I scheduled surgery for Election Day partly to be funny (“wake me up when it’s over, haw haw”) but mostly because it was the earliest they could see me to remove the 7-centimeter endometrioma that had invaded my one remaining ovary. The surgery went well (as far as I know) and the doctor was able to preserve the ovary, which is very good news. He reported back to Richard (while I was still conked out)…
If I were to give the Universe’s writers’ room a note on this season of the show called My Life, it might say, simply: This feels like a bit much. Why force her to go through the emotional roller coaster of a miscarriage in order to discover the cyst? Seems overly cruel and unrealistic. Maybe save the miscarriage for another season. Don’t burn all your plot points at once. But the writers are the pros,…
Every spring the Bradford pear explodes in celebration of the season, raining white petals like confetti. Walking the greenway, seeing the confetti in the mud, this year’s celebration feels a little melancholy, like a birthday party no one came to. [][][] To slow the creeping infection of COVID-19, we’ve been asked to keep to ourselves, a kind of radical version of my own natural inclinations. Stay in your house as much as possible, and if…
I got a dead pixel recently. I was driving R and H somewhere and I saw it there, just north of my center of vision in my left eye. It was like a speck of dust, but hard around the edges. A pinprick in the sky. I looked left, it went left. Up, it went up. Down, down. Two years ago I learned that the squiggly little translucent worms that move across my vision at…
I need to say this right now: I am happy. I am grateful. I am in love and working hard and creating and thinking and striving and questioning and all the things that make me feel real and human and in progress. I don’t have doubts about the big questions in my life. Once upon a time I feared that I would never love or be loved. I am lucky that I have found someone…
I was sick the entire first half of 2017. It was a tour de force of ailments — sinus infections, ear infections, pink eye, strep throat — cycling through my body and returning at their leisure, like microbial timeshare owners trying to make their individual marriages work. I remember two low moments in particular in that span of months: 1. Sitting in the Walgreens well clinic exam room, my throat swollen painfully shut, unable to…
The CT scan showed that I’ve got chronic sinusitis plus a nasal septal spur on my right side, and that thing is keeping stuff trapped in my head that just keeps festering and perpetuating the gross cycle of crud in my skull. So I’ve got an appointment with an ENT to talk about my options. I’ve been doing nasal irrigation daily for a week or so and it seems to be working. In fact, I…
Well, that was interesting. This whole thing ended up with me getting a referral to a gynecologic oncologist, who examined me and recommended that I get surgery to remove the endometrioma, which had grown to 10 centimeters by the time I met with him. He did not feel strongly that the uterine fibroids had to go too, but he was fairly adamant that the cyst needed to go quickly, or else I’d risk it rupturing.…
Since March, I have now had four or five pelvic ultrasounds (yes, both the external and the internal probe Congress loves so much) and a pelvic MRI. Here is what we know: There are masses inside of me and they are growing, and they need to be removed. Here is what we think we know: One of the masses is an ovarian endometrioma the size of a tennis ball (and growing). Until late June I’d…
I’ve not been well since July 2. I don’t know what specifically is ailing me but it’s a little like the mystery bug that got me in 2009 that no one ever could diagnose. (Sans hives. So far.) I’m on a second round of antibiotics and I’m still prone to coughing fits. And headaches. It took Holden down too, and his teacher and some classmates. Whatever it is is no joke and has been hanging…
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