When The Tide Begins to Turn

What do getting pilled, riding the second wave of feminism, and being sliced into like a New York Strip Steak all have in common? Hint: not a baby.

You came back! Or you’re here for the first time. Thank you. Please subscribe! You’re reading part 12 (Part 12!) of my pilgrimage to life without large granite boulders inside my middle and lower regions. It’s been hell. But heaven is taking over! If you start here you’ll get the whole story. If you start here you’ll be caught up enough. If you would rather read something that has no relation to any of it, try this! Or have a listen to a podcast episode.

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When the Tide Begins to Turn

It has come to this.

As far as I can recall there was never a conversation about sex between my grandmother (who I called Mother) and me other than something that went like, “I don’t care when you do it or who you do it with, just tell me so I can get you on the pill first.” And that was that. For Mom had Annie (older sister but really my mother) out of wedlock, and Annie, me. So Mom was done with what was called in her time, the Rhythm Method¹ or as she put it, Vatican Roulette. The fear of pregnancy (Oh, the horror!) was baked into the very marrow of my bones before I was born. If the study of embryology (microchimerism?² Admittedly out of my depth) is correct – it was already well within my DNA as I was being formed.

Why do I begin this (what is now part twelve of this journey) with the pill of controlling birth?

Because I did what my mother told me to do. It was never discussed or even assumed that I would “wait” for marriage. And I do not doubt that at some point there will be a twelve “parter” on that topic too. (But I might have to charge you for it). Because they didn’t. Wait, I mean. Because with the entrance of Feminism du ’72, my mother not only rode, she positively surfed that second wave. At high tide.

And on the back of that wave I was going to live her, er…sorry, “my” dream. I was not going to get stuck barefoot and pregnant. My arc would not be skyrocketing toward the doubtful trajectory of unplanned pregnancies in this family! (Picture me with my forefinger firmly pointed upward, arm raised… on a soapbox.)

Stay with me, I am not getting off course.

I began taking birth control pills at age twenty-one. Whether or not I was in real need of them. And what a comment that is. Because today I would say I was never in need of them.

At age twenty-six, five years later, my first fibroid was detected. I stopped taking the pill soon after I began having migraines around the age of thirty-seven. By that time, the fibroids were already well on their way to taking over my uterus. So, mission accomplished. I didn’t have a baby out of wedlock.

In fact, I didn’t have a baby ever.

In fact of fact, I have never been pregnant.

But looking back today, if I could choose all over again knowing what I know now… I’d much rather have delivered a child, much rather, than what is the current state of our story today:

Histrionic Fibroids.

Can I prove that the birth control pill created an uproarious nightmare of hormonal imbalance for twenty or so years causing oblong mal-shaped fibrous tissue to rapidly replicate itself until I looked six months pregnant at age forty-five? No, I cannot prove it.

But when you know, you know.

I did ask Dr. Goodman the Fifty Billion Trillion Galzillialianillllion dollar question, though:

“Why?”

Why did I get these? Diet? Pills? Why wouldn’t they go away with years of dietary changes, tons of vitamin C? Why wouldn’t they stop when I cut out all the caffeine, gluten, and every other possible joy of eating and drinking? What else could I do?

     “Nothing. It’s genetics,” he said. “You just don’t have the gene that tells your body not to do that.”

Huh. (Really? Because that just sounds too too simple.)

Well. Pressure off then! Dr. Pepper here I coooooooome!!!!

I had been told by Dr. Goodman that the report after my MRI stated that there were at least (at least!) 12-14 large fibroids, not one smaller than the size of a lemon, and one the size of a grapefruit, (that grapefruit wench was the one causing me to look lopsided), within my uterus. Beyond that I was told there were just “too many to count”. For there were dime-sized, nickel-sized – younameit-sized pieces of fibrous gravel residing in crevices, hidden beneath the mal-fruit, shoved within the very walls of uterine lining.

All of these intruders buried like impacted wisdom teeth in my petite body. Dr. Goodman was surprised so many could be growing in such a small skeletal frame. (That’s because if I’m going to do something, I commit.)

But no doubt, there they were. Hanging out in all their goth formals at the Uterine Ball. None afraid of the midnight toll.

But in the fashion that much of this story has gone, what was going down would go up again.

Dr. Goodman told me I was a good candidate for robotic surgery.

If this sounds like Star Trek, then I’m describing it well. For the gurney sits under bright lights with doctor’s aides at the patients’ sides while the surgeon sits clear on the other side of the room at the control panel maneuvering tiny scalpels - remotely.

Star Trek indeed.

The “up” news of this downward trend was that instead of a scary machete slicing my lower regions up the length of a New York Strip Steak and - this is the tender point - scooping out all within, including my uterus, there would be approximately five or six bite-sized incisions across my stomach, west to east, like a dotted line, through which an infinitesimal “thingy” would pull out the offenders. Bit. By. Bit.

Leaving my uterus intact.

You may be thinking why, at 45, I was so keen on keeping my reproductive organs.

Hope.

Even the doctor spoke of hope. Because there’s always hope.

And I like the idea of keeping all my parts. Don’t you?

Instead of six months in recovery not being able to go to work, I would be walking out of the hospital the same evening, and with the aid of a nice narcotic cocktail or two, I would be up and walking as normal within days –  and back to work within three weeks! (They knew I sang, danced, and occasionally lifted toddlers for a living. The singing was just as strenuous, for stomach muscles are required, same for the lifting.)

Take THAT, HAAAAAAM!

This is great! I’m going to sail in there one morning, be out by three or four at the latest, rest up on a narcotic martini and back to life in a jiff!

Well, it almost…almost… happened that way…

For the enemy of my healing, who had been thwarted (Curses!), wasn’t about to go down without a fight.

1. Now called Natural Family Planning

2. The sharing of DNA between mother and child (my own summation, far too simplistic a definition)