Healing Anyway: When Your Body Knows Before the Tests Do

A personal reflection on medical advocacy, intuition, resilience, and learning to trust what my body was trying to say.

Healing doesn’t always look the way we imagined it would.

This Recovery Was Different

I almost fired my surgeon today.

Not because he caused my infection.

Not because he isn’t a skilled doctor.

But because he didn’t listen to me.

This has been one of the hardest and most humbling weeks of my life, and honestly, I wasn’t sure I even wanted to write about it yet. But if there’s one thing I’ve learned through this journey, it’s that sometimes the stories we most need to tell are the ones we’re still living through.

My hip replacement surgery was April 20th. The first week felt incredible. By Day 2 I was already off the walker and using a walking stick. Within days I was walking over a mile and thinking,

“Wow…this recovery is going even better than my first hip replacement.”

Then things changed.

The incision became red and angry looking. I started feeling terrible in a way I couldn’t fully explain. Not just pain…something deeper. My whole body felt wrong. I started getting violent body shakes, almost like my system was in shock. I kept saying over and over:

“I don’t think this is right.”

“You Don’t Have an Infection”

I went to the ER. Bloodwork looked normal. They believed something was wrong, started me on antibiotics, and told me to follow up with my surgeon.

At my appointment on May 5, my surgeon held those normal lab results in his hands and told me repeatedly that I did not have an infection.

“I’ve told you three times now,” he said firmly. “You do not have an infection. Your labs were normal.”

But my body was telling a different story.

I tried to explain that I didn’t feel okay. I told him something felt deeply wrong. I described the body shakes, the escalating pain, and the overwhelming feeling that my system was struggling.

Still, because I wasn’t presenting with a fever or falling apart emotionally in the exam room, I don’t think the severity of what I was experiencing fully translated.

That’s the hard part about being someone who keeps functioning.

Some people fall apart loudly.

Some of us survive quietly.

I’m the second kind.

As the days went on, things got worse. Walking became harder. The pain escalated beyond anything I could describe. The shaking continued. I lived on Tylenol, so I never really developed a fever, but my body was screaming that something was wrong.

Still, I questioned myself.

Was I overreacting?

Was anxiety making things feel worse?

Was I expecting recovery to happen faster because my first hip replacement had gone so smoothly?

The Moment Everything Changed

Then came the appointment that changed everything.

My surgeon walked into the room, looked at my hip, and immediately said, “This is new.”

The swelling had become severe. What looked like a massive hematoma had formed almost overnight.

He sent me directly to the ER and called ahead personally.

Within hours, bloodwork came back completely off the charts.

Massive infection.

I was admitted immediately and taken into surgery the following morning

During surgery, they had to reopen the hip, remove and replace the ball and liner, clean out infected tissue and debris, and start over. They began aggressive IV antibiotics while waiting on cultures to identify exactly what we were dealing with.

Everything changed in an instant.

The Conversation

Last night was one of the lowest moments I’ve had through this entire journey. Physically, emotionally, mentally…I hit bottom. I remember telling my nurse I wanted a psych consult because I believe healing is more than physical. You cannot separate body, mind, and spirit. When one breaks down, the others follow.

And this morning, I planned to fire my surgeon.

When he came into my room, I told him the truth.

I said, “It’s not that you aren’t a good surgeon, and it’s not your fault I got an infection. But you failed to listen to your patient.”

I explained how dismissed I had felt when I repeatedly tried to communicate that something was deeply wrong. I told him that not every patient presents pain the same way. Some of us remain calm even when we are suffering tremendously.

And then something happened I didn’t expect.

He listened.

Really listened.

His face changed, and he apologized. Not defensively. Not dismissively. Genuinely.

He told me I was right.

He said he should have listened differently.

He acknowledged that he had relied too heavily on the earlier labs and not enough on what I was trying to tell him.

That moment changed everything for me.

Not because it erased what happened.

Not because this journey suddenly became easier.

But because accountability and humanity matter.

Later, my nurse said something I’ll never forget:

“Do you realize how many future patients you probably impacted today?”

That hit me hard.

Healing Anyway

This story isn’t about revenge.

It’s about advocacy.

It’s about learning to trust your body when something feels wrong.

It’s about understanding that pain does not always look dramatic.

It’s about remembering that calm people can still be critically ill.

And maybe most importantly, it’s about finding your voice even when you are exhausted, scared, and hurting.

I’m still in the hospital as I write this. Infectious Disease is now involved, and I’m facing a long recovery ahead with IV antibiotics and a very different healing timeline than I expected.

Plans will change.

Life will shift.

There are things I will have to let go of for now.

But I’m still here.

Healing may not look the way I imagined.

But healing anyway is still healing.

— Deb Deaton