Personal Narrative: My First Three Stages Of Having Surgery

There are three stages to having surgery. The first stage is learning about the procedure. The second stage is having the surgery performed, and the third stage is recovering. For me, recovering was the most challenging aspect and the emotional recovery left scars much larger than the lacerations from my surgery. These emotional scars required me to tend to them devoutly and they were the most difficult to heal.

When I was in seventh grade, I was diagnosed with scoliosis. My orthopedic surgeon, Doctor John Braun, delivered the news on a sunny April afternoon. My parents and I were in examination room two, and I eagerly anticipated his arrival. He opened the door and immediately introduced himself. He shook my hand first, which I thought was “cool.” His handshake was firm, his fingers reached past my wrist, and he was a tall, thin man. I admired his bedside manner.

As Dr. Braun elaborated on the condition of my spine, my young mind wandered onto other things. I heard tidbits of information about my back, “the vertebrae are rotated,” “shaped like an S,” “spinal fusion,” but I did not know how this surgery could affect my life later down the road. The spinal fusion Dr. Braun would perform to correct the scoliosis would be highly invasive
It took months of emotional distance from these friends and no one to talk to to make me realize I did not want pain to define who I was. People loved me for my energetic, friendly persona, and I wanted this vibe about me back. The first step was managing my pain. I researched ways to “fix lower back pain from surgery,” and began sleeping on my heating pad every night. Although this didn’t fix the pain, it managed it enough so I could begin to repair the relationships that were broken and help everyone recognize that pessimism was not who I was. This task was no “walk in the park,” but with the patience I slowly began to regain, I successfully completed