Several days after my car crash moment, I went to my second referral appointment at Southmead for a series of very painful steroid injections. They took half a minute each and I had to have 6, directly into the surface of what was a very angry keloid scar. It felt like someone was holding a lighter to my cheek. The nurse assisting Jonathan held my hand and counted back from 100 with me, but I remember I was just whimpering random numbers in the 90s. “98, 97, 95, 97, Ahhhhhh,” then I puked in the bin. Fucking hell it burned. But fucking hell did it kill that scar.
A year on, after another round of steroid injections and,
more recently, laser treatment (still with the same wonderful Dr), the scar no
longer gives me pain or discomfort. When I run my finger along it now, I can feel
the flattened skin as if it was any other part of my face, whereas before its rigid
surface was completely numb. When someone would touch me and accidentally brush
my scar I would cringe away because I felt the pressure but not the contact.
On a whim, my GP had referred me to Dr Jonathan, who is a specialist and a researcher in scars, at his ad hoc clinic. It had taken a lot of grovelling to even get to that point. Last year, my scar was still active – still thickening and getting wider even 3 years after I was bitten. It itched, and pain like toothache would bolt through my jawbone when it was cold outside.
I was 25 and a young woman so I definitely felt the social pressure to be pretty. And learners would ask me about it. Or people would keep glancing at it instead of looking me in the eye. One time, a learner with additional needs (obviously not their fault) said “What the hell happened to your face,” pointing in horror. I never let these looks or comments bother me, but I reflect on them now and I see how it ground my confidence down.
At my first appointment, I had told Dr Jonathan the truth. I
said, I don’t want this rock-hard angry thing on my face. It’s ugly, it hurts, it
reminds me of a time when I was so depressed that I don’t want to look at my
face anymore. I miss who I was before I went to Nottingham. To my shock, I
started to cry, really fucking hard, right there in the doctor’s chair. I hadn’t
cried once about being bitten. Not once. Not in the confusion of when it first
happened, not when I was lying awake and alone in a hospital bed on a drip all
night because they didn’t even know if the dog was vaccinated, not when I had
to go back to a city I hated for surgery, not when I was having my stitches cut
out after they had embedded in to my face, not when I spent my birthday with a big padded dressing covering a hole in my face, not about the way it hurt or the way
it looked or what anyone had said to me. But at that first appointment, the truth
of how I had felt all along just rushed out of my body. With the altruism and
patience of a saint, gentle and genuine, Jonathan patted my arm and promised that
we would try to make it better now.
He was patient as he explained why the scar had become hypertrophic.
Why I still had stitch scars because they had knitted it too tightly and left
the stitches in for too long. He explained his research (with a PowerPoint which
I LOVED) and what he wanted to do to help me. I listened, my face wet with
tears and my hands clasped tightly together like a child. I trusted him, and I
was right to, he is a phenomenal doctor.
Anyway, the point in this post is to reflect on my feelings
about all of this, but I wanted to explain the above for context. When grandad
died, post-‘car crash moment’, I began to reflect on many many aspects of my
life. For a long time, I had been told that I must be strong. Maybe it’s a
Northern thing, maybe it’s an eldest daughter thing, maybe it’s a my family
thing, I’m not sure, but I was raised to believe that I shouldn’t dwell on
injuries, losses or pain because that would be pathetic. Moreover, in my early
adulthood I was conditioned to think I was ‘playing the victim’ by trying to
express that something (abuse) was upsetting me.
I started to suppress my feelings a lot. I didn’t bring
things up because I knew I would not only go ignored but probably be berated. Then,
when I was bitten, I began to believe that I deserved it. That I’d done bad
things and I had to carry the evidence of them on my face as punishment. That it
was wrong to even want to improve how it looked or felt because the scar
was rightfully mine to bear.
Writing those words just made me tear up. Like Jonathan did
when I finally told him how I felt, I want to pat the old me on the arm and say
how sorry I am for thinking she deserved any such thing. I want to tell her how
brave she is and how proud I am. She managed to get her Master’s degree literally bleeding, depressed and thinking she deserved it. I want to promise her that I’ll make it better
now. Because I realise now that not wanting to wear a scar that was hurting me,
inflamed and worsening, a stamp on my cheek reminding me of the most painful
chapter of my life … that didn’t make me weak or vain. I wasn’t ‘playing the victim’
I was the fucking victim. Of a literal dog attack. Jesus Christ.
Recognising that the people who told me I was playing the
victim and made me swallow my tears did so because of their own guilt and
discomfort was liberating. It has taken much therapy, mind you.
Jonathan offering to help me with my scar changed me. His
promise not only made my face better, it made me think I deserved for
it to get better. I believe that the people who reach out their hand to a
stranger and change the course of their lives are the pinnacle of the human
experience, in part. May we be those people ourselves whenever we can, and may
we have the courage to accept a pat on the shoulder from an outstretched hand and
know that we always deserve love.
Something I wrote a long time ago, long before I was
bitten. It doesn’t really have a title so in the interim I will call it, ‘Staring
at the sunset (babe)’
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