If you break your leg, everyone can see the hurt, you get sympathy and support. You get some crutches and there is a time in the future when the discomfort ends.

Almost a decade ago I had a pelvic torsion happen. I twisted my pelvis along the horizontal axis. I twisted one Iliac crest forwards. This caused my pudendal nerve to be stretched.

This set in motion the most painful and mentally devastating period in my life. This nerve if you are unfamiliar is what controls sex organs, bowel movements and urination. It’s also a parasympathetic nerve meaning it responds to emotions. It’s the same thing that controls a dogs tail. When a dog is scared or stressed they tuck in the tail. Though humans don’t have tails we have the reflex.

Why would I share such intimate details of my life anyway? Because something so small has altered the trajectory of my life in profound ways and shaped my personality. From what I’ve read, it also causes divorces and suicide due to its location. The implications go much further than you might think. It’s one of the most painful and unsettling types of nerve pain you can endure because of its location and control of vital body functions and because it creates a feedback loop of fear, anxiety and depression which only makes the condition worse.

I had no words or way of telling doctors what it really was because I couldn’t connect the dots at first. It started small. When I first injured myself it felt like an electric shock that shot up my butt from the end of my tailbone to my waist. It truly felt like I was being sawn in half there for a split second. It only lasted a moment and went away. It left a fullness feeling though. A feeling my brain kept interpreting as needing to have a bowel movement when clearly I did not. To be continued… I promise its going somewhere deep ;)