I hate this.

Still nine days until my appointment with the GYN surgeon. In those nine days, I can:

1. Eat all the sushi in Colorado.
2. Decoupage an entire dining room table.
3. Make a plaster cast of myself, paint it in a macabre style, and stand it in the window to discourage intruders and visitors.
4. Create a crude robot babysitter from parts found on Free Craigslist.
5. Memorize the script to The Thorn Birds (starring Richard Chamberlain), produce one-person re-enactment.
6. Make Pfeffernüsse three times.
7. Reorganize everything in my house by color.
8. Paint a fantasy Vulcan-eared self-portait.
9. Grow back 1/8" of hair on my head.
10. Jog to Denver and back four times.
11. Put together anything from IKEA... WITHOUT instructions.
12. Line up all the pasta in my pantry, end to end. Paint it red and pretend I have lined up all the blood vessels in my body like that weird medical factoid suggests.
13. Write the Great American mini-novella entirely in Pig Latin.
14. Bathe Lola the Great and recover from injuries sustained.

    

    Lola the Great and Brad

15. Convince myself that my fallopian tubes have grown back together in a coup attempt to have more miscarriages.
16. Convince myself that I have uterine cancer and every second is a day closer to inoperable.
17. Go completely nuts.

Strange places

It can happen to even the happiest of persons. Stuff and Things pile up, and they mix with a wretched cocktail of hormones that have lost their climate control. I fall into a place. There are no windows. No doors. No one to share the Stuff... and Things... I am all alone in a world of full of people. And with all the people, I could stop being alone if I could open my mouth and say, "help."

But I don't want to. 

Because what would it mean? I'm just sad AGAIN? Annoyingly glum? Crazy? Weak? Broken? Bad investment? Attention whore?

It's a strange place. And it's familiar at the same time.

Thus Spoke Uterothustra

When Veronica was still just an hourling, the Womb of Doom struck again. It had been but a few hours since I'd had a c-section and been tidily stitched up (according to the bragging doctor about his GLORIOUS stitchjob), when I hemorrhaged like a fiend. A combination of postnatal neglect and stubborn steel-trap cervix caused trouble. Intense agony. I had a team of five doctors, and a multitude of nurses, the machine that goes PING! and a very nice lady with an ever-present needle of something always to my left listening to me swear like a sailor who was being murdered by an acid-drooling alien. I thought I was going to die that night.

...But let's back up a smidge.

I was 8 months pregnant with Veronica. She asked about my postnatal birth control. My brain split into atoms, reconvened in a laser-like focus on her face, thunder and lightning about my head, "THE GODS DEMAND A HYSTERECTOMY AT THE C-SECTION!"

The Gods were denied. Apparently, doctors don't like to grant wishes at c-sections. Chickens.

So I agreed to a meager compromise, a tubal ligation. Not what I wanted, but at least there wouldn't be anymore miscarriages to trifle over.

So fast forward to NOW. I have increasingly horrible displays of menstrual disaster, combined with hormonal roller coastering for the last year. The pain has been beyond control, the bleeding... Moses knocked on my door asking if he could lend some assistance. 

I found myself in the doctor's office with the wand monkeys, having a BIG FAT DUH ultrasound, "...unexplained thickened endometrium layer...."

"...Endometrial biopsy. It's a simple procedure, in-and-out, no big whoop, take an ibuprofen ahead of it..." and then I freaked out on her. There may or may not have been some hyperventilation, blackouts, drunken bar brawl verbiage. I've had two endo biopsies before. One involved vomit. The other involved Valium that may just as well been a Gummy Bear without the delicious sugar goo. An hour later, I regained my senses. In that time, I think my doctor may have had a drink or two. But she agreed to just refer me to the surgeon, since I "seem to be pretty ok with the more radical approach." I'm getting that tattooed somewhere.

The old ute and I have a contentious relationship. I won't cry too hard when she goes to live in a glass jar.

Stuff... and things...

First, a walk down memory lane, just to set the tone. You know, just in case there's someone out there so clicked without realizing what I'm probably going to discuss A LOT. If lady parts squeam you out, best to look away now.

We now resume our broadcast.

*tap tap LOOOOOOOOUD MICROPHONE SQUEAL*
Turns out I have more to say, after all. Stay tuned while I dust off the bloggy part of my brain.