A couple days ago, I got in a pretty bad scooter accident after lab. I was making a left turn at a crosswalk onto this steep hill when I completely misjudged a car’s speed, my speed, & the timing of two pedestrians crossing. I slammed the brakes so hard the scooter screeched, the back wheel lifted, & I went straight over the handlebars into the street. Not like a little “lost my balance” fall either. My feet never even caught me. I literally tumbled & skidded across the road.
People stopped to help because I genuinely couldn’t get myself up at first. My legs kept giving out trying to stand on the hill. At one point, while trying to reposition myself, my knee made this loud snapping sound that one of the guys helping me actually heard too. Somehow, once I was finally standing, the pain still wasn’t that bad. Mostly I felt shaken up, embarrassed, & weirdly fine enough to keep going.
But once I got home, things got bad fast. My knee swelled up like crazy, bruising started showing, & every tiny shift of my leg made me cry out in pain. Not even dramatic movement either. Slightly turning wrong, adjusting on the couch, trying to take my shoe off, all of it hurt. By the time I got to urgent care the next morning, walking wasn’t really happening. I had to be pushed around in a wheelchair, got crutches, got told not to bear weight, had an xray, & now I need an MRI because they think I tore my MCL.
But today it hurts less. So obviously my brain went “oh okay so you made that whole thing up.”
Earlier I limped to the bathroom without my crutches, & somehow that became evidence against me. Like see? You can walk. Case closed. Fraud.
Which is stupid. Resting it for a day would obviously make it calm down some. But now my brain keeps replaying the whole thing like it’s trying to catch me in a lie.
The pain wasn’t horrible right away.
I got back on the scooter after.
I made it to my appointment & I got home before I felt any pain
So now I’m sitting here wondering if it really wasn’t that bad, if I just panicked, or if people took care of me over nothing.
Being fat has really messed up the way I think about medical stuff just because of how many times I’m dismissed. My own pain doesn’t feel trustworthy to me. There always has to be proof before I’m allowed to say something hurts. Pain by itself doesn’t feel like enough if it’s coming from my body.
If the MRI comes back normal, I already know I’m gonna spiral & imagine everyone secretly rolling their eyes at me the entire time, like I wasted their time & made the whole thing embarrassing.
But yesterday I literally couldn’t take my own shoe off.
I don’t want a tear, surgery, physical therapy, or months of recovery. None of that sounds fun or validating or whatever.
There’s just some messed up part of me that wants the MRI to show something anyway, only so I can stop feeling like I’m on trial in my own head.
I don’t even know if this makes sense. I feel embarrassed & guilty that people cared for me because this awful little voice keeps saying I might not have deserved it, maybe I made it look worse than it was, maybe I’m just a dramatic faker. My body has been treated like the problem for so long that even when I’m injured, I’m more scared of being exposed as dramatic than I am of the actual injury.
Has anyone else felt this way before, & how do i change my thinking?