buy the time …

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 30^th, 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.