She Walked Through Pain Long Before the Surgery
-
Ramya Harman
- January 3, 2026
Pain does not always arrive dramatically.
Sometimes, it settles in quietly and learns how to coexist with daily life.
She had been living with stomach pain long before anyone took it seriously. Long before the word “surgery” was spoken out loud. Long before hospital corridors and admission forms became familiar. The pain had been there even before her delivery, dismissed as discomfort, pregnancy-related changes, something that would pass.
In October, she delivered her baby through a C-section. It was her first surgery. The body barely had time to recover before life demanded movement again. New motherhood does not wait for healing. There are responsibilities that begin immediately, even when the body is still learning how to stand upright again.
The pain didn’t leave after childbirth.
It stayed.
By June, it had grown sharper, more insistent. But pain, especially in women, often learns how to be ignored, by others and eventually by the person carrying it. She continued to function. Walked through it. Worked through it. Adjusted her posture, leaning forward slightly, instinctively trying to reduce the pressure. The body adapts long before it collapses.
What made it harder was not just the pain itself, but the absence of belief around it.
When she leaned forward while walking, when her movements slowed, when discomfort shaped her days, it still wasn’t recognised as something serious. There were no dramatic symptoms that demanded attention. No visible wounds. No urgency that others could point to.
So she endured.
This is how invisible pain works. It doesn’t interrupt life loudly. It erodes it quietly.
By the time she was admitted to the hospital in June, the diagnosis was acute appendicitis. The word “acute” arrived suddenly, as if the pain had just begun, even though her body knew otherwise. The appendicitis surgery experience was framed as urgent, but what went unspoken was how long the body had been carrying warning signs.
This was her second surgery in less than a year.
Emotionally, it felt heavier than the first.
The cesarean had come with preparation, explanation, and reassurance. This surgery came with exhaustion. With fear layered over fatigue. With the knowledge that the body had already been cut once and would be cut again.
What people often don’t talk about is how surgery is not just physical. It is deeply psychological, especially when it comes after months of pain that went unacknowledged.
She remembers walking into the hospital, slowly, carefully, still holding herself together. Still minimising what she felt. Still explaining less than what was real. Because women are taught early on that pain must be justified to be believed.
Some pain is carried quietly.
Some pain is loud.
The surgery was meant to be simple. Laparoscopic. Minimal. Routine. But bodies do not always follow plans. What was expected to be a small intervention turned into an open surgery. The cut was larger. The recovery longer. The reality heavier. Another scar, layered over a body that had barely healed from the previous one.
Lying on the hospital bed afterward, she felt something shift. Not relief. Not fear. Something quieter.
Recognition.
What people often don’t talk about is how surgery is not just physical. It is deeply psychological, especially when it comes after months of pain that went unacknowledged.
Recognition of how much pain she had been walking through without complaint. Recognition of how easily women’s pain is normalised, delayed, and rationalised away. Recognition of how resilience is often mistaken for the absence of suffering.
This surgery felt different because it carried context. It was not just about appendicitis. It was about months of being unheard. About functioning while hurting. About leaning forward while walking because standing straight hurt too much, and still being told nothing was wrong.
Recovery was slow. The body moved cautiously. Pain demanded rest this time, whether life allowed it or not. The scar was tender, but the exhaustion beneath it felt older. Accumulated.
She thought about how many women live this way, carrying pain until it demands intervention. How often symptoms are dismissed as stress, hormones, motherhood, or “normal”. How many surgeries could have been less severe if pain had been addressed earlier?
This was her second surgery, but it felt like the first time she truly saw herself as someone who had survived something. Not heroically. Not dramatically. Quietly.
There is a loneliness that comes with medical trauma, especially when it is layered. The body remembers what the mind tries to move past. Hospitals stop feeling neutral. Pain no longer feels temporary.
And yet, something stronger also emerges.
A new awareness.
A firmer boundary.
A refusal to minimise what hurts.
This experience did not make her fragile. It made her precise. She learned to name pain sooner. To listen to her body more closely. To stop waiting for validation before seeking care.
Healing, she realised, is not just about stitches closing. It is about reclaiming trust in one’s own experience.
This reflection is not written to evoke sympathy. It is written to name a reality that many women recognise but rarely speak about. Pain does not need permission to exist. It does not need witnesses to be real.
Sometimes, the body carries pain until it physically cannot anymore.
And sometimes, surgery becomes the moment when everything that was ignored finally demands to be seen.
