It’s funny how medicine can be both a cure and a poison at the same time, and medical experiences can run deep in your veins long after your treatment finishes. My most profound experience with medicine doesn’t come from medical school, or even residency, but comes from a hospital bed, similar to the ones I stand next to during my rounds, except during that experience, I was the one being rounded on.
If we ever were to meet, you would likely be able to declare with confidence that I am the only person whom you’ve ever met who survived acute appendicitis for three weeks without any antibiotics, or even painkillers. When I was a teenager, I developed abdominal pain, and was evaluated three different times in the ED, and three different times I was told (without imaging or blood tests) that I had either stomach flu or period cramps. I eventually developed septic shock from a ruptured appendix, and was hospitalized for a month. When I had returned to school three months later, life looked a lot different, both as changes happened around me (as three months can be a long time at that age) and changes that happened within me.
My ordeal was not the cause of being born in a place lacking basic medical care, nor was it the result of a cryptic and unusual presentation, but was simply due to a series of unfortunate medical errors caused by carelessness and greed.
I imagine that in a parallel life I had actually died, and I feel it in my soul, because part of it is missing too. The part of me that had entered that hospital was a young 13 year old girl, who dreamed of finally kissing her crush, who loved to ride on her bike to the beach with her friends, who was looking forward to picking her dress for her middle school prom; that part had died. The part that lived was the one, the one who had to endure being violated by countless rectal exams, nasogastric tubes, IVs and blood draws from every part of her body, who had to live with contemplating suicide to end the physical pain, the one begging my mother for a drop of water from the towels used to cool my overheated body, the one being restrained on the surgical table wide awake, the one having to learn to walk again after 3 months. That part, it lived, and it had to grow stronger in order for me to survive, and it took over me for the next decade or so in the form of severe health anxiety and mistrust in doctors.
Although I have learned to heal bit by bit, late at night, I still cry sometimes when I remember that 13 year old girl who had dreamed of kissing her crush on that day that the belly ache came; I mourn her, and I hope that somewhere, in some version of her life, she got her surgery and went on to kiss her crush at the middle school prom, and both of them joined the rest of her friends and rode their bikes all the way to Brighton Beach. And the girl that stayed, for her I pray that she can finally begin to be released from her grief by sharing with others her most profound medical experience.