Christelle, A Life Devastated By Modern Medicine's Treatments

by Heidi Stevenson

14 January 2010

An energetic and competitive girl in her early teens, Christelle Marini fell while playing tennis. That put her in the clutches of modern medicine.

Her life was taken over with drugs and surgeries. Always, she was told that the proposed treatment carried little or no risk, and always she ended up worse than before. Now, the impish smiling girl pictured in the image to the right has been transformed into the young women in a wheelchair, living in constant pain without hope for anything approaching a normal life.

The Interview

This interview was conducted with Claudine Goze-Weber translating between French, Christelle's native language, and English, my own. Claudine understands Christelle's pain, because her own life has been devasted in a similar way. There are thousands of Claudines and Christelles out there—nearly all living in modern nations—people whose lives have been devasted by ineffective and dangerous spinal surgeries.

The Little Accident That Started It All

Christelle was an avid tennis player with hopes of reaching championship levels. She loved to dance, swim, rollerblade, ski, and bicycle. No sport was out of her reach. But it all came to an end with a simple fall while playing tennis. Her ankle was badly sprained, so she was placed in a cast (plaster in the UK) and used crutches (sticks in the UK) for a time.

The Medical Treatments

With the inactivity and unusual stress on her spine, she developed sciatica, pain radiating down her right leg. After a CT scan and MRI, a disc herniation was diagnosed. Her doctor did not inform her that disc herniations are quite common—that MRIs often show them when there are no symptoms—and that it's only speculation that they may cause such pain. Christelle's doctor did not consider waiting to see if she got better, or suggest physical therapy to adjust for the abnormal gait caused by the cast and crutches, or offer any other conservative treatment.

No, her doctor offered one thing only: spinal surgery. He told her she had to have surgery on the L4/L5 disc, and described as "trivial as appendicitis surgery". He promised she'd be back to sports within three months. So, at the age of 13½, she underwent spinal surgery.

Christelle was worse after the surgery. On top of sciatica, she now had lumbago—chronic low back pain.

About three years later, another doctor said that her problems could be explained by herniation of the L5/S1 disc, the one below the previously "repaired" disc. So, she underwent a second spine surgery. This appeared to improve her condition for a time. The sciatica improved, but the surgically induced lumbago was unchanged.

But further damage was done. Over time, Christelle developed perineal pain and bladder problems. Sitting became impossible, she could no longer stand upright or walk, and she had a constant sensation of a mass in her tailbone. So, of course, surgery was done again about six years ago.

The third surgery provided her with some temporary relief, but then her condition started to worsen again. So, a fourth surgery was done a year later—about five years ago—this time a fusion to stabilize her spine at the level that had been destabilized by the previous surgeries.

The result of the fourth surgery was the worst yet. She started losing her ability to walk, developed burning neurological pain, abdominal pain, more perianal and perineal pain, pain at the site of the surgical incisions, and bowel problems.

A couple of years ago, she also developed terrible headaches and more strange sensations in her tailbone area.

Christelle has arachnoiditis, an untreatable condition nearly always caused by medical procedures on the spine, a known risk of any invasive back procedure, yet one she was never even told exists.

The Doctors' Response

No doctor has ever apologized to Christelle. In fact, the worse her condition has become, the worse the treatment she's received.

Once in the clutches of modern medicine, it's hard to get free. As Christelle describes it, "I fell in the infernal circle of chronic pain, and doctors, instead of helping me, began to characterize my pain as of psychosomatic origin."

It's the typical response of modern doctors after causing life-destroying harm with their surgeries and drugs. Rather than trying to at least minimize the harm, they push the patient into even more harmful treatments. Then, when there isn't anymore damage they can do, they deny the patient's pain, or blame the patient for it. The patient is characterized as difficult and mentally ill. The pain and debilitation are slapped with a diagnosis of psychosomatic.

In the face of growing disability and unmanageable pain, Christelle was drugged without her consent. She'd been told she was being given an injection for relief—and she woke up in a psychiatric hospital.

She was held for four days. The staff tried to drug her without her consent. While there, she often fell because of her disability. The staff would leave her on the cold floor, saying she was hysterical and faking it. Finally, she got lucky. One psychiatrist examined her and said that she didn't belong there, that she had no psychological disorder.

So now, Christelle is left severely debilitated and deteriorating with arachnoiditis, an iatrogenic neurological disorder for which there is no treatment in modern medicine. The one thing the doctors could do to help is provide adequate medication to ease her pain—but that they won't do.

Christelle's Life Today

Christelle describes her life like this:

I am now a 31-year-old woman with a broken body that makes me suffer real torture each minute—with a significant loss of mobility, no possibility of work, an uncertain future, needing help for my meals, for transfers, for all daily toilet functions.

I have insomnia. My health state does not become better. I have no sentimental life. I can't imagine living a normal sexual life and getting pregnant because of my spine.

About the medical profession, Christelle says this:

The medical profession no longer cares for me. Many doctors don't even treat me as a human being. One doctor told me, 'I have seen all I need to see about your case. Your problem will be resolved when you are two feet under earth. You have been a guinea pig and this has led to disaster. Your only hope is a miracle in 'Lourdes'. Medicine can't help you.

Just imagine how much better Christelle's life would be if a doctor had stopped treatment before all the spine surgeries that have devastated her life.

In summary, Christelle says:

I am paying a lot for being so blind. They made my body a source of pain, a body that I don't recognize as mine. They broke my life forever.