·My Uterus, The Car: Part I - Anticipation
I did not know until two days ago that the female uterus is shaped like a light bulb, and about the same size:
Which might, as it happens, explain this picture that was taken of me about 6 months ago (and edited by a friend, thanks):
Why would anyone really care what size and shape it is? Me. Have to.
Mine is full of tumors.
Don’t be alarmed, I am not sad, or worried – because they are removing it. Monday. September 11th. Never Forget. Well, it was the only day my doctor had an opening for surgery. I am not scared, as I had exploratory surgery in May at which time the afore-mentioned tumors were found. So now I pretty much know what being put to sleep is like – AWESOME; I know what the recovery is kind of like – not so awesome, but not awful. I get to be off of work for minimum 4 weeks. And get a sad and paltry 60% of my salary (and after taxes, it’s more like 40%, which I guess is better than zero, but still sucks.)
So, my boyfriend had the brilliant idea of making a kind of chronicle (I would much rather refer to it as a “true-life novella”) out of this whole situation, which may be funny, serious, and hopefully, give you women out there that might be experiencing some of the same problems I had some insight and knowledge.
I’ve had problems all my life with my girl stuff. I remember being in Utah in the 5th or 6th grade and having to be sent home because my cramps were so terrible – like small, evil gnomes kicking me with pointy-toed boots from the inside of my stomach and cackling while they did it (oh yeah, all the Mormons didn’t really help, either.) I am sure that’s pretty common for most, but then when I got into high school in Arizona, I kept having my period for 7 days…10 days…seriously, sometimes 21 days. THAT is not that common. And it blew. I worked lots of crappy mall jobs (to be discussed in another episode) and I swear, all the change that I made went to tampons. Okay, and a horrible fringy leather jacket. So at the ripe old age of 16, I got on the pill – and not for sex, but for trying to regulate my cycles. Halle-fucking-lujah, it worked.
But only about for 2 years.
Enter college. Drop out of college 3 semesters later – change pills. Work more crappy mall jobs – change pills. Go back to college at 21 – change pills. Graduate from college with an extremely useful English degree – change pills. Get married – change pills…you get the idea. Every year or two, I was on a different brand, or dosage, or whatever kind of pink-pony magic that exists inside a fucking birth control pill. Either way, I would only be “normal” for about 6-12 months. I remember during my second and more successful college career, I was poor and couldn’t go to the campus clinic for pills (due to East Texas Bible Belt Public University Pill Authority) so I went to Planned Parenthood. Not a bad idea, except I think I got what amounted to be the Satan Batch of Birth Control – as soon as I started taking them, I was immediately paranoid and did not leave my sad apartment for 3 days, sat on my couch thinking the floor was lava, and crying. Planned Parenthood insisted nothing was wrong, and I took their word for it, even though I knew something very weird was going on with that particular pack. Hey, maybe it was because I had changed pills more frequently than Madonna changed her image. I felt like shit, all the time. Only now do I realize how much I felt like shit, and why. I was slowly developing tiny baby tumors and all of my normal cells were using all their energy to ward off the devils growing inside of me. Fatigue? Sheeeyit, I have no idea how I took 15 hours a semester, worked a 40-hour work week, and still had energy to drive around in my awesome 1970 Ford Maverick, which had very little braking capacity. I think I was a walking zombie.
I should have probably prefaced that portion of the story by saying I was not a big party girl – didn’t really drink a lot, didn’t do drugs, so there was a great deal of particulars that I could NOT choose on which to blame all of this crap. When I got out of college and got married, the whole 21-day period really was no big deal since I didn’t have much sex with my then-husband, who later divulged to me his homosexual inner self after 3 years of marriage. We will get to that in another chapter as well. Basically, this was my and only my problem to deal with, and no gynecologist gave two shits because a) the tumors were not visible yet and b) according to all doctors, at 26 you are not allowed to make the decision on whether or not you want children. Which I did not. And knew it quite well, even at 17. One OB/GYN had the audacity to proclaim to me, after a sonogram, that my light bulb/uterus was tilted in such a way that I would never be able to have children. Okay, I said, Hurray! Hell naw. You still get to keep that little problem-causing motherfucker for another 10 years, because evidently at 35 some sort of Christ-like transfiguration takes place and I all of a sudden know FOR SURE that I don’t need or want children. Why 35?? It is the glorious Magic Number at which a woman can get mammograms paid for by her insurance (even though many women younger than that have had breast cancer, and even if she has a history of breast cancer in her immediate family it WILL NOT BE COVERED…at least in my insurance plan, which was Aetna at the time.) It is also the mysterious age at which a woman can suddenly make her own decisions about her own body, no matter how traumatic and painful and miserable her life has been up to that point. Holy shit. Had it not been for my present doctor, who is nothing less of a Goddess and a Saint rolled into one, I would probably not be having this surgery…I would still be fucked up. I have seen no less than 10 different specialists in my lifetime – none could tell me what was wrong with me until I met The Incredible Dr. Maryann Prewitt. The dramatic and ridiculous thank-yous will ensue later. Which brings me to the impending surgery.
It’s a hysterectomy, folks! But wait, there’s more. Here’s where all of the women reading this need to perk up and pay attention, since I know that at this point you might be drifting off into thought processes that include going to Zappos and checking out shoes. Don’t, because this part is super-important. There are different kinds of hysterectomies, and probably only one kind that your doctor will tell you about and/or elect to perform. Most common is the vaginal hysterectomy, and that’s really only if you have few problems – if you have tumors, this is NOT an option. Next, the abdominal hysterectomy, which leaves a nice scar right at the top of your panty line (or a C-section type scar,) and THIS is the surgery that, if you have had complications like mine, your doctor will most likely recommend and leave it at that as your only option. Which sucks, and I am here to get the word out about LAVH (Laproscopically Assisted Vaginal Hysterectomy, the third and not widely performed) kind. Here is the deal with LAVH – it requires more skill for the surgeon, but leaves you with much smaller scars and much less recovery time. It costs more, and takes longer to perform, which means more time under anesthesia, which sounds scarier – but your organs do not get moved around as much as in an abdominal hysterectomy, and all your shit in there stays fairly intact after the surgeon removes the crap parts. Many doctors will not give you this surgery as an option because, believe it or not, they get paid LESS to perform it, even though the cost is more to you. Many doctors will not give you this option because they are “old-school” or “lazy” and do not want to take the time to learn about new procedures. I have talked to so many women lately that live in remote locations (like Indiana) where their doctors never even MENTION this possibility to them, which is unfair, so consider yourself armed with knowledge now. If you live in an area where this is not offered, go to a bigger area. I have not had the surgery yet, but I can tell you now without a doubt, it will be worth it. Unless for some crazy reason, it turns into an abdominal, and if that happens, I will let you know and we can all be sad together. This can happen. My chances are quite good that it won’t. I think. I am not normally an optimist, but I am trusting my doc on this one. We’ll see.
Anyway, I will be providing a running commentary as well as timeline for this shitty situation at this point in our saga. Timeline goes like this:
November 2005. My company, in their infinite struggle to afford insurance for the employees, change insurance and I can finally go to Dr. Prewitt again. I had been a patient of hers in 2000, but almost as soon as I went to her, my company changed insurance policies and I could not go to her any longer and it be covered. After that, I went to my regular doctor for my annual, and went to see another gynecologist who, in 2002, performed a hysteroscopy and saw what she thought were ovarian cysts. These were my options at 32: ZE-RO. There’s medication to get rid of the cysts, but this particular doctor was not interested in that as the side effects, apparently, were not good. So she sent me on my way with a smile and a “you’re too young to have a hysterectomy” speech. Thanks bitch, I’ll just keep bleeding every month all month long. Fun for me, nothing to do for you!!! I get to Prewitt 3 years later and immediately she gets me on track to get this fixed, whether it’s cysts or whatever.
January 2006. I have the first of what will be several ultrasounds, and unidentified flying masses are discovered in my uterus as well as on top of my ovaries. Yay! The long trek to surgery is next, as the ultrasounds don’t really show what is exactly going on in there. So we decide in late April to take a little looky with a laparoscope and possibly remove, if possible, whatever is not supposed to be there.
April 2006. After spending two days too long in Vegas (3 days, not 5, is plenty when you are hovering on the elusive edge of middle-class,) I go immediately from having fun with the Clint Eastwood Dirty Harry Slot Machine to Doctors with My Slot in Their Hands. I cry uncontrollably as I am scared to death of the anesthesia, since I have absolutely no reference point for what it will be like. Surprisingly, it is awesome. When the guy says “okay, this might burn a little bit but then you will be nice and relaxed,” they are TOTALLY right. And it rocks. I dreamt about hamburgers and fries and pizza (oh yeah, I had not eaten anything but liquids for three days prior to surgery, nothing the day OF surgery, and surgery was at 4pm…needless to say, I was fucking hungry.) Waking up was ok too. Morphine was fun and relaxing. The two bad things upon waking up was scratchy throat from the tube, and being still hungry. I got to go home after about 2 hours. I remember the doctor telling me what they found, but I didn’t really remember anything until I called her the next day. No ovarian cysts…but FIVE TUMORS TAKING UP THE ENTIRE UTERUS. At this point, I asked the same question you are probably asking right now – why didn’t they just take that diseased hell-womb out of me right then? Tumors, unlike what I thought, are not soft and mushy. They are hard. In order to prevent an abdominal hysterectomy which at that time might have included a blood transfusion, they had to just get the fuck outta there. I’d already been under for awhile…no taking any chances. For which I am eternally grateful. So I go home with two incredibly small incisions – one in my belly button and another right above my pelvis – and begin to heal. I was back at work in a week. Two sucky things I remember about that week: my shoulder HURT, bad. Like I had slept on it wrong for about 45 hours. It was due to the carbon dioxide (or whichever one doesn’t kill you, I can never remember) that is in the anesthesia. Evidently it likes to go to the shoulder. It huuuuuurt. The other sucky thing was not being able to take the SuperStrong Sexy White Pain Stockings off until the night after surgery. Okay, I know that circulation is your friend, but FUCK!!! Those still weren’t as bad as the shoulder. All else was just kind of generally dull pain. Darvocet helps. Cleaning the bathroom because my mom was coming over the day after surgery was not a good idea. Neither was driving anywhere for a couple of days.
May 2006. We have to shrink the tumors in order to get them out vaginally, so this sounds like David Copperfield-type shit to me…but no, I get to have a shot. Unfortunately, it is not a shot that will make you feel like a happy drunk. It is a shot that will make you a RAVING FUCKING LUNATIC. It is Lupron, and while it works and is great, it seriously changes hormone levels. First symptom – hot flashes like nobody’s business. Women that have not had hot flashes, do not laugh at women that do. Imagine feeling like you are burning – I mean fucking on FIRE – from the inside out. I had to take cold showers to make it better, and I am usually cold all the time, so this is brand-new territory for me. Second symptom, night sweats. And it’s not just like it’s nighttime and you are sweaty. You wake up dripping wet like you just got out of a swampy, hot-ass river. It is gross, and I felt disgusting all of the time. My doctor prescribes Effexor, a drug I have taken before for depression and am familiar with, and the night sweats subside for awhile. Stay tuned - the part where I go insane is just around the corner.
June/July/August 2006. Cranky, hormonally over-wrought and stressed beyond the breaking point, I flip out at work sometime in late July. I snap at a co-worker, which is kind of a boring and hum-drum way to flip out, but hey. Being the Queen of Mediocrity, it’s the best I can do. Oh, I also sob like a homeless drunk by the time I get to the doctor’s office. She orders me to stay home from work for 5 days while my medications are adjusted, as the Effexor is no longer working (ha HA, no shit.) I am prescribed Wellbutrin and a higher dose of Premarin and Xanax, because the Lupron has seriously driven me to the point of sheer insanity and I don’t know how to think or act any longer. Fun. Keep in mind that I am not the type of person that really goes out for a lot of meds – not that I have some kind of moral issue with it, I just don’t really feel the need to medicate myself. That being said, I am thinking, “Holy shit, this is a whole lotta pills to be takin’.” Well, it appears we still need to wait longer for the tumors to shrink. Surgery date is now set for 9/11. No joke. I am more than psyched.
Week before Sept. 11, 2006. My company, once again in their struggle to battle the Demon-Dragon of Small Company Insurance Policies, changes providers on Sept 1. THIS IS BAD. Even though everyone including our insurance broker, my doctor, my employer, and Jesus knows that I am having no choice but to switch policies, I have a supremely bad feeling about coverage by the 11th. And with good reason, it turns out! Two days before surgery, my doctor’s office is telling me they cannot get the pre-cert for the surgery. As if I am not already crazed enough, I now have to get on the phone for hours on end and go to war with broker and new insurance provider to make sure I can even have my fucking surgery. I am in tears at the prospect that I might have to wait yet another week in what is seeming to already be the longest wait of my life. Somehow it all is pulled off, and I go to pre-op on Thursday, Sept.7th. YAAAAAY!
Pre-Op. I normally would not tell this part because anyone that has had surgery knows that pre-op is just a bunch of questions at the hospital and a bloodletting. However, the bloodletting will forever be etched in my memory. I have always been good at giving blood – I can watch, it doesn’t hurt, they can find the vein right off the bat, etc. Not this woman. I don’t know if it was my veins or a lack of skill on her part, but HOLY CHRIST ON A CROSS. She puts the needle in and all is normal. No blood is flowing. She puts the needle in a little deeper, still no blood. SHE THEN PROCEEDS TO DIG NEEDLE IN AND AROUND VEIN, going deeper and deeper until the needle is almost entirely inserted in my arm, no blood is coming out, and I am grasping the arm of the chair as if it might be the last thing I see before my life ends. It burns like frostbite inside my arm. Finally she admits defeat and releases the tourniquet (still with needle in arm) and VOILA. Blood. I want to vomit.
Pre-Op #2. On Sunday before the surgery I have to get more blood drawn. I recount my story above to the nice, new, harmless nurse that sits before me. She does not seem distressed by my story. I try not to flinch. It is better this time. And in a different arm. Still – show some concern. No pain has yet matched pre-op #1.
SURGERY DAY! It’s finally here, I am there on the dot at 8am, and I am ready to get this show on the road. About an hour and a half later, they wheel me back and all I can see for the future is awesomeness. I am giddy with joy.
The joy, my friends, is short-lived. Part II ensues.
I know. I have never looked more gorgeous, and the light is so flattering. My boyfriend did not get the shot in time for the completely gay thumbs-up sign. Maybe it was on purpose.
No Comments »
No comments yet.
RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI