Those of you that know me know I’m really not one of those eternally positive people so this may sound a strange thing for me to post about, you may also remember my goth-phase and my ongoing love for heavy metal so, on that front, it may not sound strange at all but here’s why I’m never concerned about having a visible surgery scar.
As someone who has struggled with a chronic illness for many years, hell I think probably my whole life because I can never remember a time (even as a child) where I was not constantly exhausted. My sleepy teenage phase (granted I was at residential ballet school and that’s more exhausting anyway) was also extreme. I’d be disappointed if I woke up on weekends home before 2pm! So I think the AS has always been behind the scenes causing something to be off in my body and extra challenging for me just to function. After the actual diagnosis in 2018 lots of things made sense and when looking at MRI scans of my spine you could finally see unmistakable damage and disease.
However this is still under the surface, even with these reports in hand, I had doctors questioning if there was anything “really” wrong with me because I have been conditioned all my life to just suck it up and keep moving. Having a level of hyper-mobility doesn’t help because I “pass” all the tests for someone with a severe, degenerative joint disease; I look fine and I don’t fit the mould.
But NOW when someone asks why I have been off work for some weeks, or why they haven’t seen me in the studio as much all I have to do is point at the scar on my neck and it’s immediately understood. The follow up questions are genuinely sympathetic and completely understanding and never question the validity of the injury or how painful it must be. I’m advised to “take it easy” and “look after yourself” and “don’t do too much”. Pretty crazy given this is about 20% as annoying as what I have been through during an AS flare.
People cannot be blamed for this reaction, having a surgery is a finite “fix” and there is a beginning, a recovery and an end. Chronic illness doesn’t stop and doesn’t have a fix and this does not really compute with the human brain which likes stories to have an ending. Ongoing suffering is so difficult to handle that you see it on so many levels – empathy is waining for war-torn countries, charitable donations stop when you see it’s not solving the problem. We become hardened and put it out of our minds because it’s too challenging to imagine ongoing pain.
Sadly this is the reality for so many people, and we continue to be disbelieved, forgotten or learn to just suffer in silence because the reactions are too negative. Scars however, get much more positive reinforcement because there they are, right in your face as a visible representation of what is happening to you and what you have overcome. Whether your scar is from surgery or an accident, we all have different emotional connections around them, sometimes traumatic as I have dealt with in my massage work. But for me, I like my scars, they prove I was not “making it up” or exaggerating as I have been so often told just because I power through and choose not to lay in bed crying about it. I like them because finally I have a visual representation of pain which everyone can immediately understand. I like them because it’s part of my journey and I hope this may give others the confidence not to hide something you have been told may not be aesthetically ideal, but wear it like the mark of strength it really is.
