Yesterday, the only thing that stopped me from calling an ambulance was the realization that I would have to get up from my bed and my pain-induced paralysis to unlock my front door in order for anyone to reach me.

Sometimes when I watch action movies, I wonder if I would be particularly resistant to torture because I am so well acquainted with this pain. I’ve endured when nothing I could say or do would make it go away. Wouldn’t I be equipped if something important were on the line?

This pain and I go way back, since Memorial Day weekend in 2008. I was newly eleven and fresh off the accomplishment of elementary school graduation. Doubled over in the fetal position, I was told to sit up. This pain is meant to be private.

The vomiting started some years later. My body’s effort to exorcise this pain, or at least to scream it into center stage.

When I learned the vomiting was the pain’s companion, I finally ceded to negotiate my mental and hormonal health, hoping that in the event that they left the pain would go with them. It did, for a while, then it returned.

It was 2023 before a doctor finally took a look. Or was it 2023 when this pain became so unbearable that I resorted to playing doctor myself. Or maybe it was 2023 when I refused to be dismissed. No, no, it was 2023 when a simple ultrasound revealed the inanity of me never having had one before. Oh and also 2023 when doctors disagreed on a diagnosis but managed to agree on a procedure. Anyway, it was 2023. It was 15 years.

One day a therapist did that thing that therapists do when they blow your mind by stating the obvious: chronic pain.

For the past two years I’ve inconvenienced my life and my pocket in the hope of keeping this pain away. “Take, take, take,” I pled. Maybe I wouldn’t be as stalwart under threat as I sometimes imagine.

But every ultrasound still brings a surprise. And the blood, I haven’t even mentioned the blood. If we go down that road, we’ll drown.

So with a new doctor and a new *tentative* diagnosis, I attempted to reclaim my life and my dignity. I dared to declare that this pain does not control me.

Then: Yesterday, the only thing that stopped me from calling an ambulance was the realization that I would have to get up from my bed to unlock my front door.

In theory, torture has an end goal. When you give in, give up, spill, at least you’ll be let out of your misery. But this, this pain. It’s not torture, it’s just plain suffering.

I won’t bore you with all the stats about how patriarchy and racism have shaped gynecology, about how there’s no funding into women’s health, about how even with the best doctor the research that would provide answers simply does not exist, blah, blah, BLAH! I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt to assume you already know. And if you don’t, and if you care, go find out on your own time.

I’m just here to say that this is suffering. Suffering. And I’m not the only one.

Signed,

N.A.