The Dissection

I try not to talk to people about being in pain. There is no greater downer in a conversation than telling someone you’re in pain. People are kind; they want to help. When I tell them I’m in pain, they look sad;they ask what they can do. I don’t know how to say that I’ve already tried so many things. That I’ve seen a hundred doctors. That the specialist I finally got an appointment with doesn’t take insurance, so I pay $500 just to talk to him for an hour. That alternative medicine doesn’t have the answer – that I’ve tried exercise and yoga and magnesium and teas and extracts. That I understand why so many people are willing to do anything to cure themselves - like drink dilute bleach or wear copper socks or pray. I’m not religious, but sometimes I pray, just to see if some miracle might happen.

On the worst nights, I want to cut my legs off. It is lucky I have my husband to stop me from following through with such bad ideas. I am on a new medication that numbs the pain, but it numbs everything. I feel like a zombie. I tell my friends “I’m so, so tired. I sleep twelve hours a day.” They laugh and exclaim how hard this year of medical school has been. I don’t tell them that I don’t even know how hard the block has been because I am barely conscious during the lectures. At least I don’t spend the whole class googling cures and reading clinical case studies that I’ve already read. At least I don’t shake my legs so hard that the people next to me can’t focus.

One time I was given a gift card for a professional massage. It was an hour long and I told the massage therapist to only work on my legs. I asked for harder pressure five times before I could even feel it over the pain. Afterwards, I felt so relaxed. My legs were completely quiet for the entire ten-minute walk home. I lay down in the grass and looked at the sky for what felt like the first time in years. But then the feeling came creeping back. For a moment I had almost believed it was gone for good. I cried because I now knew what I was missing.

In anatomy class, we dissected the spine of our donor. She had so much hardware in her back – sixteen studs running down in parallel tracks. I think that she must have been in a lot of pain. When we use the chisel to break through her vertebrae, I think about how nice it must be to feel nothing. I scold myself for that dark line of thought. I can see her nerves, spreading out from the column. How can such a small line of tissue cause so much pain? When I’m done looking, I tuck the donor in gently as I would a friend. I hope she is resting easy, painless.

I am a first year medical student from rural upstate New York, where I grew up on a horse farm. I received an undergrad degree in math from Dartmouth and then worked in software development. I am interested in topology, ontology, and rural medicine. In my free time I like to hike and bike.