How I was dying alive but nobody believed me - Why you should always trust your gut feeling (Real story)

TRIGGER WARNINGS: DESCRIPTIONS OF GORE, GASLIGHTING, MEDICAL TRAUMA, NATURALISTIC DESCRIPTIONS, NEAR DEATH EXPERIENCES

late 2023.

While touching myself, I feel really tense down there. Like, unnaturally tense. First thought? Cramp. But cramps come with either stomach or anus pains, cramps that strong, I mean. I start thinking; when was the last time I put a tampon in? In 2019? The realization comes to me that it isn't normal. One or two days, hell, even a week of being tense down there are normal at times, life is stressful, but...An undisclosed amount of time? Definetely not.

I just remember, my friend had a surgery to remove an ovarian cyst like 3 months ago. So I google up the symptoms, and with shock, I see every single problem and symptom of mine I had throughout the year. Peeing yourself, periods that come 15 days late, severely bloated stomach, like a beer tummy almost, random pains in pelvic bones, and like 10 more. Obviously, my mom doesn't believe me, but I make a scene crying and bluffing out how much it hurts.

At school, no one listens to me. I say: "hey, I gained 5 kilograms but I haven't eaten anything besides one sandwich for the past two days, this isn't normal!", I say: "hey, my period is over and my hips got 10 centimeters bigger, it hurts my back! It's not normal!" What everyone has to say? "You're growing, sweetie, everyone goes through that!"; "If you really wouldn't eat you wouldn't gain weight, would you? I saw you eating chips 3 weeks ago, maybe that's your 'nothing'? Get off your phone while you eat and you'll go down again."; "I had that happen to me when I was 15 too, don't worry, it's just your body type!"

Everyone hears me cry, but no one cares to listen. They keep trying to gaslight me that I'm insecure, that I have an eating disorder. My favorite pants don't fit me anymore. My favorite dress doesn't fit me anymore. My belt is too short. I want to kill myself. Not because of how I look, but because my body is out of control. My body isn't mine anymore.

I scratch at my wrists and arms, and I don't feel anything, I stop eating at all, I don't sleep, I don't brush my teeth, I don't talk, I don't smile. Was it to get someone's attention? Was it out of desperation? Was it because I was a soul trapped in someone else's body? I'm not sure myself.

I go to the gyn and, indeed, a fat ovary cyst is located right under my hip bone. I get meds so strong they're half the size of a female fingernail, and still you gotta cut them in half and take every 2 weeks along with 3 other daily meds to keep me alive.

I didn't feel any clearance after the diagnosis. I didn't feel anything, besides the mildest satisfaction of "oh, okay, I know what's happening". By that point, I lost all hope in the world. I didn't find anything I could hang on to; anyone who actually believed me and didn't think I was crazy, even the diagnosis; the proof that I wasn't crazy felt meaningless.

After blood test my gyn diagnoses hormonal depression; without asking me anything, just looking at the graphs, she knows there's no way I can have it. She offers me antidepressants, but I decline. I was depressed, not retarded. Everyone thought I was crazy when I didn't take anything, so what? When I'll take antidepressants it might take them even longer to believe me. Will it be quick enough to stop me from dying? I couldn't know.

early 2024

The meds work. Oh, do they work. My cyst is starting to get dissolved, but...all of that flesh has to go out somewhere. And go out it did. Countless times do I have to run away from school, blood pooling up and leaking down my legs at any moment. This "period" lasted 22 days longest, otherwise it was just 3 day imperial marches.

Neither can I count the times I had the "Pauline, I heard from your peers that you're fainting in class? Why didn't you stay home? Do you want a cab or an ambulance?" conversation. Days turned into weeks when I had a literal tumor slowly blending itself and exiting out of the most sensitive place a female body can have. I lost count of days at one point.

After 2 months, I was so accustomed to it I would just leave the house wearing 3 pads stacked on each other and shorts under pants that I was willing to turn blood brown; when it hurts so long, you learn to live with it.

Who will look between my legs, though? No one. The conclusion is easy, I'm lying. "Everyone's periods hurt!", "I have long periods too, and I live!". 

I stayed silent.

I hate attention and pity.

late 2024

Christmas is rolling around, when I run out of my meds. I'm happy, for once in a long time I feel anything. Though no one is home, and no one cared to come to the school christmas party, I'm by myself, having karaoke and making compote, simultaneously walking around the home and decorating it with lights and baubles. 

My gyn's visit is today. My mom will come in an hour to pick me up and drive there.

Awesome!

I go to the gyn.

I have 4 stage endometriosis. God can't tell how far it's spread. On my lungs? On my guts? Maybe it got on my heart? I get a full body USG, and the diagnosis is, ironically, clear: "Pauline has very bad endometriosis. Her right ovary is grown onto her uterus (for a clearer image; imagine one of your balls is grown onto your penis), I don't know if she'll ever be able to have kids, I don't know if she'll develop endometrial cancer at all, in a month, in a year, or when she's 40. I don't see any sparks on any other organs, but if they're hidden somewhere will be a mystery until another organ of hers gets endometriosis."

By then, I'm not even surprised. At first, that is. I don't receive that information. I'm 16. I work out, I am toned, I have a great diet, I haven't touched a cigarette in my life, I haven't touched any stimulants besides energy drinks when I was 11, and I haven't even had sex yet. This was going to be a 16 year old's reality now. Maybe I'll be fertile, maybe I'll have cancer, maybe I'll have a period again, maybe I won't, no idea!

I ask myself -  What did I do to deserve this?

I'm not religious, but I go to my rosemary and the wooden picture of God my grandma has given me. I stare at it, and with tears in my eyes, I ask - You fucking asshole, what the actual fuck has my past soul done that you're punishing me like that?

I get an answer.

I have a lucid dream, and I hear an androgynous voice. I can't remember anyone with that voice from my waking live. It tells me: "Pauline. If you can't handle it right now, you have to kill yourself. It won't get any better anytime soon. If you're planning to stay here, you have to swallow your tears and buckle up, because you'll die if you won't have enough mental willpower to withstand it all." Still sleepy, I wake up, dressed in my aliexpress kaneki ken t-shirt and grey panties. I look at him, before going out on the balcony, staring at the moon, and say outloud: "Son of a bitch, I'm in."

Yeah, uhhh, about that, I started developing schizophrenia. Gorey nightmares every night (the whole gameplay of lomando was one dream I could remember firmly, but that was really one of the more lukewarm dreams since I actually like that game lmao). Faces, neon colors, noises, laughs, knockings, and even smells are a nightly thing. I developed something called phantosmia on the way, which means smelling things like sweat, rot and blood in any stressful situation. Heavy on sweat, I could bathe 8 times a day and still smell it so hard I couldn't eat.

The new meds are giving me constant hallucinations. Which I laugh off. No, literally. Whenever I see creatures in corners of my room, or sometimes right in front of me, I show them my tits, start calling them slurs or do fortnite dances on them. And if I hear knocks I just start banging on all of the doors and walls I had in my home and yell to come back with a warrant. This lasted like 3 months, so I managed to get along with some of them. They were often repeating my words, but the more I pushed  them away, the more articulated they got. They had opinions, favorite songs, commented nice things on my outfits, were reassuring me, and even told me bless you. I stopped being scary of them. Until one day, they never appeared again. I don't miss them, but they weren't that bad once I got to know them.

Whenever I tried to tell anyone about how terrible I felt, I got hit with "Wow, I'm jealous, you won't have to go to Czech to get an abortion if you get raped"

Merry Christmas to me, I guess.

early 2025

The symptoms of endo aren't lessening, but they aren't my main problem anymore. I need to get my back tooths extracted. The first one goes smoothly!

Second one, however.

I was throwing up terribly after the first two teeth, so I got meds with a day delay. Was that a day I fucking wish I could rewind in time.

I don't vomit. But it hurts. Like a lot. Like my parents try to wake me up for an hour and I'm not physically responding because the pain is too hard. I swell up like a dog on one side of my face. I taste nothing but cotton and blood for weeks on end. My face looks like I'm fucking severely overweight on one side. At one point, it's hanging down lower than my chin.

I tell people "I'm dying"; "I'm going to die tonight"; "Please release my lyrics and books and take care of my fish when I'm gone"

I'm still 16.

The google search "am I liable for an euthanization" appears at least 20 times a dat in my history, not because of my will to die, but because I forget that I already googled that.

The pain is so hard for me to feel any emotion. I'm in absolute survival mode, unable to walk, yes also to the bathroom, all just to preserve enough energy to not die on the spot.

I can't move. I don't have the power to move. I can only look around, and maybe help in being pushed to the kitchen or bathroom by someone else. I don't think. There's no time to think. There's no place to think. Colors don't exist. I say stuff on the internet like I'm all good, but I forget them the minute after. Blood is everywhere. Blood is everywhere. My blood is everywhere but inside me.

When I go to my family doctor, held up by my mother the whole way, everyone makes space for me to pass. It takes me 10 seconds to change the direction my eyes are looking in. I hold tissues to my mouth and nose to catch the blood. By that point, I'm not alive, I'm just playing my character in first person. My family doctor just looks at me, her face painting fear, and talks with my mom instead. After 8 minutes of them talking, I manage to mutter out "help", my body not changing the position ever since I sat down. My mom gets a paper to get us into ER the next day, and we live.

She yells at me along with my dad when I'm home. I don't remember, but about something meaningless, as always. She's packing me to the hospital, while I lie down. I don't move at all. My chest moves every 10 seconds at best. everything onwards is blurry, but I vividly remember one thing. 

This was the first time I could think this week. I thought: "okay. finally, that's it.", and with the last power I had in myself, I put my earbuds in, and turned The Black Parade on spotify, before managing to check the time, 11:07 am, and fainting. I was fainted for a while, but the last song I heard had to be Cancer. After that, I actually went unconscious.

I wake up the next day at 2 am. I think I am dead. But... I look around, and everything's in its' place. My jewelry. My fish tank. My balcony. everything looks just like it did before I went asleep. I can't help but smile as I shakily leave my room to go to the balcony and breathe fresh air. I know that smell. I know that taste. Late winter air. I feel cold, snow is falling on my arms, feet and thighs. I know, that, in fact, I haven't gone to the Black Parade at all.

current 2025

Long story short; big ouchie, endo meds were too harsh, I go to have a gastroscopy raw. Yes, raw. I have taken a pipe from my mouth to my stomach and let them cut it without any painkillers, anesthesia, or literally anything. Good thing I was of legal age to sign the papers myself, since, as the nurse said "she wouldn't wish that on her worse enemy". Well, when something hurts you so bad you've already been through the zombie stage, every other pain seems bearable.

Name a more ballsy 17 year old than me, I'll wait.

I have a hernia, obviously, no one believes me blah blah blah, but I make them believe. In the middle of my class, I cry, yell at my teacher, throw my med papers around and act like a crazy person. Seems that it worked, since almost everyone seems to respect that now.

Life with a hernia sucks; I won't be able to dance like I used to, my workouts have to be extremely limited, energy drinks and sodas cause me to throw up blood, and i have to be on a diet, and i can't get my navel pierced or any tattoos on my stomach/lower back area. But you know what? I couldn't give two shits. I lived, I live, and I will live. Y'all can cut my legs off and I'll climb mountains if I want to. 

So, yeah. Luv <3