with me and want others to know about them, but I work tirelessly to manage my situation, and I sort of have it under control these days. I still like dick and balls jokes and connecting over silly goofy funny things. While my disability definitely consumed me entirely early on, and in many ways still does, I’ve become a lot more than just my health struggles. My hope is to put all of my health explanation into words and give it a space to live outside of my daily interactions with others.

I don’t believe in the cultural story that silver linings are necessary to justify a tough experience, but they are real. My silver lining is that I’m a much better person than I was pre-injury. While I wish none of this had ever happened, it’s hard to ignore how different I am than before. I think I’m a more empathetic friend, better listener, and generally a more cognizant steward of Earth. And everyone goes through hard things! My situation, while unique to me, is just my permutation of the challenges we all face at some point. I’d like to learn from others’ struggles, hear their stories, and find some way to bring a little more peace to all of our lives.

If you’ve made it this far, from the bottom of my heart, thank you! By the third injury-versary, this could all be over. Or it could still be going on. Or there could be an entirely new obstacle in my way. I can’t predict the future, but I’m fighting as hard as I fucking can to control what I can. I’ll still be here, kicking and screaming and clawing my way out of this hole. Thanks for coming along on the ride :)

Birdie the bunny
Birdie is my straight edge kween

  1. Ligaments are small bands of fibrous tissue that connect bones to other bones. Tendons are the same but connect bones to muscles. ↩︎

  2. It’s important to note that this is not merely a feeling, it is essentially the exact diagnosis. Diagnostic imaging for CCI consists of various dynamic medical scans to see if your neck moves substantially farther it is supposed to. In one scan, with my head fully rotated to the side, 75% or more of my 1st vertebrae was supposed to be in contact with my second. I had about 30% still in contact. Yeesh. ↩︎

  3. If you want an approximation, take the skin around the base of the front of your neck and pull it tight until it pushes on your throat. As is expected, there is an immediate, overwhelming sense of panic as you struggle to get a full breath. ↩︎

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