When the Body Whisper Turns to Yelling

Invisible Illness and the Fight to Trust Myself

It was the last Friday in April. It was supposed to be a good weekend.

I had made plans: a walk with a close friend and colleague, starting a new pickleball league on Sunday, and celebrating my husband’s birthday. Living.

At work, things were good too.
Our Virtual Chronic Pain Group was thriving, led confidently by Arielle, Christina, and Lexii — newly trained peer counselors who held the group together with a kind of grace that made me proud.

One of the patients called me her hero that day.
Another had composed a song about Stoke between sessions.

There were so many reasons to feel proud.
So many reasons to feel happy

But I wasn’t feeling happy.
I was holding myself together, barely. 

I was feeling sad. 

Behind the screen, behind the supportive nods, behind the patient victories, my body was breaking down.

Every breath felt tight against the armor of bloating.
Pain radiated from my ribs down my right side, twisting into my back like a corkscrew.
My blood pressure had been high all day, pounding at my temples, leaving me breathless if I moved too quickly.

Underneath it all was a rising tide of dread — the kind you try to reason away, until it’s too loud to ignore

When It Started

I came back from Costa Rica in March, tired and worn down. I thought it was just from travel. A few months earlier, I had undergone an emergency appendectomy. It had delayed the trip, turning what was meant to be a family vacation into a quiet, reflective time with my husband. The ocean was beautiful, but a quiet grief lingered. I had missed the chance to surf with my daughter, to laugh with my husband and father-in-law. The healing was slow, layered on top of years of surgical trauma and chronic illness.

Then came the rib injury — a wipeout at Dog Beach. The tide turned, and so did my body. I was left bruised, aching, and blaming myself for another setback. I was so bummed that I got hurt, on top of everything else. I rested, and I rested. The pain dulled but lingered, a deep ache in my right flank. I kept telling myself it was musculoskeletal. Bruised a kidney? Bruised my liver? I felt ill. Malaise. I can tell when I’m feeling sick.

The Symptoms Pile Up — The Feeling of Exploding

By early April, I squeezed in another surf trip to Waikiki with my best friend. I didn’t feel well the whole time — tired, bloated, and in pain — but I surfed anyway, trying to make the most of it. I came home early, convinced I had overdone it.

The symptoms only worsened: flank spasms, bladder spasms, exhaustion that no amount of sleep could relieve, feelings of fullness, blood pressure spikes that left me dizzy and gasping for air. I told myself it was post-surgical fatigue or GI issues. I tried to believe it was all logical, manageable. But the discomfort grew more intense, the pressure more consuming. I kept saying it over and over: 'I feel ill, I didn’t know brushed ribs would make you feel ill. I went to my primary twice, they ordered a CT Scan, but it was weeks away. 

The First ER Visit — A Misdiagnosis

Only in retrospect have the pieces come together. That all along, this had been a gallbladder issue.

That Friday, I went to the ER, desperate for answers. The doctor was the same one I had seen in May 2024, when I came in with similar symptoms, a feeling of exploding from the inside out. He missed something then. And little did I know, he would miss it now.

He ordered CT chest and abdomen and a urine culture and said, “You have a UTI.” Your CT is normal “Relief flooded me. A UTI was simple, treatable, common. I clung to that diagnosis, but the relief was short-lived. The antibiotics didn’t help. The pain persisted, and by Sunday I was feeling that exploding feeling again.

Dismissal

I wasn’t getting better, I was getting worse. I went back to the ER on Sunday, maybe I had a bad kidney infection, I didn’t know. Same doctor.

“The culture from Friday did not show an infection, there is nothing wrong with you”, he said.

I wanted to cry.

But my blood pressure, I said

That is just from pain. My blood pressure is high. I take 5 medications.

I don’t care about your blood pressure, I thought.

But maybe he is right. Maybe I’m being extreme. These are the thoughts that persist after years of chroinc pain and chronic illness, and often finding no cause

“You are saying the pain has moved? Magically?” he said,” It’s a narcotic issue.”

What? I wasn’t there for narcotics. I was there because my body was falling apart, and no one seemed to see it. I knew something was wrong.

The Buried Pulses

At my acupuncture appointment in the middle of all of this, she said “I can’t find your pulses”. They are buried.

My body knew.

The Monday Visit — The openly hostile Doctor and the Dismiss

By Monday, I was desperate. I saw Dr. Jandra Mueller, my pelvic floor physical therapist. She took my blood pressure, two times, twenty minutes apart. The second one, after I had been laying down for a bit was 180/100. “You need to go to the ER”, she said. 
“This fullness,” she said, “I’ve seen it in endometriosis patients with gallbladder issues.”

I returned to the ER for the third time. This was a new doctor, female. At first, I had hope. Maybe she would understand my pain.

Instead, she greeted me with a sharp, “HOW CAN I HELP YOU?” I was unraveling, I was confused. Was this still an infection? “I said. “IV antibiotics?” I was guessing, grasping at anything that might help. I could hear the frustration in her voice. I didn’t have an infection, so to her, I didn’t have a problem.

'You’re already on antibiotics,' she told me.

“I’ve been doing this for a while you know”, she had said. She thought I was questioning her abilities, and frankly I was.

'Could it be my gallbladder?' I asked, repeating what Jandra had suggested. She sighed, clearly frustrated. 'and reluctantly ordered an ultrasound. “Let me do my tests” she said.

The ultrasound showed “Possible small gallbladder stone/sludge. No sonographic evidence of acute cholecystitis” It did not match what my body was saying.

She didn’t think it was serious enough, and I couldn’t totally blame her. .

By this time, she had softened and pulled up a chair. She had looked at my complicated history and chronic pelvic pain, and my psychiatric history. Ahh, of course, she must have thought. This is part of your chronic pelvic pain syndrome.'

“I’ve never felt this way before”, I repeated, even with my complicated history. She was being nice but saying none of this was an emergency. The tests don’t show anything serious. She listed everything out for me. It sounded right, but I was crushed.

She gave me a dose of IV Ativan. “You’re stressing yourself out, stop checking your blood pressure” Take it once in the morning and once at night and follow up with your primary care in two weeks.

Two weeks? I wasn’t just checking my blood pressure over and over; I would wake up with that visceral pain and feelings of exploding. Then I would take my blood pressure, which was alarmingly high.

I kept thinking, 'Don’t send me home. Something is wrong

She was ignoring my blood pressure, like the first doctor did. “it’s high because you are in pain”.

A Psychiatrist’s Compassion

Two days later, I saw my psychiatrist, Dr. C. “It could be your gallbladder,” she said. “But we need to keep you calm while you sort this out.” I was laying on her couch, crying. She could see the pain.

She prescribed Ativan. I took it, reluctantly. Not back to this, my bipolar disorder had been managed for years without Ativan. “You won’t need to take it forever”.

I drove home, and the pain continued to worsen. I cried for hours, convinced that this was how I was going to have to live.

I held my husband’s hand that night, sobbing, “I can’t live like this. It shouldn’t be this painful.”

I agree he said, I could tell he was worried now too.

I spoke to my endo surgeon, Dr. Springs-Robinson. She said. Go to Sharp Memorial, Scripps has failed you.

The Last Visit — A Life-Threatening Crisis and the Truth Revealed

I woke up at 4am in extreme pain, I didn’t want to wake up my husband again. I sat on the bed, waiting for him to open his eyes on his own. He did.

Go get ready, he said.

We were scared. Not that I would need my gallbladder out, but that they would send me home, again

Sharp Memorial was a completely different experience. The ER doctor was calm and methodical, ordering a repeat ultrasound, pain meds, and nausea meds. Unlike the other doctors, she was concerned about my blood pressure. I could see it on the nurses faces when they checked. They’d leave quietly, and come back with more morphine.

Hours later, the ultrasound confirmed what had been missed — stones in my gallbladder. 'Your gallbladder is the likely source of the pain,' she said. 'We need to admit you for surgery.'

But it wasn’t just about the stones. I was experiencing accelerated hypertension — HVN, a state where the blood pressure is dangerously elevated and poses an imminent threat to life. This was noted in my ER report, which I read in the notes a few days later. It said 'intractable pain, accelerated HVN.'

'Accelerated HVN — threat to life or body.' Those words matched exactly what I had been feeling, the sensation of my body exploding from the inside, the relentless pounding in my head, the crushing tightness in my chest.

I was admitted to the hospital and felt relief. My body had been screaming for help all along. There was something to fix. . I wasn’t imagining it.

My pain was being controlled for the first time in weeks. I was exhausted. 

I slept, a lot.

Later I would grieve, I knew that, but for now, I was frightened but happy I’d get surgery. I wasn’t imagining it.

I attended the virtual chronic pain group from my hospital bed, finally out of pain. 

Me, attending virtual group from my hospital bed the night before the surgery

Sometimes it is the pain itself that warrants a surgery. 

As I was writing this and checking back to that ER visit in May of last year, I was angry. I had been sent home from the hospital with no referral to GI, just “unexplained abdominal pain”. Even though the scan had showed “ distended gallbladder with calcified stones and significant biliary dilation”

I went to the ER that day last May to make sure I knew I wasn’t dying, so that I could go to my son’s graduation in Seattle without worrying about needing to visit an ER. All this time, I keep thinking. It never came up in the tests as acute, but the pain itself made the situation life threatening.

I’m grieving. I missed the next pickleball league. I missed my husband’s birthday golf outing. I missed my friend’s celebration of life. I wasn’t there when they spread her ashes at sea, a place she and I held dear. My daughter is visiting, and instead of surfing together, I am lying on the couch, in between walking with my dog, and writing this. 

Time will heal, I’m telling myself. I’ll be back surfing in no time 

Reflection: How Surfing Saved Me

The day I bruised my ribs back in late March, I hd been desperate to get in the water. I was back from Costa Rica. I was feeling bloated, full, in pain. Cold water. Engage the core. This woud help I was sure, given the study with USC we had done in 2023 (see Project Stoke)

As we sat in circle at surf therapy, I kept stealing looks at the ocean. I wasn’t listening fully to everyone. It looked really calm past the break. The whole time we were in circle. I was impatient, wanting to get out

I rushed in, paddled out, confident since Costa Rica

The tide shifted. One of the participants needed to be rescued. I was pummeled.

Mother Ocean let me know I needed to attend to this gall bladder, that had been whispering, gnawing over the past year. 

For that I am grateful