Visible Scars: Let’s Talk About It
I have a visible scar. It’s about three inches across and sits in the center of my neck. I forget I have it a lot of the time. I do a double take on some of my own pictures when I see it. I almost get surprised when I see the familiar, patterned flicker of eyes — up, down, back up again. Or when a few brave people faintly raise their eyebrows, gesturing with a few fingers to their neck, never daring to actually touch their own and risk being rude. Some people grab and feel at their own necks, lest there be a new mutilation there too, unbeknownst to its very owner. Whenever someone grabs at their own neck, I have a moment where the little voice in my head goes, “Oh God. They’ve noticed.”
Part of this is that good-ole-fashioned fear of being perceived. Part of this is the middle schooler that lives inside of me that doesn’t want anyone to look at me. And then I remember that I’m not that middle schooler. I’ve lived a complex and fiery life since then. I have experienced intense joys and laughter amidst struggles and strife, like those that sent me to the surgery that left me with this scar.
I don’t really have any shame about having a scar, but it is something I have had to unlearn because of the sheer number of people assuring me that the scar wasn’t something to be ashamed of. When so many people assure you that it shouldn’t be embarrassing, you start to feel a sense of compulsory embarrassment. In my consultation appointment with my surgeon and endocrinologist, one of the first things they mentioned was how the scar would heal before everything else, like the procedure or the lifelong medications I would be taking afterwards. When I told my friends and family that I was getting this surgery, some of their first questions were always about the scar. How would it heal? Would it be big? Would it be red? Will they put it somewhere easy to hide? Have you looked at scarves?
The scar was large, raised, and red for a few months after the surgery. Only now, nearly five months after and many self-administered massages with vitamin E oil later, has the redness started to subside. But it has been the visibility of this scar that has taught me so much about myself and the world around me.
Since I have a visible scar, I have had multitudinous people approach me about it – all women. Either they have had their thyroid removed too, or they have a daughter, friend, or they have their own experience with endocrinology. I welcome those who want to talk to me about it. It is a part of my life, of what I look like, and who I am. These conversations have opened the doors for so many conversations about the difficulties of finding proper healthcare as a woman, of finding a team of doctors who believe you and who are willing to listen and run more tests.
If you learn anything from my story, let it be this: you deserve to feel heard. Please don’t settle for a doctor who writes you off or treats you like a mark off their checklist. As a woman — and I write this as a white woman, I can only imagine the struggle of women with intersecting identities – it is too easy to accept that doctors know everything, but at the end of the day you are the only person living in your body. You know it well. Trust that.
In talking with these strangers, I have found myself in conversations about what it means to be a woman … of what it means to be beautiful. There is something so obscuring about looking at this red, disfigured part of my body. I know that it is different, that the average twenty-two-year-old does not have their thyroid removed. I know that it is something people notice when they meet me. I occasionally wonder what it will look like in a wedding dress or in my wedding photos.
I remember one gruesome fall on the kindergarten playground. The fall felt huge, the blood running from my scraped knee felt like it would never stop. As I cried and cried, someone, maybe it was my classmate or the school nurse or my teacher, told me, “Girls with scars are cool. It means you have a story to tell.” I found great comfort in this notion of individuality, and I hope you can too. Through all the stories we all experience every day, I suppose this was my way of telling you mine. Go live yours.
Strike Out.
Writer: Jane Dodge
Blog Editor: Sarah Singleton
Chattanooga
