I had emergency surgery

i never saw it coming

It’s been three weeks since I ended up in the ER after enduring sixteen hours of excruciating pain at home, refusing to go to the hospital sooner because the last and only other time I went (in January of 2025), the doctor was dismissive of my 10/10, vomit-inducing pain and refused to order an ultrasound for the ovarian cyst that had very clearly ruptured and instead told me I was probably just constipated and recommended I take a day off work to “empty my bowels.” Even though I’d had a bowel movement less than 18 hours prior and had recently had a hysterectomy, which I later discovered meaningfully increases your risk of ovarian cysts in the first year after surgery. So when I woke up at 3am on June 13th with a pain that was very similar in location, quality, and intensity to the pain I’d felt eighteen months earlier, I assumed it was another ruptured ovarian cyst and told my partner, Jeff, I’d just wait it out at home, expecting it would slowly improve over the next 24 hours like it had the time before.

This did not happen. By 6pm I was in more pain and my intuition was telling me something more serious was going on, but I still resisted Jeff’s request that I allow him to take me to the hospital, afraid I would once again be dismissed and my pain would be minimized and I would spend four hours in the ER only to be sent home with no relief. He called in reinforcements (i.e. my sister), who told me I had to go, even though she understood my hesitancy and my resistance to the idea. So we went, and thank goddess we did, because it was not, in fact, a ruptured cyst causing my pain. After two different ultrasounds (one of them vaginal, ugh) and a CT with contrast, the doctor (who, I am so happy to report, was wonderful and not at all dismissive) presented me with the results, noting that what the imaging revealed surprised everyone who saw it.

The doctor expected to find an ovarian torsion, in which the ovary twists on the ligaments that support it, sometimes because of a cyst, but instead discovered a twisted bowel, in a location where it is very rarely found. The beginning part of my large intestine, called the cecum, had twisted, cutting off blood flow to the rest of my large bowel and causing it to fill up with air. (This is called a cecal volvulus.) She explained that this is an incredibly dangerous situation, that I would need to have emergency surgery, and that they were going to immediately begin preparing me for the procedure. This included the insertion of a nasogastric (NG) tube to pump out any food that was in my stomach, as the twist in my bowel had essentially brought all digestive processes to a halt and anything I had eaten that day was just hanging out in my stomach, unable to move through. Luckily, I had been in far too much pain to have consumed much of anything, having only managed a couple of hard boiled eggs and a few potatoes all day, BUT the process of having that NG tube inserted was one of the worst experiences of my life up to that point and when I had it removed about 36 hours after surgery it was the first glimmer of joy I felt in what was an otherwise horrific experience.

Before the surgery, the trauma surgeon’s PA came in to explain the inherent risks of the procedure, including the potential for a perforated bowel and the possibility I could end up with a colostomy bag. At this point, my pain was still vacillating between an 8 and 10/10, I had no choice but to move forward with the surgery given my condition could be life-threatening if they didn’t operate soon, and everything was happening so quickly I did not have time to fully process what it was they were saying. While I understand there are far worse things, I will also admit the idea of having to poop into a bag attached to my abdomen was a rather devastating thing to consider I might wake up to following a surgery I was still wholly unprepared to have.

When I emerged from my anesthesia-induced haze a few hours later, I was relieved to discover I’d avoided the colostomy, but I also awoke in terrible pain, both from the large vertical incision down the center of my abdomen and from the NG tube still snaking its way down my nasal passage and into my throat. Due to miscommunication between the trauma team and the nurses who cared for me after surgery, my pain was VERY poorly controlled (see also: not controlled AT ALL) for the first 36 hours and I got zero hours of sleep and I just laid in that hospital bed and cried and when I tell you it was awful, it really and truly was. Eventually, the trauma PA showed up and corrected the problem, getting me on a regular schedule of pain medications (thank fucking goddess for IV Dilaudid) so I wouldn’t have to continue requesting it and could finally, FINALLY get a little reprieve.

Once my pain was decently controlled, the trauma surgeon came in to explain my cecum had twisted (which I already knew) and that in order to address the problem, he’d had to remove a little over a foot of my large bowel as well as my appendix (which had also been compromised). He said my bowel should return to normal function within 4-7 days. When I asked how and why this had happened, he explained it was due to a congenital anatomical anomaly — specifically, that I have (as he described it) an exceptionally loose mesentery, which allowed my bowel to move more freely within my abdominal cavity and greatly increased the likelihood of it twisting upon itself. Your mesentery, for those who don’t know, is what keeps your bowel attached to the back wall of your abdomen so that it doesn’t do exactly what mine did. The surgeon said there was nothing I did to cause this and nothing I could have done to prevent it. It was just something I was born with and that, given how loose my mesentery is, there had been a high likelihood of this happening at some point in my life. (He also told me my mesentery is quite loose around my sigmoid colon, so there is a slight chance this could also occur here at some point in the future. I’m keeping all fingers and toes crossed that it won’t.)

I spent five days in the hospital, went without even water for almost three days, and didn’t have an actual meal for six full days. Getting my appetite back was a feat in itself, but I am happy to report that I am now consuming food pretty much as normal and pooping like a champ, which feels kind of miraculous considering all my bowels have been through.

Physically, this has been the most difficult experience of my life. Those first couple of days, I told Jeff I would rather have a hysterectomy every week than go through this whole thing ever again. Emotionally and psychologically, this is a very close second to losing my mom to cancer in terms of how challenging it has been in its aftermath. Being sidelined to your life so suddenly is incredibly disorienting. As someone who is self-employed and who derives such meaning from her work, it was devastating to cancel three full weeks of appointments and then wonder if the business I have spent fourteen years building is going to recover from this bump in the road. I can already see the impact in the short term is not going to be insignificant, but I also have to trust I will figure it out. I always have, so I believe I will again.

When this first happened, I shared some of the experience on social media. It was a way to alert my patients to what was going on and let them know they would need to be rescheduled. It was also a way to feel connected to the world when I was lonely and isolated in my hospital room, my life having come to a screeching halt while everyone else was carrying on with theirs. But once I was discharged and back at home, the reality of what I had just been through started to hit me. And the reality of all I had lost was heavy and hard and at times suffocating. There is so much to be grateful for, so many ways this could have turned out worse, but the grief I’ve felt has been at times all-consuming, compounded by the grief of not having my mom around to comfort me through this crisis, and the grief of having a dad who does not have the emotional intelligence or ability to show up for me in her place.

And so I’ve stopped sharing publicly over the past couple of weeks. I’ve wondered if I’m hiding because the image I have to present isn’t pretty or palatable or anywhere close to fully healed. Maybe that’s part of it. But maybe I’ve also been trying to hear myself through the grief and the despair and the fear about what’s next. Maybe I’ve been craving the space to fall apart privately before I am ready to be witnessed publicly. Maybe falling apart completely is actually the medicine I’ve needed most.

I have never identified as a wellness practitioner, even though I know many people might put me in that category based solely on the work I do as an acupuncturist. Which, quite honestly, is fine. Call me what you want. But I have so many gripes with the wellness industry and nothing grinds my gears more than the suggestion that we have full control over our health, that if we just check certain boxes and take the right supplements and exercise and sleep and avoid sugar and blah blah blah blah blah, we can sidestep illness or injury, that if you get sick, there was something you did to contribute to it. Because what if you didn’t? The wellness industry likes to reduce everything down to individual choices and, yes, we have more control over certain things than we think and I obviously want people to move more and eat healthy and get sleep and all that jazz, but there are also so many other factors (environmental, socioeconomic, genetic) that contribute to our health and determine if and how and why some of us will get sick and others will not.

For a brief moment after this all went down, I wanted to deconstruct the meaning behind it and figure out what I had done to contribute to the likelihood of it occurring. Did I overwork myself into this situation? Did I not get enough sleep? Was I not managing my stress well enough? I exercise most days and lift weights and run and bike and eat healthy most of the time and have great friends and a good relationship with my partner and my sister is one of my best friends and and and I STILL GOT SICK. Not because of anything I did or didn’t do. Because I was born with a congenital anomaly and my luck in that regard finally ran out. Part of me wishes there was a more satisfying answer, but there isn’t. It’s just this.

There is more I could say, but I’ve yammered on long enough so I’m going to wrap it up. I don’t have a neat little bow to tie around everything except to say I am grateful to all the nurses and doctors who cared for me, incredibly thankful to have excellent health insurance through Jeff’s work because I just know the bill from the hospital is going to be astronomical, and — even though I feel a little lost right now and like my identity has been at least partially unraveled — I am committed to letting this experience change me and allow me to become more of who I truly am.

So may it be.

So it is.

xoxo

left, a couple of days after i was discharged, before the staples were removed; right, about two weeks after surgery, a week after the staples were removed

I almost didn’t write about this, wondered if doing so would negatively impact my business, if it was a bit of a TMI situation. But my approach to running my business is to be a person first, always, and every difficult thing I have been through has only made me a better and more empathetic provider for my patients. I have no doubt this experience is going to do the same. My goal has never been to present a perfect or curated or aspirational image. It has never been to pretend I’m living an ideal life. I am doing the best I can to take care of myself, to live intentionally, to control what I can control, to make choices in service of my current and future health. Even still, I have faced loss and injury and illness. Because that is part of being a person and being a person is hard. So, thanks for reading this far if you have. I am never not grateful for the support.

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❍ 6 Lessons From My Patients, Who Prepared Me For Cancer by Alena Guggenheim, N.D., Assistant Professor of Anesthesiology and Perioperative Medicine at the Oregon Health & Science University’s School of Medicine — an excellent read, a reminder that sometimes we get sick and it’s not our fault when we do

❍ Cleo Dang Would Rather Be Dead by Mai Nguyen — 5 stars, I loved it, cw for infant loss

❍ The Wedding People by Alison Espach — this was recommended to me many times and I am happy to report I thoroughly enjoyed it, it also felt timely for someone going through an unexpected and disorienting disruption to my life

❍ No One Told Men the Floor Was Made of Women — a long but worthwhile read

❍ The perpetual present-tense — this is brilliant writing, also a long read but worth it

❍ London Falling by Patrick Radden Keefe — I’m listening to the audio version of this and it is so well written, deeply engrossing, highly recommend