The Pain You Don’t Notice

When I was in the hospital after the crash, one of my earliest coherent thoughts was this: Shit. I need to cancel my massage appointment.

It sounds ridiculous now, but it made perfect sense at the time. A couple of months before the accident, I had started going to Massage Envy. I’d found an incredible masseuse named DeeDee. She was the kind of person who doesn’t just rub muscles but actually knows how to work them.

Historically, I’ve told every masseuse the same thing: You can’t hurt me. Use your strongest pressure. And historically, that had always been true.

So when I met DeeDee, I gave her the same speech.

“Trust me,” I told her. “You can’t hurt me.”

Well… I learned to eat those words pretty quickly.

DeeDee can fucking massage.

When she started applying real pressure, I had to admit something I had never admitted before: she absolutely could hurt me. And the fact that she could meant she could actually fix things.

I was sold immediately. Hooked.

So I signed up for their monthly membership and started going regularly. Eventually I even booked a two-hour session with her, which isn’t easy because getting time on DeeDee’s calendar is like getting Metallica tickets.

Then November happened. And, well… you all know where I was that month.

I wasn’t making that appointment. So I canceled it.

But here’s the strange thing: while I was in the hospital, my body craved touch in a way I had never experienced before. Not sexual touch. Just human contact. My body hurt everywhere, head to toe, but massage was completely off the table.

Broken bones. Pins. Open wounds. Soft tissue damage everywhere.

Nobody was touching anything.

So I canceled the appointment but kept paying the subscription. I figured I’d rack up credits and use them later when I could actually tolerate being touched again.

In January I finally started going back.

Not to DeeDee though.

At first I saw whoever had availability, and I gave them one very clear instruction: Do not touch my left side.

Yes, I realize how ridiculous that sounds. Going in for a full-body massage and telling someone to ignore half of your body.

But it was necessary.

I couldn’t even get my Morel-Lavallée lesion drained until mid-January, and I was keeping that thing wrapped tight to make sure it healed. My left foot was still… mangled. Less mangled after surgery and pinned bones, but still swollen and misshapen. My entire left leg, thigh to toe, was swollen. My calf was hard as a rock. Not from muscle. From scar tissue. A plate and screws were still holding my wrist together. The fracture was still visible on X-rays. I was on a superhuman dose of vitamin D trying to help the bones knit back together.

So yeah. Hands off the left side.

But I still went. Once a week for a while. Because even partial human touch helps. Hell, I’d go so far as to say it’s vital to healing. But I’m not a fucking doctor, so take that opinion with whatever grain of salt you think is appropriate.

Eventually I allowed light touch on the left side. Very light touch.

Still no DeeDee. I just saw whoever had openings.

Then one day I was scheduling my next appointment and noticed something unusual: An opening on DeeDee’s calendar.

I thought, Why the fuck not? So I booked it.

Yesterday was that appointment.

For the first time since the crash, I was healed enough to let someone work my left side with real pressure. My thigh still feels strange where the Morel-Lavallée lesion was. There’s scar tissue in places where layers of muscle and fat clearly had a disagreement with each other. My foot still feels weird. My calf is still swollen.

But I told DeeDee everything and said, “Let’s try it. If it hurts, I’ll tell you.”

And she went to work.

It felt fucking amazing.

Like, unbelievably amazing.

I didn’t realize how badly my body needed that until it was happening.

But the really interesting thing didn’t hit me until after I left: My left foot didn’t hurt anymore.

In fact, I didn’t even realize that it had been hurting. There had been this low-level growl of pain coming from my entire left leg all the time. A background hum I had gotten so used to during recovery that I stopped noticing it.

Until it disappeared.

Turns out I’d been living with constant low-grade pain for months… and didn’t even know it.

And after that massage? It was just gone.