This was originally published on Substack.
Just a warning that this post contains a few images that might be stressful for you. Nothing too graphic, but if you have a fear of needles, squint before you look at a photo.
Last October, in 2024, after years of dismissing my physical symptoms like tiredness, abdominal pain and paleness, I finally went to a doctor.
The reason why I avoided doctors for years was that I knew the news would be bad. Sometimes my imagination went so far that I imagined receiving the news of only having months left to live.
Am I dramatic? I mean, yes, but it doesn’t mean I was any less afraid or concerned about it. Going to the doctor, sitting in front of her and admitting I neglected my many health issues for years due to fear would be humiliating.
I had to do it, though.
October 2024 was the month that pretty much forced me to start loving myself. Everything that I learnt about my body in the following months was created by self-hate and will be solved by self-love.
Not in a spiritual woo-woo way. Not at all.
But the fact is that most of these things happened because I didn’t go for early checkups and listened to my body when it was just whispering. Except one, the one that was directly caused by self-hate.
My spleen.
There are a lot of deleted blog posts over at tanjajurgec.com that I wrote over the years, where I opened up about self-harm. I wrote in graphic detail about how I struggled with suicidality and rage.
A few months ago, as I was updating the website, I reread a few of them and felt so much shame. Who would want to be in my life after knowing how dark things went at times? Why would anyone want to love someone like me?
So I deleted every single post that mentioned my attempted suicide and the ways I harmed my body. My healing journey was just beginning, so I figured… out of sight, out of mind.
Well, here I am, almost a year later, ready to share some of it. Maybe my story can be a cautionary tale for someone going through the same shit as I did. Trust me, you don’t want to be lying on the surgery table telling your surgeon that this happened because you used to beat the fuck out of yourself.
In October of 2024, I was sent to the ER due to severe anaemia. I was also sent to a bunch of tests and ultrasounds so we could get the answers soon.
One iron IV, two blood tests and three doctors’ warnings about how I need to start eating meat later, my ultrasound appointment was ahead of me. Drumroll please… I had an enlarged spleen with a large cyst inside it.
My spleen was 18cm, and the cyst was 15cm. A CT later confirmed the diagnosis, and also gave a nice look at my internal organs, which was kind of cool.
This wasn’t the end of my exams because anaemia was still a bit of a mystery, and a gynaecologist might have the answers. On we go, facing more potential scary news.
Turns out, I have a polyp in my uterus, and the heavy bleeding and passing out from cramping was totally not cool, and I was wrong for not caring about my reproductive organs. Okay, I just need to be brave and face my failings.
Off to pick up contraceptives because trying to understand a gynaecologist who works in Slovenia but refuses to learn the language is not working out for me. Until I get a proper doctor who will explain my condition in our official language, I will suppress the bleeding with pills.
Cool, cool, cool. My focus is on the spleen now, anyway.
While I am waiting for my spleen puncture, I get my thyroid tested, and it turns out I have tiny cysts in it, but otherwise it is functioning well, and we will just monitor it. This is fine; it is also fine that my personal doctor mentions I might have nose polyps because, again, not being able to breathe properly for over a decade is not normal.
I keep getting these new diagnoses and warnings, and I keep on realising that I was a dumbass for letting my self-hate turn my body into a mess.
If you didn’t get the lesson yet, it’s to get your fucking ass to the doctor’s office and stop letting the whispers turn into screams.
May comes, and I am ready for my first procedure. My veins are burning, my arms are blue, but the cyst is empty and small. They did skip the sclerotherapy of the cyst, but only because they assumed it wouldn’t refill since the fluid was old blood.
They were wrong, and everything was back to its original size less than a month later.
Then August came, and I had my second puncture and sclerotherapy of the cyst. Everything was successful, from the procedure itself to my brief crush on my surgeon (I’ll just… leave that one alone).
They did forget my vegan meal again, and I ended up reporting the hospital for forgetting to feed me the second time, and I hope this will improve conditions for my fellow hospitalised vegans.
I have an ultrasound for a checkup in a few weeks, so let’s hope I don’t have to go back for the third time. I’m feeling pretty positive, and I have zero pain in my abdomen. (update – yup, I am going in for the third time)
Even my newly discovered polyps in my gallbladder are not hurting. Yes, I also have two polyps in my gallbladder because why wouldn’t I? I’m not even phased at this point.
Now is maybe the time I share how it all came to this.
Ever since I can remember, during the worst of the worst episodes, I would disassociate and start using blunt force trauma against myself. I won’t go into too much detail because I don’t know how strict Substack is, but there were fists and tools involved.
Every part of my body was fair game, and one of the most abused parts was my abdomen, specifically the part where the spleen is. I just liked the peaceful aftermath, all in purple and blue. I didn’t know I was actually harming an organ.
There is a reason I am not a doctor.
I’ve been on various psychiatric medications since my diagnosis in 2019. Some worked, others gave me a bloody nose and full-body rashes.
But then Abilify entered my life, and I will praise it until the day I die. It literally saved my life, and I mean this in the most literal sense of the word. I wouldn’t be here without it; I know this for a fact.
Those three years of Abilify were the reason I stopped self-harming. My brain was just restructured and rewired, and re-everything. I was not only not showing any symptoms of BPD anymore, but for the first time in my whole fucking life, I was free of the chaos inside my brain and chest.
I wish I could explain what I mean when I say I was clean, but it feels like something sucked the darkness out of my body and mind, and I could think clearly.
Naturally, I was happy to be moving on from the first phase of my life, and as I was now a 30-year-old, I couldn’t be happier that I was turning a new page.
I was still tired, but a) I knew there was something wrong in my body, and if I only went to the doctor, we could fix it, and b) it was probably just depression still lingering, you know? It must have been just the physical signs of mental illness still waiting to be released.
There is a sense of shame, humiliation and confidence in telling a roomful of doctors that you are in this mess due to self-harm. It’s even worse when they don’t react and just ignore it. You’re always alone in the shame bubble.
I will never know how long it took for a cyst full of blood to develop in my spleen. I will never know how long my body was struggling before it started to scream because other organs were now rearranged due to a lack of space.
All I know is that I used to find peace in the bruises and blood, and now they are left due to treatment, and I wish I could unsee it all. My veins are suffering from all the blood samples being taken, and getting the fluid pumped out of the splenic cyst is a fucking nightmare.
But… this is the price we pay for hating ourselves. No one wins when you hate yourself. Absolutely no one.
This is, of course, easy to say when you are on the other end and you’re seeing the light, but I wish people spoke more about long-term consequences. They always talk about death, but rarely about the long-term effects when you stay alive.
I don’t know if it would change anything were I to know where my spleen was and what could happen, but I still wish I knew. I wish we spread awareness about the various ways self-harm takes place, and that cutting is just one of the hundreds of ways one can bleed.
I was bleeding internally. No one noticed, and no one knew.
If you are struggling with self-harm, I am asking you to please reach out to your loved ones, to medical professionals, or to any call centres that offer help by phone to those struggling.
I promise you, the long-term consequences of your actions might come back to haunt you. And while it doesn’t concern you now, once you are in a better state of mind, you will regret it deeply.
If you are in physical pain and you have painful symptoms of any kind, please go to your doctor for a checkup.
I am truly asking you to take your health seriously. Please learn from my mistakes and fears, and do better.
Tanja
