Lihi Lisser
A few months after my 16th birthday, I started investigating why my stomach was always hurting. A family physician referred me for a lactose intolerance test and a pediatric gastroenterologist. It was the beginning of a journey, a journey that might never end, a journey to process the trauma I experienced during that time. Today, a decade later, I am able to say that I no longer suffer from chronic pain of any kind. Even the tests that showed abnormal results come back normal now (I was diagnosed in the past with adenomyosis and now there are no indications for it, and other tests such as bone density have come back normal). When the pain does come up from time to time, I know that it has come to bring my attention to the fact that something is bothering me emotionally, something that I have been ignoring.
Over the past decade I have been through so many medical treatments, visited so many doctors, done so many tests, and even undergone some surgeries. At first, when they were unable to find what was “wrong” with me (normal blood tests, calprotectin, colonoscopy, and gastroscopy), I was diagnosed with Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS).
I spent a few years suffering from stomach pain and unpleasant bowel movements, and I lived with it in peace, more or less. I took Pepto-Bismol frequently and simply accepted that my stomach was a little sensitive.
Eventually, in light of what I now understand was a trigger for trauma, my physical condition worsened. The stomach pains got more intense and more frequent, nausea became part of my day-to-day routine, and I slowly became miserable. In an attempt to treat the nausea, I tried acupuncture, and there I started differentiating between “IBS pain” and “endometriosis pain.” After a number of experiments with hormones that didn’t help, I underwent laparoscopic surgery. The moment I woke up from the operation, while I was still having an allergic reaction to the anesthetics, I immediately asked what they discovered. When they told me they had found signs of endometriosis and adenomyosis I felt relieved. Finally, I had a name for my pain. Validation. I held on to it tight.
Over the years I underwent: a gastroscopy, a colonoscopy, therapies connected to pain during intimacy, a gastric emptying test, helicobacter tests, I took every gastrointestinal medicine on the shelf and off the shelf, I took hormones, I did acupuncture, I went to a dietitian, I did so much pelvic floor physical therapy. It goes without saying that all these things came at a cost — side effects from the medication, unpleasant reactions to hormonal changes, becoming dependent on therapies to a point where they became part of my routine. At the lowest point, every day I went to a different therapy or doctor’s appointment. It was my full-time job. Alongside the insane cost of all these private therapies (I imagine I could have bought a new car with all the money I spent on these things), which only provided minor, temporary relief, I still lived as a sick person. Nothing really helped. To fill in the picture, I’ll mention that over this extended period, I was in psychotherapy (CBT) for several years, and beyond the treatment for anxiety symptoms, it didn’t really help.
I grew up with the understanding that I was a little different, more sensitive. Everything hurts me. Something is wrong. I didn’t really believe in the connection between the body and the mind. My denial of all the trauma I went through was so deep that I didn’t even call it trauma. I didn’t understand that triggers would appear and my situation would worsen as a result.
I thought I knew myself really well, that I was aware of my feelings and knew how to speak and express them and say what was bothering me. Eventually I understood that there was a part of me I wasn’t aware of at all.
Today I understand that this part was trying to break into my conscious mind, to tell me that it was there and that there is trauma to process, but my body created so much pain as a distraction that I just couldn’t listen to that part. I imagine that this is clear from everything I’ve said so far, but in case it’s not — I was full of determination. I didn’t give up for a moment. I believed that I would not live my life this way. This was not my destiny. It couldn’t be that I would always feel this bad. I wasn’t willing to accept it. And I definitely wouldn’t make peace with it.
About a year ago, in a desperate attempt to exhaust every possible avenue, I started going for second opinions. Another endometriosis doctor, another gastro, and I also got a referral to a pain clinic. I received a recommendation to see Efrat Suraki and I made an appointment with her. I was thinking of heading in the direction of medical cannabis. Little did I know, my life was about to change. Efrat explained how the pain mechanism in the body works, how in a situation of chronic pain the mechanism sounds an ongoing alarm and the pain no longer serves its original purpose. She gave me hope and also made me angry when she said that I’m okay, I’m healthy. I thought to myself, if she is wrong, this is medical malpractice, and how could she be right when no one else had ever told me this? But because I was so desperate to feel better, I gave in. I did everything she told me, but the most important thing was going to therapy with Lihi.
Lihi gave me my life back. In a long process that is not over yet, I got better. Lihi taught me about the body’s pain mechanisms, how they work, why they work that way, how I came to be in this situation, what went wrong.
Even today, a year later, it was difficult for me to write that. But I wish I could have read something like this years ago. I hope whoever reads this finds comfort in it, that life with pain is not an inescapable destiny. You can get better. It’s hard work, don’t get me wrong, but I got my life back.
