In the emergency room, I clutch my left side with both hands and close my eyes. Looking around me at the other people in pain makes my own worse. I was sent here from urgent care, where the doctor felt my abdomen and noticed that although I was feeling pain in my left side, I seemed to wince harder when she pushed on my right. This could be a sign of appendicitis, she said. Even though I’m in some of the most intense pain I’ve ever felt, I expect to be sent home.
Before this point, my physical symptoms had never resulted in anything actually being wrong with me. In fact, I’d internalized years ago that most of my bodily sensations were a product of anxiety.
When I was 17, I went to the hospital for tightness in my chest. After an EKG, an X-ray, and some blood tests, everything came back normal. They concluded that I probably had acid reflux. I started to take Prilosec, an over-the-counter acid reducer, but it didn’t make a difference. I went to a chiropractor. I got an endoscopy to see if the supposed acid reflux had burned my esophagus and left me with chest discomfort. When I talked to my primary care doctor about it, after pressing on my chest and asking a few questions, she rolled back in her stool and asked if I would ever consider going to therapy.
I kept getting the same answers: There was no physical basis to what I was experiencing. I knew by then that muscle tension, including chest tightness, could be a symptom of anxiety, and I resigned to the fact that it was all in my head. In some ways, this was a comfort — it meant nothing was really out of order with my physical health. On the other hand, it left me disconnected from my body, too willing to write off symptoms as being a product of my misfiring brain.
A few years after the chest tightness began, I started having bladder problems. Or at least, more bladder problems — as far back as middle school, it took me 30-60 seconds and a concentrated effort to actually start peeing once I sat on the toilet. But now, that was compounded by a light, near-constant pressure on my bladder. It felt as though it never completely emptied, and I went to the bathroom more often.
When I saw my doctor about it, she said, “You probably just have an overactive bladder. It’s very common in young women.” Without asking me any questions, feeling my abdomen, or ordering any further tests, she prescribed me medication. I was skeptical, unsure how she could be so confident, and didn’t take the medication. Like chest tightness, I’d heard that some people with anxiety felt like they had to pee more often. I again wrote this set of symptoms off as psychosomatic.
There were other things, like abdominal pain after sex, pangs of back pain, and feeling full after very small portions of food. But not knowing better, I looked at these symptoms as isolated rather than interconnected. By my mid-20s, I rarely went to the doctor unless I was truly sick or in prolonged pain. But when neither of those things was true, I looked at my symptoms as being either a normal part of life or a physical sign of mental distress.
And then, just a couple of days after the recent election, my ovaries began to literally scream. There was a constant ache in my abdomen that left me bedridden. I thought perhaps I’d pulled a muscle at the gym or was coming down with a stomach bug. When a couple of days and sleepless nights passed, and the ache still persisted, I decided I should go to urgent care. I hobbled down to where my wife had pulled up the car, scared but hopeful that I was close to relief.
“Well, it’s not appendicitis,” said the E.R. doctor once I finally got a bed and a CT scan, “but you do have two very big ovarian dermoid cysts.” The nurse, a woman, was quick to reassure me, “They’re quite common. It’s just something our bodies can do. So fun,” she sighed.
Dermoid cysts, also known as teratoma (derived from the Greek word “teras,” meaning “monster”), are a collection of cells that try to become part of your body. As such, they can contain hair, teeth, skin, and fat. They grow slowly over many years. Many people don’t discover them until they’re pregnant and receiving regular ultrasounds.
Turns out, my cysts are the size of a grapefruit and an orange, respectively — sizes that can cause problems like pain comparable to labor contractions or, in the worst-case scenario, ovarian torsion. While I can’t be sure how long my ovaries have been growing these little mini-me’s, I have to wonder if it was way back in middle school, when I first noticed a change in my urinary functioning.
The impact of having a diagnosis — of learning that there is, indeed, something inside of me that isn’t supposed to be there — has been varied. For one, it’s validating to know that everything wasn’t just “in my head.” Whether or not all of my prior symptoms are connected to the cysts, it’s highly likely that at least some of them are. But I’ve also experienced a spike in anxiety and a litany of spirally questions, like, What if there’s some other problem I don’t know about? How will I be able to differentiate anxiety from real issues in the future?
Yet, after the last few months of processing this experience and awaiting surgery, I’ve settled on the conclusion that this was a lesson I’m glad I learned now, at 27. I will advocate harder for myself moving forward. I will take care of both my body and my mind, trusting my experience of both, and trusting myself to make the right decisions. And to complement the lesson learned, I will rid myself of these little monsters, these leeches, like silence, that my body can no longer tolerate.
Elle Warren is a Chicago-based writer covering grief, OCD, queerness, and other historically taboo topics for outlets like The Guardian, HuffPost, Business Insider, and beyond. Find her on Instagram and TikTok at @ellewarrenwrites.
