Page 62 of Lift Me Up

She leaves without another word, and as I pull off my clothes and put on the gown, it takes every part of me not to break down in tears. This. This is why people with chronic illness hate going to doctors. They feel invalidated, like a number on a list that has to meet quota. They feel like their needs are not being met, and when they bring that to their attention, they’re made to feel bad for simply asking for help. Some sign that someone is trying, that someone cares.

Getting myself up on the table, I feel the inevitable pressure of the monster, the pain in my ass, literally. I try not to cry but the moment I let out a long breath and look up at the ceiling, the ugly speckled tiling of the no good news room, it might as well be the ‘bad news bears’ room or the very bad news room. At least in there, I’d have something to look at, the sad looking bears lining the walls reflecting my emotion. The tears escape, and I quickly wipe them away, telling myself to hold it together until I’m alone. Alone is where the anger, the fear, and the sadness can creep in.

My phone buzzes beside me and I use it as an excuse to distract myself from everything for a moment. His name makes my heart sing.

Noah:

We miss you.

Under the text is a picture of Noah and Birdie snuggled up on the balcony of my apartment, soaking in the summer sun. Laying back in my full reclining outdoor chair, Noah looks radiant in a navy tee, his bronze skin makes his puppy brown eyes look golden in the glow, his smile is soft and sweet, and Birdie looks precious as always. It makes my heart ache, yearning to be there. To be anywhere other than here.

“Alright,” Dr. Harris announces herself, walking into the room with her instrument tray and the varying torture devices associated. Needles for injections, surgical materials in case a deroofing is needed. She meets my gaze and pulls on a glove in preparation for the events that will follow, knowing it will get messy. She clears her throat, “Where should we start?”

If only I knew the answer to that, as if there was an implied ending to the suffering. But this isn’t some fairy tale with a perfect ending, it’s a cruel and harsh world out there and it is hardly fair or just. There is no end, there is only carrying on until you can’t possibly go any further.

And then?

Life keeps going, the world keeps turning. As if your little life of suffering was hardly there at all.

When she's finished, I think we're done here. I think, 'all I want is to be home and in bed', and I dress myself like I didn't just go through something that would be traumatic to someone else but is a normal thing for me. Dr. Harris adds the size, colour, frequency and God knows what else to her notes about the spots she worked on, and then she makes a noise at the back of her throat. I shrug my bag over my shoulder, preparing myself to leave.

"Oh, Georgie?" I turn back to her, and she gives me an honest smile, "I noticed you've lost about five pounds since your last visit, I just wanted to say it's great to see that trending in the right direction."

That. That is the moment my threshold of pain and anger, and every possible emotion comes to a head. The point where my blood boils over.

“I think I want a second opinion.” I blurt out to her, stopping her from telling me that my weight is the problem, and she’s trying her best to help accommodate my condition and all the bullshit excuses I’ve dealt with for years.

She clears her throat and adjusts her glasses again, "The last time you asked for this, you came back here to me asking that I take on your care again.”

I hate feeling like I am being gaslit, made to feel like it’s all my fault when clearly, it’s not. She makes me feel crazy, like what I'm saying isn't real. That my pain isn't real. My illness isn't real. It clearly is, and I have followed her rules, her prescriptions and candy-coated bullshit care for long enough.

I swallow past the lump of doubt and say again, “I know. I chose to come back because you were a closer alternative than going three hours away, and at the time you were both giving me the same options. But that was over four years ago. I just want another opinion, which is something you’ve often referred to in previous appointments. I want to know I’ve covered all my bases, and you told me last time that there were other doctors available to send referrals to who may have alternate resources, so I want to do that. Please.”

“I see.” Her lips press into a firm, thin pink line.

I instantly feel small, like I’ve done wrong, and this is why my mom came with me for the first eighteen years of my appointments, because I would either forget to ask something or bring something up, or I would be shut down like this. I can tell Dr. Harris doesn’t like the backbone I’ve found, but the hardened exterior has come from so many years of hearing, ‘you’re not sick, oh wait, you are sick, oh look there’s nothing we can do just live with it, this is your fault.’

“Well, I will write the referral to my colleagues, and you’ll get a call when they have something for you. It can take time, though, so in the meantime, if you need another visit, you still need to reach out to the office here.” She turns cold, colder than she'd been in years. But I watch as she quickly drafts the referral, and I swallow the lump in my throat as she turns to me with a hardened expression, pinched lips, and narrowed eyes. "Have a great day, Miss Wright."

She might as well have told me to go play in traffic.

By the time I get home from the appointment, my body aches worse than it has in years. This is up there with the pain from surgery recoveries, and believe me, when you have over 200 staples in the creases of your legs from HS excisions, far closer than you ever want a staple to be near your lady bits, thank you very much. But this pain is different. Muscles I didn't even know I used begin to ache like a throbbing charleyhorse all over.

It must have been from the tension I carried as she did her work, stuck me with injection needles of steroids to encourage the spots to heal from the inside. She'd done too many of those to even begin to count them. Dr. Harris then did the single deroofing procedure to take the pressure off the monster on my left butt cheek. She injected freezing in and around the inflamed area while I laid on my stomach, my bare ass hanging out for everyone to see, face scrunched at the impending pinch and sting and pain before the freezing took hold.

But the other issue that comes with chronic pain, the medicines designed to take the pain away don’t always work. Lidocaine can only numb an area so much, and they can only use so much in certain areas, especially with inflammation and infection on a good day. So, while the surrounding areas took, and my butt still felt like I’d been jabbed with the needles they use at the dentist to numb a cavity before the drill. The pressure from the monster, in combination with the other pain is enough to make you want to scream. But I just laid there, said nothing, and refused to cry until I was in the comfort of my own home. I could let it all go then.

The sharp instruments on her tray were used to lift and remove the tight, taut skin, the ‘lid’, the ‘roof’ of the monster. It cuts away to leave an open area that will heal inside out. She drained what she could, and I couldn’t bear to look at the repetitive gauze pads covered in the blood and infection that always came from HS monsters like this. She just kept piling more and more; kept pressing, draining.

I tried to ignore her commentary as she did all this, how she described the size of the spot in comparison to a quarter-sized bruise-like spot on the top of the skin, but that underneath the tunnelling and inflammation it was comparable to the size of a small tangerine. It was hard to imagine anything that size inside your body, but I didn’t doubt her in that comparison. I could feel every press of her cleaning, finding a new tract to clean and pack with gauze. It was once she started packing the wound to help encourage healing that I tuned it out, remained focused on breathing and thinking about getting home.

I only tuned back in to her one sided conversation when she noted the red lines of infection creeping along my skin around the area she'd just performed the procedure, pondering the starting signs of cellulitis. She then prescribed an oral antibiotic that I knew wouldn’t work, would only make me feel sick and terrible for days in combination with the ones I was already taking, but I would take it as she told me to because I didn’t want to hear the ‘you’re not taking your meds as prescribed and that’s why you flare’ bullshit I’d heard before.

The moment I step into the apartment, Birdie is by my side. She knows, she knows, she knows. I try to give her a little nudge, to tell her I’m okay, to hide the fact that I want to lean on her like a crutch, like she wants me to just like Noah has taught her but—I don't. All my strength was tested today, and I want to remain as strong as I can until the floodgates open, and I am alone. For now, I want to feel strong on my own. I don’t want the help. I don’t want her to see me breaking. I don't want Noah to see me breaking. Not again.

Things have been too good to have him see me at my worst again. I have yet to see him as anything other than perfect, and it’s infuriating right now. I know I can't get mad at him when he has done nothing wrong, and it’s just my mood. I can't take my pain and my issues out on him, but damn it the moment I see his smile all I want is to snap. He doesn't deserve that.

I know I need a reason to ask him to leave, and quickly. I put on a brave face, straighten as much as I can, stand in such a way that makes me feel like I can breathe, like the feeling of a hot poker searing into my skin lessens only for a moment. I know that this feeling will pass, it's an after effect of the freezing meds fading out and leaving behind the pain to deal with until it heals.