Surgery to Correct Poland Syndrome – Part 2
If you have read any of my other posts you may know that I prefer to struggle alone. Surely fueled by pride to some degree but also largely because my upbringing taught me that my struggle is MY struggle, and I adapted to that reality. So when a a few days after the surgery, as I’m sitting up in bed (because lying down caused too much pain), I hear a knock at my bedroom door and see my grandma there I was less than ecstatic.
No harm was meant, either by her or by my dad who called sure, I’m sure. They wanted to help. They wanted to offer some comfort. They wanted to…I’m not sure what the motive was exactly because I was never asked.
While I didn’t and still don’t fault their intentions, I do fault their methods.
“Did my dad know me at all??” — was my thought, wondering what in the world possessed him to think that I wanted an audience for the pain and discomfort I was in.
I didn’t want to be in this bed. I didn’t want to be in pain every hour of the day, barely sleeping because even the slightest movement caused piercing pain to shoot through my back and chest. I didn’t want to feel helpless. I didn’t want to be incapable of getting up and resuming my soccer training after having spend so many years working hard to get where I was — and now I’m out of commission for way too long — just when my team as a whole and my personal skills were at a pinnacle. Instead of continuing with that momentum I was FORCED to withdraw for a time.
Over the next 5 years I would have a number more surgeries. I have lost count at this point — probably blocked it all out really.
Once the process was started it seemed even less possible to speak up. And I know my parents meant well. I know they did what they believed to be best for me. I know there was no malice in their actions. But they never asked — the only assumed — and if a question was raised, it did not seem like I could offer an honest response, but rather it would just give cause to argue and I’d lose anyway.
My last surgery was as a freshman in college. Immediately after soccer season, over the very next 3-day weekend, I took the train from Philadelphia to Long Island, NY. It wasn’t supposed to be the last surgery. I was supposed to go back every 6 months for a while so my doctor could monitor the implant and determine if any adjustments were necessary, but I was done. I was done feeling like a medical experiment. I was done being reminded on a consistent basis that I am different (a fact hard to ignore when I’m visiting a doctor to address the condition).
I never went back after that. At some point my dad asked if there were any more surgeries in the future because his company (he owned a small business) was about to switch insurance providers and he wanted to make sure I was fully taken care of under the insurance company that had already approved the procedures. I told him no more, and that was it.