“EW GROSS” they scream. “WHAT IS THAT” they question. I respond with a defensive, “It’s just Wormie.”

That would be my patella scar. The one I received over the summer when I went under the knife to have ACL reconstructive surgery performed.

The thing is, my scar, Wormie, is not any normal scar. It’s a keloid. A keloid is a type of scar in which too much tissue has healed over the scar. The doctor told me to put vitamin E on it and I have been following his instructions applying vitamin E to it and more but it is not working yet!

But seriously people, I know it is not the prettiest scar to look at, so please stop being so immature about it.

I call it Wormie because it looks like a worm. It is bright pink, though sometimes purple, and is slender and raised up along my skin. Wormie is a difficult scar to heal because it is on my knee at a spot where it stretches when I bend my knee.

It has dawned on me not to sweat the small stuff. Worrying about Wormie is pointless. I just have sit back and wait for it to heal. I can’t help that my scar healed the way it did. There’s nothing I can do to immediately fix it.

For now, Wormie will remain a part of my existence and I just have to embrace the fact of his presence. It doesn’t hurt, so I’m not too worried.

Wormie is a great conversation starter though, so there is a positive side to it. People ask, “What is that from? That’s one crazy scar!” If I’m too tired to explain what happened, I go with the story of a shark attack. It’s way more interesting than, “Oh, I got hurt playing soccer.”

This scar has taught me to never worry about the little things in life because there are so many other issues that could go wrong, and have gone wrong. So what if Wormie is ugly. He’s beautiful to me and that’s all that matters.