Not Sick Enough

(orignally written October 9, 2023)

As I sit on the eve of my 40th birthday, I’m thinking about all the names I’ve been called — some true, some not — but none as confusing or infuriating as “not sick enough.”

It started with what the hospital called an “elective” outpatient surgery on December 12, 2022. To me, there was nothing elective about it.

I had a seven-centimeter separation in my abdominal wall — diastasis recti, a condition that left my core so weak I couldn’t sneeze, jump, or even stand without feeling like my insides were falling out. After delivering two ten-pound babies in under two years, my body had simply stopped cooperating.

When I finally decided to have it repaired, people treated it like I was getting a luxury upgrade. A tummy tuck. Insurance wouldn’t cover it. Friends told me to try “calories in, calories out.” Even in the world of women’s health — where I actually worked — no one took it seriously.

The “Elective” Surgery That Almost Killed Me

The surgery itself went smoothly. I remember texting friends that I was okay. Then I got up to use the restroom — and fell backward into the bed.

I couldn’t speak.
Couldn’t walk.
I was bleeding out.

My blood pressure plummeted. My body turned gray. Nurses scrambled for transfusions. Over the next week, they pumped me with blood, plasma, platelets — anything to keep me alive. My arms were black and blue from needles; my veins gave out.

And still, no one knew what was happening.

I’d been diagnosed years earlier with Von Willebrand Disease, a mild blood-clotting disorder, but none of the usual treatments worked. My body simply refused to clot. For seven weeks, I bled.

I had visitors, but the nights were spent alone in agony. I had visions of Death visiting me in my hospital bed while carolers sang Christmas songs outside my hospital door. For the record, I’ve always hated Christmas music, so this was a living nightmare.

The Aftermath

By the time I was released, I was pale and barely stable, but I begged to go home. If I’d waited for my hemoglobin to normalize, who knows how long I would have spent in that bed. At home, the drains from my abdomen filled with dark red fluid for weeks. I felt like a horror show of my own making. And still — I was grateful to be alive.

But once my face regained color, something strange happened: concern disappeared. Doctors and others around me could not figure out what happened. I went from in acute danger of death right back to “you’re young and healthy and this should not have happened” once more.

But the fact is, it did happen. And it is still happening. I went to all the specialists and printed out and annotated all of my hundreds of pages of medical records. I would show them to friends just to prove how bad it really was. I was desperate for someone to validate that what happened happened. It was like the moment I stopped looking sick, the world stopped believing I was ever in danger. And not only that— the world told me it was my fault.

The Bureaucracy of Suffering

When the physical recovery ended, the mental one began — panic attacks, flashbacks, sleepless nights. I couldn’t drive without imagining a crash and no one knowing how to save me. I worried I’d passed my illness to my kids.

So I did the responsible thing: I asked for medical leave.

I worked for a mental health company. You’d think that would make things easier.

It didn’t.

My primary doctor hesitated to sign off. HR sent me to a third-party insurer who denied my claim, insisting I wasn’t disabled enough. Not sick enough. My company eventually paid me out of goodwill, but the message was clear: they were doing me a favor.

I’d spent a year advocating for my body — now I was begging for permission to heal my mind. Every phone call, every form, every “we’re sorry, but” felt like a reminder that my pain didn’t count.

The Slow Burn of Dismissal

By late summer, I thought I was getting better — until I wasn’t. Chest pain, fatigue, weight gain, inflammation, itchy skin. Doctors waved it away: dehydration, diet, stress. My labs screamed autoimmune disorder; the specialists shrugged. A rheumatologist finally agreed to treat me without a clear diagnosis. Her compassion brought me to tears. It shouldn’t have felt so radical to be believed.

Meanwhile, I kept fighting a $12,000 hospital bill. Apparently, I wasn’t sick enough for insurance to cover the care that kept me alive — but just sick enough to owe them for it.

What “Not Sick Enough” Really Means

“Not sick enough” is the phrase women hear in every form:

• when our pain is dismissed,

• when our recovery is rushed,

• when our trauma is invisible.

It’s the whispered judgment behind “You look great now!”
It’s the policy fine print that calls normalcy in health “elective.”
It’s the quiet disbelief when a woman says, “Something’s wrong with me,” and everyone looks away because she’s standing upright.

I turn forty tomorrow. I don’t know if the swelling in my abdomen will ever fully go away. I don’t know if my body will stop reminding me of what it endured. I will never know if I should regret the decision I made, or how it ever went so, so wrong.

What I do know is: I was sick enough to almost die, but not sick enough to be believed or have sympathy.

To death and debt collectors, I was sick enough to owe them.