Marina Martinez

Before surgery I decided to take a few selfies in my hospital gown. I did this to try and calm my nerves before being put to sleep.

One year ago, I woke up sweating, gasping for air like I had just been held underwater.

There was a pain in my chest, but not like a sore or gas. It felt like I was being stabbed by a cluster of long kitchen knives. All piercing deep into my chest with their sharp tips emerging through my back.

I slowly climbed down my loft bed, gripping the ladder with all my strength on the way down so I wouldn’t slip and fall. My feet felt weak as I struggled across the hall to my parents’ room. It hurt so much.

I shook my mother awake. She looked at me with worry, cupping my tear-streaked face in her hands as she asked me what was wrong.

“I feel like I’m dying.”

We drove straight to the hospital that night, waiting for what seemed like days in the emergency room. I would try to rock myself to sleep while clutching my chest, but the pain kept me awake. After five hours, the nurses directed us to an empty white room. I thought they would find out what was wrong with me easily. I thought they would be able to give me some medicine to at least take away my pain. I thought it would be my only visit to the emergency room about this problem.

I was wrong.

They sent me home with a handful of painkillers, recommendations to specialists and surface-level pity. I stayed on the couch that night, watching ‘The Dragon Prince’ to try and take my mind off the pain. I tried everything. But painkillers were useless, and even with the assistance of a heating pad, elevated seating and a distraction, I still felt a giant burning hole in the middle of my chest.

It was unbearable.

After the sun finally shone through the cracks in the shutters covering the window, the rest of my day appeared “normal.” The pain went away, and everything seemed fine. But this normalcy only lasted for about a week before I found myself crying in the chairs of the ER waiting room once again. And again. Over and over, I would go in only to be sent away after hours of waiting.

Every visit was the same, apart from the pain. It only increased with each attack. The hole in my chest grew bigger and bigger.

Not a single doctor knew what was happening to me. They continued recommending specialists who would put me on different diets and medications for gastritis. None of it helped me. Some thought that it was all just a strange response my body was creating due to stress. But nothing they told me actually helped. It still hurt.

I began to push through the attacks at home and tried going to school like everything was fine. It was the middle of my sophomore year and I would constantly be harassed by teachers who wondered why I would leave during the middle of the day.

There were times when nothing happened for a week or two, and then I would be back to sobbing on the floor and screaming, “Why is this happening?” No painkiller could kill my pain, and I began to lose hope of ever feeling normal again.

One attack was especially horrible. Instead of a group of kitchen knives, it felt like a giant thick spear, ramming itself through my body. The pain was insufferable. I laid on the couch crying in a fetal position, wishing I could just pull the pain out of my chest.

My mother didn’t stop trying to find answers. She continued to consult doctors and called family members to see if anyone had experienced anything like this before.

After countless times of hearing, “No, I’m sorry” and “I hope she gets better soon,” my aunt picked up the phone. She told me she had felt the exact same thing before getting her gallbladder removed.

An ultrasound I had done the first few weeks of my condition showed I had gallbladder stones. But the doctors dismissed it at the time. We consulted the pediatrician who then recommended us to a surgeon. All other doctors disagreed and refused the possibility of the problem being my gallbladder, but when we brought up the family history to the surgeon, he agreed to the surgery.

My gallbladder was full of gallstones, so full it looked like it would explode. They had to scrape it out of me.

I spent the night in the hospital recovering from the surgery. For a while, it was hard to get up and sleep due to the soreness behind my ribcage, but I welcomed this discomfort compared to the stabbing pain I used to feel.

When we left that hospital, I had to be careful for two weeks so as to not reopen my scars, but I still danced while we were walking to the car. Feeling the cold wind on my face, I took a deep breath.

For the first time in a whole year, I finally felt OK.