Photo Essay: Surgery Scars

After leaving Children's Hospital of Wisconsin following a 6 day stint on a floor where the other occupants' average age was 2, I came home with a unique souvenir; a foot long, internally stitched up wound from where my back was sliced open and a pinky finger length cut from which some of my hip bone was taken. The culprit of this permanent souvenir? Spinal fusion surgery prompted by a small battle I had (and lost, unfortunately) with scoliosis. The scars I received from this experience were both physical and emotional. It took some time for me to get comfortable with the physical, and I have since grown accustomed to it (well, did I really have any other choice?). As for the emotional, I know my limitations (like I will never be able to be a high jumper on a track team again due to the bizarre twising of the spine that occurs when flopping oneself over the bar) and I make adjustments where needed. The physical took more of a toll than the emotional.
My photo essay project will showcase various surgery scars from my friend Tara, the Analla tripley's mother, Faye, and myself. I chose this subject because having surgery is a life changing event that not everyone goes though and those of us who do experience it differently. All of our surgeries took an emotional and physical toll on each of us, and the scars decorating our bodies are as unique as the procedure or condition that caused it. With each scar came a different magnitude of pain and emotion, and each one has its own story to tell...

Natalie

Externally, it is just a long, thin scar. But internally, there are two stainless steele rods fused (with hip bone) to either side of my spine starting about midway through the cervical vertebrae and going all the way down to the thoracic vertebrae. I had it done during my freshman year of high school and I was out of commission (aka no basketball for me) for about 9 months.

Instead of taking bone from one of my ribs as originally planned, the surgeons decided to take it from my hip instead and this was the result. The scar has a different texture than the longer one above and it is a bit raised with a little valley around it, differentiating itself from the rest of my lower back.

Tara

A 5 part knee cap reallignment surgery is the culprit of this scar decorating Tara's right leg. Softball, a favorite high school sport of Tara's, was put on hold for a bit while the surgery was done to correct the knee dislocation that was currently occurring while playing the sport. The tibula osteotomy and reallignment of the patellar tendon took place in June with about a 6 month recovery period, just in time for the next season. While running post-surgery took some getting used to, Tara's knee is now more stable and reliable than before.

The scar looks kind of like a smiley face, does it not? When Tara started having abdominal pain 2 weeks before her first semester at Marquette, smiling she was not. She would later learn that a mass of cells had formed near her stomach, expanding into a 2lb cyst. The emotional pain for Tara was greater following the surgery to remove the cyst than for her knee reallignment, which carried a more physically painful burden.

Faye

A triple arthrodesi, or ankle reconstruction, was on tap for this mother of triplets in July of this past year. Faye had 3 bones in her left foot fused as well as a number of screws internally decorating her ankle. This physically and emotionally draining surgery required 8 full weeks of nothing but sitting as to let the foot fully heal. However, a blood clot in Faye's leg developed following a few weeks of constantly being in a chair. A surgery with a magnitude of emotional and mental scars leaves behind only 2 small, physical reminders.

If you make a fist with each of your hands and put them on top of the other, knuckles to knuckles, you would be simulating Faye's knee before her knee replacement surgery; bone on bone friction sans cartilege. The pain from having the cartilege in her knee scoped out years prior prompted this surgery, which was more physically painful than the ankle reconstruction, despite the blood clot and other implications. In both cases, the heaviest reminder of both surgeries is the cane; not the scar. Though not always around, it remains a subtle reminder of the pain that once was and the physical limitations that are now in place.