My Panties

I know that caught your attention, but this is really just a TMI, girl talk post. Feel free to click away if the words "tampon" or "uterus" make your squeamish or blush. In fact, go look at this to clear those words from your mind.
My laproscopic surgery is next Wednesday the 12th. In preparing for the possibilities of anything from them finding nothing to the horribly unexpected "total hysterectomy with bilateral salpingo-oophorectomy" (removal of uterus with cervix, tubes and ovaries) I have been reading some sites' lists of stuff I might want for recovery. I figured I'd prepare for the worst and then it won't happen. (That's always been my theory and it's always worked for me.)
Two of the things I had to buy gall me. Menstrual pads and granny panties.
I find pads gross for many reasons I won't enumerate, but if I have bleeding after the surgery I will not be able to use tampons, so I bought a pack of the hated items and hope I do not have to use them. I didn't even buy the cloth kind or the eco-friendly disposables, because I reallyreally don't even like the bad, plastic-y kind, but at least they lock "stuff" into their chemical goop. (By the way, I highly recommend Natracare tampons. They're just like old school Tampax or o.b.--depending on whether you get the applicator or not--but no dioxins, plastic or rayon. And they're an ethical business.)
And granny panties? Nuh-uh. I have never worn them, so buying a "7 pairs for the price of 6 100% cotton Hanes Briefs" pack at Target was somewhat shaming for me as someone who takes great pride in not haven "given up" on my looks and clothes. Even worse? They apparently only make such things in little girl patterns and colors. There was not a pack of all white briefs and there were no black briefs at all. So now I own seven pairs of 100% cotton granny panties which make me look like a very over-sized toddler. The worst? I bought them a size too big so they will be super comfy. Lets hope this doesn't lead to something awful, like a fondness for the damn things. Right up there with a taste for human brains in my book. Scratch that. At least zombies are cool, for crap's sake.

It's my job to worry.

I was trying to remember where I had heard a quote something like my title when, for no particular reason, I remembered one of the quotes I had to memorize for Mr. Lavelle's notoriously difficult AP English final in high school. In 1990. (Looking back, I realize now that the final was actually really easy. A gift to us, the students he had made think all year long, but we all liked the mythology behind "the hardest final ever" which never changed a single freakin' question from year to year.) Mr. Lavelle was my favorite teacher ever, so in his honor:

Not tho' the soldier knew
Someone had blunder'd:
Their's not to make reply,
Their's not to reason why,
Their's but to do and die:
[Alfred, Lord Tennyson's "The Charge of the Light Brigade"; Googled only for correct punctuation]

Anywho, that totally has nothing to do with this post, but it's weird what you can suddenly remember 20 years and some months later when you honestly can't recall what you ate today.

So, "Forward, the Light Brigade! Charge for the guns!"

It suddenly occurred to me today that when I have my larproscopy on January 12th, it's possible that rather than finding nothing and leaving me to wonder what to do with this pain and other "stuff," or finding endometriosis and/or adhesions which may cause me to lose my uterus, that a third possibility is that I might lose it all. Or most of it. It honestly hasn't popped into my thoughts the whole time I've been agonizing over whether or not to have my uterus removed if they find nothing when they open me up. (The doctor said that sometimes some people find relief from pelvic pain of unknown etiology by having a hysterectomy. I won't be doing that as there are too many other things that might go wrong: cystocele, hernia, worsening of my IBS, greater surgery aggravating my autoimmune illness/inflammatory response, vaginal, vaginal vault, urethral, small intestine or rectal prolapse and, ironically, pelvic pain.)

This lead to a rather intense anxiety attack with much sobbing. The thought of taking hormones for the rest of my life, when I am not yet 40 and my family has a life expectancy of around 80 or 90 years, usually, terrifies me. I like the way I look, flaws and all, but I do not want to gain more weight, I don't need any drier or pimplier skin and I am not fond of synthetic hormones to begin with. (But the nearest bio-identical doctor is near Philly. Too far for me to travel for a doctor's appointment; I grumble over traveling to Hershey, for crap's sake!)

All of this on top of the mystical proclamation that recovery will take four to seven days to four to six weeks depending on what they have to do, leading me to wonder how employed people plan for this shit.

So, I worry, but that is nothing new. It's my job to worry.

The Scoop Which Hopefully Doesn't End in "The Scoop"

I talked to my doctor for a while on the phone today. We went over all of my recent problems, the tests results and further actions we can take. In the end I believed we've done everything which can be done without looking under the hood. So I told him I'd like to go ahead and schedule a laproscopy to check for adhesions and endometriosis, neither of which usually show on ultrasounds or x-rays. The scheduler will be calling me soon to set up a pre-op evaluation appointment and the laproscopy itself.
My decision on my uterus is this: If there is something visibly wrong with my uterus itself when they open me up, then they can take it, regardless of how bad the "it" is. I don't want to have to be opened up again because the scar tissue or endometrial tissue grew back. However, if there is nothing visibly wrong I will not have a hysterectomy. There is too much too risk for not much guarantee of relief. A uterus helps work as a placeholder for keeping everything structurally sound and without it, I feel there is too much of a chance the empty space could cause as many problems as having the uterus there what with my IBS and the inflammatory actions of my autoimmune disease and all of the other "normal" things which could go wrong.
If I do have my uterus removed, I will be asking them to take my cervix with it. I've had abnormal paps several times, so at least the idea of not getting uterine or cervical cancer are comforting ones. Many women don't want to lose their cervix for sexual pleasure reasons, but I can honestly say I've never noticed any particular sexual gain from that bit of flesh.

MPT (Medical People Time)

So after more than two weeks for two blood tests (one of which was pointless as I'd just had it done) I finally called the gynecologist's office myself. His nurse just called me back and said everything is "normal." Bloodwork, ultrasound, etc. So I said, "Well, what's my next step? Because obviously everything is not normal in there." And she said she'd let the doctor know, but I should rest easy tonight knowing I don't have a tumor. Well, then, maybe they should have let me know that before two weeks plus had passed. And, also? DUH! Something is wrong they just don't know what it is yet...
ARGH!!!

A Pound of Flesh

Just as I was getting agonizingly tired this afternoon, I received a call back--finally--from my gynecologist. We chatted for a while and we agreed we should do some lab work to see where all of my hormone levels are in case this whole thing might be menopause hitting me in earnest. Yes, at 38 years old. We chatted a bit more about how I'd rather not do a laproscopic procedure (which could show endometriosis because that does not show up on ultrasounds) unless we had exhausted all non-invasive diagnostic measures. He said he totally understood and as we wrapped up the conversation he hit me with, "We really do need to have a serious discussion about hysterectomy at some point, though." Um, what? I was too stunned to say anything but the usual end of call pleasantries.
Hadn't this whole phone call just been about not wanting to do that unless absolutely necessary? Hadn't he told me that even if they see nothing wrong during a laproscopy they could do the hysterectomy if I wanted to do it because it may or may not help with the unknown problem? Now he's all like, "Hey, yeah, let's do this thing already."
I talked with Nate and reaffirmed that I would not have a hysterectomy if there was nothing indicating a need for one. Nate also said that if I get to the point where there is nothing else that can be done and Doc starts talking about it again that we'll get a second opinion or two or three.
Something has been bothering me during this whole thing, though, and that is this: All of my medical records from all of my doctors are available to all of my doctors since the are all affiliated with the same medical center. And both the gynecologist and the reproductive endocrinologist asked me about my moods and my Bipolar II in seemingly offhand ways and I'm always up for talking about it because I like to try to show people, that, "Hey, I do have a mental illness, but I'm okay and there is nothing scary or stigmatizing about it." Obviously, neither of them were merely curious but somehow connecting the mental health issues with my gynecological health issues. So it leaves me feeling like the diagnosis I am being labelled with behind closed doors is female hysteria. ("Keep her from breeding. Off with her uterus!")
At the end of the phone conversation I had with Nate I said, "Okay,well, I'll see you when you get home and, by the way, we really should talk about castrating you." He laughed nervously and said, "Um, what?" And I said, "EXACTLY! That is exactly how I felt after I talked to Dr. [name redacted]!"
I hadn't slept at all last night and was by this point trying to stay awake until bedtime, but the call and the dogs being snuggled up on top of me left me with little choice but to take a nap. I slept for two hours. I still feel utterly exhausted but I am quite worried that that small amount of rest will have me hanging out in Insomnia Cafe again, tonight...

blahg-er is blah

Words haven't been floating around in my head so much the past week or so. Images, ideas, pictures, maybe other people's words if I feel like reading for a bit but I'm just not chatty. Not in real life, not on paper, not on the screen. Or in a box with a fox eating lox.
I think the stressing out over the lady parts and the fact that I fucked up and missed my ultrasound on Wednesday and now have to wait until Election Day for the damn thing is just too much to think about so my brain has decided to just not think the way it normally does. Or I had a stroke. (Ah, just kidding. )
So Election Day promises to be... interesting? As I've said before, I do not have the good luck with which my husband has been blessed. For him November 2 is a promising day. For me? It's a terrifying prospect of Republithugs and hysterectomies.
On the other hand, if they see something during my ultrasound, even if it's not good, at least I'll have an answer and hopefully a treatment will be decided for me. Because if they see nothing then I have to decide if I want to roll the dice on a hysterectomy since "it may or may not help with the pain of unknown causes." I'll probably vote no; Nate feels the same. But we are both also hoping for an answer. Ack! This whole thing is just one big-ass conundrum. I don't want to have something "wrong" with me, but I know something is wrong because I don't feel "right." But the doctors--so far--say it is nothing, basically.


As a side note: I finally disconnected my Tumblr account from my Facebook account because I was overwhelming too many people with posts. I know I'm usually too prolific for some people, so the addition of tumblahgblahgblahg to my normal load of blergh scared some people off from reading my page at all anymore.