Our website is currently under construction — thank you for your patience.

This Week’s Issue

Bent by injury – broken by ACC

Want to promote your business or idea?

We Support Local

Written by

Published on

June 24, 2025

Dean’s spine, his truth … six years… two failed surgeries…one system that still says no.

Dean must remain unidentified for this newspaper. His story is very real. It is not exaggerated. In truth, he is a bent young man, but not broken….the pain real, the diagnoses fabricated. It is his spine, his truth … six years… two failed surgeries…one system that still says no.

BY DEAN

At 21, I was injured at work.
The pain was immediate; the damage undeniable.
The specialist diagnosed trauma to my spine – L4 minor L5 major protrusion and called for urgent surgery.
But the system said otherwise.
The specialist called it an “injury”.
The system called it “degenerative”.
“Pre-existing” “not traumatic not their responsibility”
Not because of evidence. But because it was cheaper.
That single decision changed everything.

For fourteen months, I fought to prove the truth
while my body deteriorated.
By the time I won the legal battle,
my body had already lost the physical one.
First surgery: Failed
Second surgery: Failed
Now my spine carries metal that doesn’t heal
– only holds the weight of all that’s broken
and the weight of a systems delay.

Six years later, ACC offers a third spinal operation,
as if a scalpel can undo six years of pain,
six years of silence.
But this isn’t discomfort.
Its suffering.
Pain that screams beneath the skin.
Pain that robs breath.
Pain that wakes me in the night.
Pain that follows me like a shadow
– fighting for the closest space at my heels
with the black dog of depression,
while the black panther of pain stalks my thoughts.
It whispers I’m a burden.

It rewires neural pathways,
gorges on my will, and erases the person I used to be,
changes the person I am;
and robs potential future versions of myself.

Still, I must prove I’m in pain.
Countless medical appointments to explain again – and again,
only to be met with raised eyebrows and quiet disbelief.
But it’s not just my body and mind that bears the weight.

My pain spreads to those I love.
My family watches helplessly.
They see sleepless nights.
They see the days I can’t get out of bed and the days I can’t eat.
They carry the grief of witnessing a loved one fade
– and the guilt of being unable to help.
Only watch on in silence.
Pain doesn’t just break people.
It breaks relationships.
It wears down love.
It echoes.

ACC says they “support recovery”,
but fight me over a taxi ride to the grocery store.
“Not treatment related”, they said. “Not cost effective.”

I am a grown man being forced to grovel for the right to eat.
Then expected to say thank you and be grateful
when they finally allow a ride to survive.
They send forms to tick boxes, pain scaled down to numbers.
“What’s your pain as a number one to ten?”
As if numbers could capture what it takes to walk while your spine burns,
or what it costs to swallow tears and put on a smile
while passing strangers down the grocery aisle.

This is not a broken system.
This is a system that breaks people.
I’m not lazy; I’m not lying
I am not a statistic. I’m a person,
still waiting for accountability
And still- I rise, against a system that holds you down.
I rise, not because I’ve healed,
But because I have people worth rising for;
people who stand beside me who prop me up.
Who shoulder what pain they can to ease the weight,
Who remind me that although I didn’t choose to exist in suffering,
I can still choose to exist and suffer
because there are people worth suffering for.

ACC only ever offered me one thing without resistance.
They eagerly offered me the option to give up.
I didn’t take it.
Here I am a broken product of a broken system.