I have been the luckiest girl this past Thanksgiving week! I got to see my babies in DC and my babies in Pennsylvania. I don't think it gets better than that. |
| Guess who he was actually pointing at? |
I started off my weekend in DC at National Adoption Day watching my little babe C get his forever family. There were lots of tears, tons of smiles, and giggles galore. (Which wasn't exactly expected given the projectile vomit I got hit with the night before. Gag face but I love him so much it don't even matter.) I am such a lucky girl to call his family my family. I strongly believe that you get to have two families in life. Your family of origin, and your family of choice. Matthew and Patrick and their kiddos are my family of choice. I am so grateful everyday that they welcomed me in to their family when I needed one the most and my family of origin was on the other side of the country. They have taught me so much about compassion for others, intentional parenting and unconditional love. I love them to pieces and am so glad that C baby got to join them for real and for always!
After a whirlwind weekend in DC, I headed to Pennsylvania to meet my newest nephew Uncle Phil and snuggle the Chim and Josie. Thanksgiving has been an Aunt Megan holiday for the past few years, and it has become a tradition that I look forward to SOOOOOOO much. Aunt is my favorite title. (Just until I get the title of Her Royal Highness, obvi.) I was greeted at the airport by my most wonderful brother and the cutest niece and nephew ever. I am so happy to be able to be there for a whole week, and am so grateful that I get to snuggle these babes. I spent the entire week snuggling, feeding, tickling, and playing.
All of this baby snuggling has been quite emotional for me. I know! Megan? Emotional? What?!?! It's not a thing. It's totally a thing. I know I talk about it a lot, but for those of you in the universe of the interwebs that haven't heard, I had a hysterectomy this summer.
This blog is about to get real. And REAL long.
A hysterectomy at 30 wasn't something I was expecting, and it absolutely wasn't something I welcomed. I was diagnosed with Complex Hyperplasia with Atypia which is an early sign of endometrial cancer. It is treated two ways, and the less radical way was to load me up on high dose hormones. My body hates artificial hormones of any kind in even a very low dose, and lets me know how much it hates them by throwing giant blood clots up to my lungs. Super fun. Not. So we went for the radical approach. All said and done, it was about 4 weeks from the time I found out I was going to need a hysterectomy, to the time I got one. Not exactly a ton of processing time.
TMI ALERT
(If you don't like to discuss lady parts, congratulations! You're part of the system of patriarchal oppression and you should get over it, but I'm going to give you a heads up anyway so you can look away if you choose because I'm nice like that.)
I have had lady bit problems all my life. They peaked in the summer of 2012 and I was at a loss as to what to do. I couldn't really even talk about my issues (still kind of can't, obvi because I call them lady bit problems and issues instead of what they really are) without using some sort of euphemism because I wasn't sure what was allowed in normal conversation. I never wanted to gross anybody out, and I was looking for a man, so I definitely didn't want any of them to know about my lady bit dilemma. So I suffered. My close girlfriends (shout out to AM, RJ, DL, MP, EB and the many more who put up with my dramatics) knew, but nobody really had any advice to give other than to see a doctor. And sympathy. Lots of sympathy. I am so grateful for the ears and shoulders I was allowed to moan to and cry on during one of the most difficult times of my life up until then.
So Mount Saint Helens, Niagara Falls, and/or The Red Sea commenced. It was super fun. The best part was that I couldn't ever gauge when it was going to happen. I loved that the most. I remember one day I got ready for work and everything was normal so I took the metro in to work and hit up the ladies room before I went through security at my job site that day, and lo and behold the Falls were rushing! I had to feign illness - I totally told them I threw up (Damn the patriarchy!)- and take a cab home praying the whole time that I didn't bleed all over the cabbie's seat. He would have been pissed.
I couldn't leave my house when Mount Saint Helens came a-calling because I had to be in the bathroom every 20 minutes or a clothing change was necessary. Believe me, people remember when you come back from the bathroom wearing a different outfit and it can lead to a lot of weird questions. I took seventeen years in the bathroom when I did venture out crossing my fingers that today wouldn't be the day. I carried around the BIGGEST purse known to womankind, because I essentially had to carry a diaper bag around with me 24/7. I had to change the type of underclothing that I wore, because it wasn't conducive to having to use tampons and pads and still getting bled on.
I finally had had enough and took myself to see the doctor. This is a whole other story that I will eventually write a blog post about, but at the time I didn't have insurance. I looked around at my options, and the only place that would take me as an out-of-pocket, walk-in patient was Planned Parenthood. It definitely wasn't my first choice, but it was my only choice. I walked in there hoping to just get the care I would need to be able to live my life again without the fear of having to melt and die if ever my little lady bit secret was accidentally revealed. Via an accident. It was my worst nightmare. I did get close one time when I was with a friend coming home from karaoke one night and I fretted the whole way home. I jumped out of his truck and down my legs it went. I was SO glad it had waited until I was all the way out of his car, and that I was wearing black pants. Black pants are my best friend.
I got my first pelvic exam (Yay me!) and the doctor asked me 372 times if I was sure I was a virgin. Apparently they don't see very many 27 year old virgins at the DC Planned Parenthood clinic. I was seriously going to kick her in her vagina if she asked me one more time. It was just a reminder that I was 27 and single, and not having babies.
Everything checked out with my exam, and she simply wrote me a prescription for Oral Contraceptive Pills. The pill. Birth Control. Blah blah. I took them faithfully at the same time every morning and after 7 straight days of the heaviest bleeding I had ever had, I called the clinic back and asked if that was normal. They told me that it was and just to continue taking the pills and everything would be fine. I called back every 4 days after that because I didn't stop bleeding for THIRTY. FOUR. DAYS. You read that right. 34 days! The nurses at the clinic just continued to tell me that some bleeding was normal, and if I was really worried I could go to the emergency room and blah, blah, bullshit. Of course I wasn't going to go to the ER! I was nervous about how much everything was going to cost in the first place so the ER was out of the question in my mind. That and I dislike doctors, and had never been to the ER in my life. So I stuck it out. It finally, mercifully stopped and a week later I was in the exact place I didn't want to be - the ER - with a giant pulmonary embolism. I was the .01% of people that have one of those incredibly nasty side effects that doctors are supposed to tell you about but they don't always remember to. That is also a story I will chronicle for you at a later date. It's a fun one. :)
So the birth control had to stop. The synthetic hormones were a large contributing factor to my PE and the doctors told me that hormones were simply not an option for preventing pregnancy. Of course preventing pregnancy wasn't the first thing on my mind. The Red Sea was far more pressing. No one agreed with me though because in their minds the most pressing problem was that I had just died and could potentially die again at any moment. Dumb doctors. Didn't they know the more pressing thing in my mind was that I was bleeding to death all the time?!?! Is there such a thing as quality of life? They may have gone to medical school, but they sure didn't know how to listen.
Fast forward three years. I had had a period for three straight years. I was spending $200-300 a month on feminine supplies and couldn't stand the surprise all the time. Some days it would be very light and other days I would be in the bathroom every 10 minutes. And there was no way to predict which day would be which. I had moved to Iowa by that point and was finally in a place with good insurance and decided to try to fix it again. The Falls were starting to get out of control again so I made an appointment and went in to see an OB who was actually a midwife. She and I both agreed that a Mirena IUD would do the trick, and I wouldn't be at risk for another PE because it only has a very small amount of progesterone which isn't "thought" to cause blood clots and the hormones are localized. Meaning none would hit my blood stream, triggering another PE.
After a week of Niagara Falls again I ended up back in the ER with a PE. So. Much. Fun. They told me it couldn't happen with an IUD, and of course, me being me, I was the .01%.
A couple of weeks of the Red Sea later I was back in the OB's office, this time with the actual doctor. I explained in very careful and exact detail how much I was bleeding. Including the fact that Depends were now my source of underclothing because nothing else would allow me to be outside a bathroom for longer than 10 minutes. He said, get ready for it, it's going to be good, "Women come in here all the time telling me they are bleeding to death, and they aren't." Not kidding. Word for word. I have a witness. Not only did he not listen, but he brushed all of my concerns away like they were nothing.
Now I am the first one to admit that I can present information in an incredibly dramatic way, but when it comes to medical things I would much rather not be sitting in a doctor's office so I don't generally exaggerate my symptoms. But he seemed to think that I wasn't worth listening to so he did an exam and sent me on my merry way.
Three days later I got out of bed late on Sunday morning and couldn't really breathe as I walked myself the fifteen steps to the bathroom. I of course called my dad who is my voice of reason and he suggested that perhaps I ought to take myself in to the ER. I hate the ER. I had already been there twice in the last month and was definitely not wanting to go in again. After all, I had just seen the doctor a couple of days before, and he told me I was fine. Right? Well the voice of reason prevailed and I texted my best Iowa friend Cosette to see if she was available to perhaps take me in to the ER. I have a nasty habit of driving myself to the ER when I probably shouldn't. :) I decided to take a shower because I was pretty sure they might need to get up in my lady bits, and a girl should have clean ones in my humble opinion. I couldn't breathe by the time I got out of the shower. I had just enough air left in me to throw on a Depends and drop to the floor before I passed out. The one thing I remember is that I was absolutely terrified that someone was going to have to break down my door to get in and whoever it was would find me there wet, and in just a diaper. I managed to reach up and grab a shirt and pull it half way on my body. So if any peeps were to bust in on me they would have gotten the most beautiful view of their lives! Me in a diaper and a crop top. Best. Day. Ever.
Cosette came to my rescue and took me in to the ER. It turns out that the reason I couldn't stand without getting woozy or breathe so well was because I had lost about half my blood volume over the last couple of days. Imagine my surprise! Luckily not-so-nice-or-attentive OB was in the hospital so I could say, "I told you so!", but I didn't have the guts to do it. He finally admitted that perhaps there was a problem, and took me in for a D&C.
My pathology report came back a few days later and my best-friend-doctor the OB gave me my diagnosis. I think he was getting my not so subtle hints that he may not be my favorite person and he referred me to a Gynecologist Oncologist. Heaven only knows that I wasn't going to let that man do anything else to me.
I saw the GYN ONC (that's what the HysterSisters call them) and he walked me through my options. Of course because of my blood clot history there was really only one option and that was a radical hysterectomy.
I was devastated. I'm still devastated. As a younger more naive Megan I had said that kids weren't my cup of tea, but as an older and probably not so much wiser Megan I desperately wanted them. I love babies. I love kids. I wanted to raise babies and send them in the world to treat everyone they encountered with love, kindness and respect. I wanted to send more love into the world. Also not to brag, and this might be a delusional statement but I think I'd be a bitchin' mom. And there I was sitting in a doctor's office having someone tell me that that was no longer going to be an option. Of course being a mother wasn't off the table, there are things like surrogacy and adoption, but all I could think about was that my body was made to have babies. And now it was betraying me yet again. In a way that I didn't think it ever would. I had never thought about my womanhood being necessarily connected to my lady parts but with the idea that those parts were no longer going to be a part of me ... it slapped me right in the face. I was also heartbroken because even though I have some ambivalence about my church, I was taught that women had the divine gift and responsibility to bear children and now that that was off the table I felt like I was less-than. Not worth very much. Or perhaps anything at all.
I was 30 and about to lose the ability to have children, and facing an unknown cancer diagnosis that could potentially be nothing, or something huge.
The surgery ended up going much better than anyone had expected and the pathology came back with clear margins. Yay for no cancer! Cry face for no uterus. I went in to the see the GYN ONC for my one week check up and when I expressed my feelings of sadness over the fact that I let him cut out what I thought was a perfectly good organ and not find any real cancer he patted me on the back and said, "You're going to need to get over that." I shit you not. Where do these men come from?! And who taught them bedside manner? They all need to go back to school and take a lesson in sensitivity. Especially being in the specialty that they're in. You can't tell a 30 year old that they need to get over their feelings about losing their ability to have children when you've never experienced being a woman. I wanted to ask him how he would feel if I castrated him and all of his children and grandchildren were then nonexistent (even though it probs would be quite the same thing). There was no reason to dismiss my feelings, but he thought that he needed to do just that.
Of course I lost my mind at him. My emotions were all over the place and I'm not exactly the calmest person under the best of circumstances. Once the tears started flowing and the hysterics settled in, he then sat down and spent the next 20 minutes giving me the eternal perspective speech. I moved to Iowa and got a Mormon surgeon. Seriously. What are the odds? I let him talk but the running commentary in my head was, "Shut up. Shut up. Shut up. You can't have a life that you always thought you wanted and tell me to wait for the next life to have mine. Also where do you get off bringing religion into this? All I needed was an acknowledgement of my feelings." He also told me a story about his residency where he delivered twins from a 65 year-old grandmother who was a surrogate for her daughter who was born without a uterus and blah blah blah. I didn't hear very much of what he said because the condescending pat on the back and immediate dismissal of my feelings had turned me completely off. Afterward he made sure that I didn't hate him and that we were okay with each other. I love that he felt the need to make himself feel better. My mom was with me and thought it was so nice that he took the time to talk to me, and I could have gotten on board with that if it hadn't been for the fact that he only took the time to talk to me because he was trying to fix something that he royally messed up. He did have the good sense to tell me that if his wife had heard what he said to me she wouldn't be very happy with him, so at least he acknowledged some wrong doing. It's more than I can say for douchebag OB.
So here I am almost 5 months after my surgery snuggling babies I desperately want to snuggle and underneath the absolute joy there is an undercurrent of utter sadness. I love these kiddos so much and it is quite painful to think that I might not get that someday. I know there are options like adoption and surrogacy, but there is something about bringing forth life (that sounded so lame I know) that really resonates with me. I also at this point, can't imagine myself doing surrogacy. I think I would just be angry watching someone else carry my baby, and I think I would feel weird about how invasive it would have to be when there are tons of babies out there that already need love. I can adopt. I feel as though I will adopt, and I feel strongly about fostering to adopt. I know it can be difficult and painful to have a child with you and then have to give it back to someone else, but I truly believe that I can love a child unconditionally for the amount of time that I have them, and if that is what their parents need to get a little respite time and work their things out, I can provide that. That does mean that I probably will never get to have and to hold an hours-old baby. I won't get the luxury of being able to breastfeed. I won't be able to experience being pregnant. All things I think I will have to mourn for a long time.
There will be moments when I feel totally at peace with what has happened, and then something will slap me in the face and I'll be mad and angry and feel a total sense of loss all over again. I'm hoping that those roller coaster rides will go away eventually, but for now all I can do is hold on, keep on keeping on, and snuggle all the babes that I can for as long as I possibly can.