I’m (Not) a Baby: A Story of (Chronic) Pain
By: Saffyre Falkenberg
Tags: Chronic Pain, Personal Essay, Chronic Illness, Pain, Disability

Let me tell you a story.

It was the day after Fourth of July. Even though it was early in the morning, the Texas sun was already out in full force as I unloaded groceries. Two pitbulls trotted up to me from down the street, panting heavily. Busting out one of the coveted water bottles from my trunk (this was the stage of quarantine when bottled water was nearly impossible to find), I helped the two drink from it. Ushering them into my backyard, I got them some food and water before settling down on the porch to make some calls. I figured these two pups had been scared of the fireworks the night before. Being a Sunday, animal control was closed. Thinking about what I wanted to do about these dogs, I noticed they were out of water, so I stepped off the porch to get the bowl and refill it.

As I stepped off the porch, my left ankle rolled underneath me and I collapsed. When I fell, I heard and felt two huge pops. On my hands and knees in the grass, an animalistic moan slipped through my lips. The dogs were at my side immediately, licking my cheeks as I sobbed and moaned and rocked back and forth.

I know pain. You see, I live with vestibulitis and vulvodynia, Hashimoto’s, and suspected fibromyalgia. Regularly, my vulva feels like someone set it on fire while little lighting bolts shoot up into the depths of my pelvis. My knees feel like they’re full of boiling oil, hot acid feels like it has taken up residence behind my shoulder blade, and my hips. My hips are the worst. Knives feel like they’re exploding through my hip sockets. Sometimes I just lie awake and feel. Feel all of this.

And this pain I felt in my ankle when I fell was a white-hot knife that made me feel like an animal reduced to its most basic instincts. All thought left me in those first moments, and all I knew was the searing agony throbbing in my ankle.

After a moment of nothing but pain, pain, pain, I gathered myself and tried to take stock of my body. What was hurt? How bad was it? I knew immediately I needed to see a doctor. Those pops I heard might mean a broken bone, I thought. Thankfully, I had my phone with me, so I was able to call my husband to come help me. We had to let the dogs out of the yard, which just made me cry harder. I felt like a giant baby as I cried from the pain and shock of it all. I hadn’t cried from pain in a long, long time.

I crawled to the car as my next door neighbor silently watched (he’s a weirdo who does weird stuff like this all the time), and my husband drove me to the hospital as I joined all the neighborhood groups on Nextdoor and Facebook to post about the dogs.

And then something magical happened. It has happened to me before. In fact, I’m pretty used to it happening when I’m in extreme pain. It’s what lets me go to work and sit through classes. There’s probably a medical or scientific term for this specific type of defense mechanism, but I don’t know what it is. I can tell you, though, what it feels like. The pain gets packed away in a box, taped up securely, and stuffed in the back of the closet to be buried under a pile of old winter coats. The pain is still there, but it’s somewhere in the back of my mind. On the periphery. My mind floats away from my body so I can ignore the physical sensations demanding my attention. Everything gets compartmentalized, for better or worse, so I can function. So, I sang along quietly to BTS, posting photos of the dogs online and making sure the hospital we’re heading to is in network. As long as I didn’t move my foot, I could ignore it.

At the hospital, my heart was beating so fast that it kept setting off an alarm on the monitor. Normally, my blood pressure is low or normal. This time, my nurse asked if I’ve ever been diagnosed with hypertension. She then asked me how I would rate my pain on a scale of 1–10.

I was stumped. Pain scales make absolutely no sense to me. Supposedly, the normal amount of pain someone has on a day to day basis is zero, though this seems about as feel as unicorns to me. I live with 1–3 pain on a daily basis, I would say, and it’s worse when I have a flare up. Someone once told me chronic pain patients should add 5 to whatever they’re thinking of saying. But that would have put me off the charts that day in the hospital, and I didn’t want my nurse to think I was a giant baby. “Seven,” I decided. I wasn’t crying or writhing in pain. I was able to keep it in the box in the back of my brain-closet, so surely my injury must not have been that bad.

She gave me a Tylenol. The radiologist then came in to take x-rays. When she moved my ankle a certain way, I gasped in pain. She side-eyed me, as if my pain was inconveniencing her. Immediately, I felt ashamed that I couldn’t suck it up and acted like a baby.

The ER doctor told me I’ve sprained my ankle but that I’ll be fine in six weeks. He gave me a prescription for Tylenol and lidocaine patches, wrapped my foot in a loose bandage, and sent me on my way.

Fast forward nearly six months later. My ankle hasn’t stopped hurting. I’m embarrassed every time I tell someone about it. For other people, their sprained ankles were back to normal in a few weeks or even a few days. What is wrong with me? I wonder. I feel like baby whining about my minor aches. Still, going down the front steps makes me wince, and walking to the gas station with my husband makes my ankle swell up to the point where walking is agonizing. I’m slow-going walking anywhere, and, on bad days, I have a pretty noticeable limp that got me called a bitch in a Wal-mart for, apparently, being too slow.

I’m frustrated with myself for being such a baby about it. Why can’t I just get over it?

The orthopedic surgeon I see tells me on December 15th I had a grade-three sprain. That means the ligaments in my ankle completely tore all the way through. Not only that, I had managed to do it to both sides of my ankle, an incredibly difficult task, supposedly. I should have had surgery back in July, and I need surgery now to repair the damage. The ligaments healed, but not well. They’re too loose, which is why my ankle is still unstable and painful. The surgery will tighten the ligaments and a boot will keep the joint stable. Then, physical therapy will help me build strength and increase my range of motion as I wear a stiff plastic brace. The whole healing process, he tells me, will take about a year.

I’m shocked. To be honest, I thought he would tell me I was fine or maybe that I needed some physical therapy. Grade-three ankle sprains, though, are described as causing severe and intense pain, extreme instability, and the inability to bear weight. They almost always have to be fixed with surgery. Well, I guess I’m not a baby after all, I think to myself as my surgeon describes the injury to me.

Everyone in my life is angry and shocked at how the ER doctors missed such a serious injury. I’m not surprised. In the hospital, by I was upright, dry-eyed, and still. I chatted with my nurse and joked with the doctor. They watched me banter with my husband. Yes, my heart rate was fast and my blood pressure was high, but I told them I was only a seven. I was coherent and functional. I’m not surprised they underestimated the severity of my injury given the fact I masked it so well. That box of pain was gathering dust in the back of the closet; it’s no wonder they didn’t find it. I didn’t look or act the way someone with a severe injury would. Calm, cool, and as collected as I could be in pajama pants covered in mud from my fall, there’s no way anyone would have thought I was acting like a baby.

Why am I so worried about seeming like a baby? Because medical gaslighting is constant companion of mine. A year after surgery to repair my vestibulitis, I told my gynecologist I was still experiencing pain. “That’s a bummer,” she said. Later, I went to a doctor because my joints hurt so much after my shifts at Target that I could barely move. “Everyone is sore after being on their feet all day,” he told me. “There’s nothing wrong with you.” I believed him. Still, the pain persisted. I heard it all: “Just take some Advil.” “You’re too young to have joint pain.” “Have you tried losing weight?” Every time, the message was clear: you’re making this up. They all had (have?) me convinced that my pain isn’t real. That it’s all in my head. That I’m making it up. That all of this is normal and I’m only complaining about it because I’m weak.

But I’m not weak. If anything, I’m strong. I can survive every day with pain that would topple any other person. Not only can I survive, but I can do pretty well for myself. I’ve accomplished things that a lot of able-bodied people haven’t. Above all, I know I can endure. For better or for worse, I can make it through just about anything. And if that’s not strong, I don’t know what is.

The day after my appointment with the surgeon, I tell my therapist the latest update in the ongoing saga that is my left ankle. “Wow,” she marvels when I finish. “You must have a high pain tolerance.”

That’s one way to put it, I guess.