Archive for February 2011
Baby on Bar
Posted on: February 22, 2011
It’s 2008; just weeks before my 27th birthday, my cousin and I sat down to plan our double-birthday March madness bash. With only five days separating our birthdays, March becomes an all out assault on being single and getting older in a city that makes it possible for you to never grow up. Anywhere else on earth the likes of a 34 year old single person who never married and never had a kid would be deemed broken, in New York they are revered as Gods – untouchables. In fact there is a growing number of twenty-year-old women chasing down the elusive “untouchables” to change their unsettling ways. George Clooney has made this chase an art.
My cousin and I thought we were going to be “untouchables” – never wanting to settle down. Our sign, Pisces – difficult fish to catch. We sat there at an Upper West Side dinner planning on inviting everyone we know to the swanky second floor midtown bar for our celebration. The drinkathon would be the Thursday night on the eve of my actual birthday. I told her how my mother concerned said, “I was married by your age.” That’s when we came up with FBA. FBA is a bet and stands for First B*tch to the Aisle (FBTTA didn’t sound as cool). The rules – who ever walks down the aisle first is the loser. If you got married first you were deemed Dead Bitch Walkin’. The loser was at the mercy of what the winner wanted them to do. My cousin new immediately what my punishment would be – a tattoo. I hate needles. She loves tattoos. I had to think about mine for a bit, but it takes awhile for coal to become diamonds. If my cousin loss she would have to name her first-born child after me – Marisa could be a boys name. After hearing this, my cousin upped the ante, the tattoo had to now have her name or initials in it. She didn’t stop there – if one of us got pregnant before marriage we had to get a tattoo with the other person’s name and name the child after the winner. This scenario was never going to happen.
Now about nine months ago on the 4th of July, I helped my cousin pack to move into her new apartment. We were both nowhere near an aisle, but close like sisters. We hadn’t seen each other in a couple of weeks, something that rarely happened since we moved here together almost eight years ago. I asked the same question we had asked each other a million times, “What’s up with you?” Her response a bit unusual, “Do you really want to know?” Jokingly I responded, “Let me guess I won the bet, your pregnant.” Calmly, with a subtle excitement in her voice, “Hope you’re ready to be an auntie.” I was excited, scared, jubilant, more scared and relieved that I didn’t have to get a tattoo. Little Marisa was on her way! Ever so ready, she looked at me, “I wanted to have kids by the time I was 30.” It hit me like a ton of rocks, I always thought we shared similar paths and all this time we veered in different directions – from thinking kids were just fun to look at from a safe distance, behind the glass of contraceptives.
It didn’t really hit me until a few weeks after, it was a Saturday night and my boyfriend was out of town. It was time for a real girls night. I was already out and dressed for some good ol’ bar hoping debauchery. I looked at my phone to find all my girls were now doing stuff with their husbands or fiancés. I called the dwindled number of single friends, called the two and neither picked up their phone. But there was always my partner in crime, my cousin. I went to dial and realized my drinking buddy was now creating baby buddies. My New York was changing; nothing was untouchable.
The nine months flew and there we were, two ladies of Manhattan, sisters created from the beating that this city throws at you, standing amidst the lighting fixtures at Home Depot. My cousin’s boyfriend was off with her parents looking for a drill while I stood there pushing the cart as she waddled beside me carrying 40 weeks of life inside of her. “Come out already, your auntie wants to play,” I sad as people eyes darted around us trying to figure out if we were a couple or sisters. “I’m ready,” she says with little care that people are looking. “Eight years ago when we moved to New York, did you ever think we would be walking through Home Depot while you were ready to pop.” My cousin is special, beautiful while being bloated, without looking at me responds, “Yes.” Her baby might not have been planned, but it’s what she had in plan.
She is getting the tattoo, she won’t tell me how my name is involved. Her boyfriend has vetoed a son named Marisa. The bet was still won by me, but my cousin really has the prize.
Now if the baby would only come out!
OVARY/under is 30
Posted on: February 16, 2011
There are no funny pictures of ovaries.
Well about a year ago I started this blog in the hopes that I would write everyday during the year before I turned 30. That experiment lasted 11 posts. It wasn’t for a lack of material. Everything crazy that could happen fell from the sky and smacked me in the face. To my kind cousin Niki, who missed reading them, she made me miss writing them. In the month leading up to my 30th, I would like to attempt 30 posts till I turn 30.
Now many people will say that 30 is not old. “30 is a new chapter,” one might chime to break the levity that 29 years olds face. Maybe it’s different for men than it is with woman. As I am fast becoming aware, my body is telling me that I am getting older and parts aren’t going to work like they use to. Mainly I am talking about my nether region, my south of the border, my sun don’t shine place, my baby making parts…I can go on. The truth is, it is not that a biological clock is ticking and needs to make something happen, it has to deal with what is already happening.
A few months ago I started to complain to my boyfriend about stomachaches. They started to become frequent and he felt I should go to the doctor. I threw out every answer to avoid a visit to the hospital, “I ate too much cheese” was my favorite. After awhile I think I just started eating cheese so I could blame it later. While at work one evening the pain was so debilitating that I couldn’t get up. My coworker said I should go to the ER. I didn’t eat cheese that day, so I had nothing to blame. I chose Roosevelt Hospital because it was closest to work. I called my boyfriend to tell him that I had errands to run and that he should just go to his place. Being that it was 11pm at night my lie was transparent and he knew I was going to the hospital for my mysterious cheese haunting. After the first 4 hours and a second cursory visit from a doctor, he determined that it wasn’t my stomach at all but my ovaries. For the most part a woman’s ovaries are a benign feature on the female form until they want babies. They are more of a nuisance, part of the circuitry that makes us bleed for a week. But when a doctor mentions your ovaries, they suddenly become very important, what defines you, what makes you a woman. He wouldn’t go into what he thought might be the problem, but that I needed more tests. After 4 more hours, the doctor came back to do a sonogram. My boyfriend asked if I wanted him to stay, I nodded yes. Then the doctor pulled out a blue dildo, that just happen to have a camera at the end. My boyfriend and I locked eyes and almost simultaneously I nodded for him to leave and he kindly said he would step outside. The doctor, was very good looking but we could not determine if he was gay, straight, metro began poking around. It hurt like hell. As I watched the handsome doctor and the kindly overworked nurse through the frame made by my spread knees and thighs, I did what anyone would do in my position. I made Fraggle Rock jokes. I decided that my lady area was a land where puppets could seek refuge. I was nervous. I was scared. I was exhausted and all I could do was picture Technicolor stalactites shimmering behind furry creatures breaking out in song. Thanks Jim Henson.
Let's go down to Fraggle Rock
Then he saw it. A distortion. Something that could not be explained and needed further tests as this sonogram was outdated and not very clear. They wanted a gynecologist to have another look. What were the Fraggles doing down there. The doctor was trying to rule out if I needed surgery. To do what? The doctor then looked at me with a reassuring smile, “It could be a number of things but we just want to make sure. One thing could be torsion. We would then have to look into surgery.” I had a wedding to go to in 3 days, I couldn’t have surgery. After several hours passed an exhausted OBG doing rounds came in. She happened to train with my OBG. After a quick exam, the OBG asked how long I had been there, way too long, and then had a look of “this ER doctor is an idiot” when she told me, “You do not have torsion.” “If you did, you would be in a lot of pain, you wouldn’t be sitting here speaking to me. You wouldn’t be able to stand because your ovary would be twisted and that would result in us having to adjust it or remove it. But you do not have torsion.” She believed I had a cyst but couldn’t confirm till I got a more in depth ultrasound at 8am.
They allowed us to grab a bite to eat at 6am (which they’re not suppose to do), as we crossed the street my boyfriend eloquently suggested, “Never go to this hospital again, unless you’re shot on this exact corner.” I hope to avoid getting shot and that hospital. The specialist wasn’t even open till 9am, so our patience was running out, my boyfriend’s ran out four hours ago. Then after the ultrasound specialist saw me, she thought they might be cysts but didn’t have the authority to confirm that so I had to wait for another doctor to diagnose that issue. We waited and waited and one nurse tried to find someone for us to speak to. She said someone was coming. An hour went by, someone is coming. Another hour went by, someone is coming. Thank god for the iPhone. We looked up cysts on the internet and my symptoms, we didn’t need a doctor to confirm what WebMD explained. I marched over to the nurse’s desk and said, “I’m leaving, if I’m dying you can call my cell.” I had reached my limit and stomped out. It was a ridiculous experience only being seen 5 times, for less than 15 minutes a visit, over a 13 hour period. I’m not going to go into a health-care debate, but the system was screwy.
I made a regular appointment with my gynecologist and she confirmed, what I did have, cysts on my ovaries. Unpleasant news, but not at all life threatening. I had entered the age where this is common and my body was changing. This was now part of who I am. A debilitating pain that would happen every time they grew. It feels like continually being punched in the ovary, my back starts to hurt and then the tears come. Hoping that it would only inflame the one time, my mother told me the same issue started when she was 25 and it was a monthly occurrence. This would have been good to know beforehand. This was just going to happen, part of the “new chapter in my life.” It has happened a few times now, where the pain sets in and sadly my boyfriend has often been witness.
The pain hits. I begin to cry and this sets off a four-part sequence of crying:
Step 1: Cry because it hurts.
Step 2: Cry more because you are embarrassed that you are crying.
Step 3: Cry because, no seriously, it hurts like a b*tch and you need it to stop.
Step 4: Cry even more because you are crying.
The good news, it fluctuates and it could be nothing except a monthly dose of pain. The worse case scenario they grow really large where surgery is needed or it results in infertility. If the pain really dose become unbearable that might mean the cysts have grown so large it causes torsion. I’m not ready to think about my baby making parts. I’m not ready to ponder that kind of future. But my future started to punch me in the ovary demanding it was my present; they were not benign. My 30 year old body is asking questions I don’t have answers to and the Fraggles have no song for.
buy the time ... 