Inside Out

It's been quite a week. I have tangoed so much that my feet actually ache, at all times, sitting or standing, and that's WITH the new shoes I bought! I even dragged my friend Beth along for the ride on Friday, and I think she enjoyed herself and even managed to snap a few pics!
Work eased off slightly, and I say only slightly, as I am back in the trenches again, tomorrow, but it was quite a relief to have two days off in a row where I could sleep until noon and not panic that my pager was going off at any moment. It's a ridiculous job, really, sheer torture most of the time, and it's just not what I want out of life, ultimately. I mean, this is not life, it's not living; it's a half-life, a barely-there existence, and when I wonder why I have no one in my life, well, it's no wonder; I have nothing left to give anyone after leaving work, it's all been drained out of me.
But this past week was a bit of a reprieve! I was working intraop, which means I tagged along with the EEG techs while they monitored patients during surgery. It also meant I got to wear scrubs all day long, hang out with the Old Boys in the OR (not a female in sight), and not worry about too much - I was observing, learning, not running the show, as I have been for the last few months. So, with the weight of the world comfortably off my shoulders, I was unprepared as I walked into the OR my first day. The first case on the roster was in the pediatric hospital: scoliosis repair and spinal fusion with instrumentation, Harrington rods and osteotomy with bone grafts. The same exact procedure I had myself nearly 20 years ago. It was something I had managed to avoid all through medical school and residency, careful not to observe any Ortho ORs or take any spine electives. It was a part of my life I would rather forget, although try as I might, I never will. The 20-some inch scar that trails its way down my back, my tilted ribcage that digs into the back of every chair I sit in, the clicking in my right shoulder and pain in my neck  are pretty potent reminders. And although I've done an amazing job at recovering and never looking back, running, dancing, doing all manner of yoga poses, it still remains a cross to bear, something that invariably comes up in conversation, or in any relationship. And it still causes me pain to think about it, to ponder what that poor 15-year-old girl had to endure unnecessarily; how I never got to have an adolescence untarnished by illness and hospitals and x-rays and braces and deformity; how I still carry that black cloud to this day, constantly thinking awful things are going to befall me, because, well, they have.

As the scalpel went in for the first time, incising a long, neat, straight scar down the length of this anonymous girl's spine, I thought: "that's it, what is done cannot be undone, she is cut, she is scarred, forever, the pristine skin mutilated, and she will have to carry that with her for the rest of her/my life..."
I was thrust back to the pre-op consultation, when they warned me that during the surgery, to prevent the possible complication of paralysis due to distraction and undue pressure on the spinal cord, I would be woken up and asked to move my toes. Jesus. It's all blocked out, of course, due to the wonders of anaesthetics, but through advances in modern medicine, we now just monitor the electrical potentials throughout surgery and watch for any changes. And there were some in the middle of the procedure, but she pulled through. The rest of the surgery was a blur, half present, half in the past, remembering the iodine bath I had to take, the flowered face masks in the OR right before I went under, the weeks of pain, on morphine, wanting to die. Why did I have to go through this, I wondered? Why does it still hurt so much? Why do I feel cheated of my youth?

What is past is past, but sometimes the pain is so great, the scars so deep, that we carry them with us, like an ID card in our wallet, marking our identity, defining who we are, whether we like it or not. For some people it is more obvious - they are blind, or deaf, or crippled, and I cannot imagine what that must be like. For the rest of us, it's more subtle, more inside than out, the damage, the imperfection, the deformity. It may not be the story you want to tell, you'd rather have the perfect picket-fence childhood filled with happy memories - who wants to start at such a negative vantage point? I know most people see it as one of my great strengths, what I have been through, what I have overcome, and certainly, 20 years ago I never thought I would be standing in an OR, a neurologist, presiding over the same surgery I once underwent. But, like many things, it gets tiring, telling the same, tragic tale over and over to new, awe-filled listeners ogling a spectacle of human triumph. I don't want to be different. I don't want to be damaged. I want to be whole, together, sane, healthy, confident, happy, but when you start out so broken, can it really ever be fixed?
You may heal, but the scars remain, a constant reminder of the war wounds and the battle won, but hard-fought.

Comments

[benjira_kaiju]

i believe it was no less an intellectual than Demi Moore who noted that people always judge the insides of themselves to the outsides
of others.

i don't think many people have the kind of perfect childhoods you imagine are possible - as soon as you find one, contact The Smithsonian - because that's where they'd belong!

either they're stepfordly unaware of their own personal issues, traumas and wounds, or they'll lack the emotional and psychic equipment necessary to engage adequately or properly with tragedy when it strikes.

i'm sure by now you've had a flurry of calls and emails with people confiding to you about their own hitherto unspoken injuries and pain.

i'm sorry that you've had to suffer as much as you have during such a pivotal time in your life - indeed, it's the first time i'm privy to this - but having garnered almost 5 years experience in listening to people at Gay Line, let me assure you that *not* engaging suffering in a world filled with incredible pain makes you less of a full and perfect human being.

picket fences are picket fences - and they keep things in as much as they keep things out!

thank you for your post.