If my body is a battleground, how do I know if I’m winning?
I’ve been wrestling with my understanding of my body and its place in social and medical contexts for the last month, ever since a minor elective surgery turned into a nightmare infection that has uprooted my life, trashed my plans for the next few months, and left me with a literal giant gaping hole in my back.
I have been through an endless onslaught of trips to the hospital, meetings with doctors and medical procedures, narcotic drugs that fog my brain and leech my energy, and daily bandage changes where I lay in the fetal position on my bed, half nude while my parents push and pull meters of disinfectant-soaked gauze in and out of my wound. My body no longer feels like my own, I have no conception of privacy anymore. During the surgeries, the doctors undressed me but put a sticker over my ass crack. My second surgeon is comfortable digging his fingers deep into my flesh, but he won’t make eye contact with me when I’m sitting on the table in my bra and sweatpants. I’ve always hated going to the doctor, because they have consistently disregarded my concerns and blamed everything on my weight, just as they do to my mother. I always leave feeling unheard and ashamed.
For the last month, my body has been out of my control, and my ability to make decisions has been completely taken away by my circumstances. The recovery period, I am told, will take many months, and during this time, I barely have enough energy to carry my laptop from the couch to my bed. I’ve been sad, angry, grieving the loss of my last year and a half of college, first to COVID and now to this injury.
One part of this whole experience that is particularly emblematic of the whole ordeal is the Wound-VAC: I barely blinked an eye when I was told that they would insert a tube into my wound and attach it to a vacuum pump that I would carry with me for 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It was heavy, cumbersome, and painfully obvious to anyone who could see the tubes protruding from under my shirt. It emitted a constant gurgling noise that sometimes sounded like a loud, wet fart. The whole ordeal of having it on me was just as exhausting, inconvenient, and absurd as the entire situation it represents.
I am left quietly wondering how this will impact me in the long run. Will I ever feel like my body is a private space? Will I be able to have my partner touch me without flashing back to nitrile gloves and fluorescent lights? When will my body no longer be a battlefield, and when will my life be in my hands again?