Medical Trauma: How Pain and Dismissal Affect Lives

Grief and Pain Intertwined

As the anniversary of my botched surgery approaches, I find myself in a state of deep despondence. Grief doesn’t always come from losing someone you love; sometimes, grief comes from losing the life you once knew. For me, that grief is braided tightly with chronic pain.

Every day, I track my symptoms , hoping for patterns, for answers, for proof. And when I looked back at my data this month, I was devastated by what I saw: 86% of my days are spent in pain, and in the past eleven months alone, my pain has increased by 72%.

These numbers aren’t just statistics. They are my lived reality. They raise questions I’m terrified to ask:

• Will my life be pain 24/7, every day of every year?
• What correlation can be made between the surgery and this decline?
• Why hasn’t anyone truly listened when I’ve said something is wrong?

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The Weight of Medical Trauma

Medical trauma isn’t only about what happens in the operating room. It’s about what happens after, the dismissal, the gaslighting, the endless appointments where your pain is brushed aside.

Last month, I met with a female OB-GYN. Before running basic tests, her first recommendation was more surgery. The thought of being cut open again felt unbearable. I am three days away from a colonoscopy, already depleted, dehydrated, and struggling to get through each hour. How can anyone suggest additional surgery when I can barely eat, sleep, or function as I am?

This isn’t just frustration. This is grief. This is rage. This is the crushing reality of being forced to live in survival mode.

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When Pain Becomes Life

Tracking my symptoms isn’t easy, but it keeps me grounded in the truth. The trends don’t lie. They tell me:

• Pain is not an occasional flare; it is my daily baseline.
• My condition has worsened steadily, despite compliance with treatments.
• My quality of life is eroding, one data point at a time.

For patients like me, data is evidence. It’s a way of saying: This is real. This is happening. Please believe me.

And yet, the healthcare system often treats patients’ self-tracked data as optional, anecdotal, or unimportant. That dismissal is another layer of trauma.

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Grief Beyond Loss: Mourning the Life I Had

When people think of grief, they often imagine funerals or breakups. But chronic illness and pain create their own kind of grief, one that is quieter, lonelier, and ongoing.

I grieve the ability to eat without fear.
I grieve afternoons spent laughing instead of lying in bed.
I grieve trust in a system that failed me.
I grieve the version of myself that surgery took away.

This grief doesn’t end. It lives alongside me, shaping my days and clouding my future.

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Why Surgery Isn’t Always the Answer

One of the most devastating realities of medical trauma is the reflexive suggestion of more surgery. For some, that may be the path to healing. For others, like me, it feels like gambling on a body that has already been through too much.

Surgery should never be the first answer when the problem isn’t fully understood. For patients with complex conditions, and for those of us with disorders like Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, POTS, or other chronic illnesses; surgery can create more problems than it solves.

We need more research. More listening. More respect for patients who know their bodies better than anyone else.

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Living With Despair and Holding Onto Hope

I won’t lie: there are days when the despair is so heavy that I wonder if I can keep going. Days when the thought of being DNR feels like the only choice. That’s the shadow side of chronic pain and grief , the way it erodes not only your body but your will to keep fighting.

But here I am, still writing, still documenting, still asking for someone to listen. That, in itself, is a form of hope.

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A Call for Compassion and Change

If you’re reading this and you’ve lived through something similar, please know you are not alone. Chronic pain and medical trauma are invisible to the outside world, but together we can make them seen.

What I need most, what all patients need most is:

• To be heard when we say something is wrong.
• To be believed when we share our pain.
• To be treated with dignity, not dismissed with quick fixes.

I share this story not just for myself, but for the millions of others living in silence with grief, pain, and medical trauma.

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Writing Through the Grief

This blog is my testimony, my outlet, my way of screaming into the void and hoping someone hears me. My reality is not unique. It is part of a larger systemic failure where pain is minimized, patients are blamed, and grief is left unacknowledged.

But writing gives me power. Naming the pain keeps me alive. And maybe, just maybe, this post will reach someone else walking through the same fire, and remind them that they don’t have to do it alone.

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You are NOT alone

Medical trauma doesn’t end in the operating room. It lingers in the follow-ups, the dismissals, and the gaslighting. Research shows this has real psychological impact — the National Institute of Health has studied medical trauma and its long-lasting effects on patients. At the same time, chronic pain itself is poorly understood and often minimized, despite extensive research like the Mayo Clinic’s overview of chronic pain.