The Fall of the Uterus of Usher
I'm so glad to be back with you. And I come bearing stories.
To clarify for those who aren't aware of exactly what I was having done this morning, the procedure, Essure, involves placing implants in each fallopian tube, which cause the formation of scar tissue to block the egg's pathway into the uterus, thus preventing pregnancy. This is done non-surgically, through a hysteroscope threaded into the uterus through the cervix. It is very safe, very effective, and comparitively painless.
Two statements, both true, one ironic.
Truth: I didn't get sterilized.
Irony: And yet I am sterile.
Yes. You read that right.
The doctor couldn't perform the procedure because apparently my uterus is already so webbed with scar tissue and adhesions that she could not thread the hysteroscope up to reach one of my fallopian tubes at all. The other is completely blocked by a mass of scar tissue. In her opinion, I am extremely unlikely to ever become pregnant, and if I did, my uterus would be unable to expand, meaning I would miscarry very early on.
Go on. Do what I did. Laugh. Laugh until it fucking hurts. Laugh until the tears roll down your face. It is funny. It's so funny I don't know where to start. It's so fucking funny I don't feel like I have to make a lot of jokes about it, because this fucking stands alone, the situational equivalent of a visual joke. I literally can't make it funnier.
Little did I know that when I referred to my uterus as a spider-infested crevice inhabited only by the wailing spirits of the dead, I was actually not wrong. It is like a haunted house, a cursed place never meant to hold life.
We don't know what caused this. I have never had unprotected sex with anyone but Sargon, and I have never contracted any venereal infections. The doctor says that to create the kind of scarring she saw, it likely occurred when I was very young, still a child. It might even have gone unnoticed. In other words, it was just one of those things. And I never knew. The doctor never suspected, either, since my medical history is so very responsible and so very clean. It completely blindsided her.
Irony: I lied about being sterile for many, many years, from the ages of about 14 - 20. I claimed a "fever in childhood" had rendered me unable to have children. I felt guilty for lying, but in actuality, I was telling the truth . . .
When I first went to see her, the doctor asked what I'd been using for birth control, and when I indicated that our primary method for years now has been condoms she seemed surprised that I'd never become pregnant, since apparently most people who rely on them as the sole method of prevention usually have at least one accident. Today, she told me this is probably why I never "oopsed." My uterus is like the surface of Mars - seamed and angry, hostile to all life.
So, anyway, there is still a small chance that I could get pregnant, and since the results of that could be Very Very Bad, my doctor has graciously agreed to help me out by making sure that it never happens, even though it actually probably can't. I'm calling her tomorrow, and we'll decide if I want to try for a tubal, or if I'll just go for an IUD just in case and get my husband clipped. I'm leaning toward the latter, provided scar tissue won't impair implantation of an IUD.
Right now, this minute, I want to say to all of you thinking about being sterilized with Essure that while she was unable to complete the procedure, she told me I will still have just as much pain as if she had. Just as an experiment, because I want to know how bad it is, I have not taken any of the pain pills she gave me. I haven't touched the heating pad.
I am telling you right now that it only hurts as badly as a mild period. Your mileage may vary (especially since I have a high pain tolerance and my adhesions are probably why my periods are more painful and plentiful than most), but I wanted to throw that out there for reference. It's just not that bad at all.
If it had worked, and I'm incredibly sorry it didn't, it would have been worth it a hundred thousand times, and a thousand times again. So please don't be afraid of the pain. It's nothing. I'm not in any real discomfort, and I wasn't even sick from the drugs. Everything went very well, except for my long-suffering doctor not being able to fit the implants in because of the hellspiders that have been spinning webs in my living-deathcradle.
Here's where I wax philosophical.
While I was waiting to go into surgery, I explained to Sargon that one thing bothered me about all this. I'm cutting myself out of the Mother role, going from Maiden to Crone. A lot of people have given that up in pursuit of other things, goals spiritual and physical, lofty and mundane. I'm hardly the first. And yet, to someone very much raised with the triple goddess imagery of the life and spiritual cycle, it felt odd to contemplate damming my physical creativity up, to sacrifice it in the fullness of its power. I have such respect for life, and such holy dread of it, that I feared by giving this up, I was possibly performing an act of spiritual sabotage.
"You were never much for the Maiden, dear," he said. "But I think you'll make a great Crone."
Oddly, I'd never felt so complimented. I think he's right. I'm a dirty old woman already, thoroughly enjoying my years in a pretty young body, but halfway there already. I love crabby old women, and I have always understood that youth and age are just like the two wings of a Dutch door, separate but the same.
For all my pagan goddess fertility-cult fears that I was doing something vaguely blasphemous, I awakened and was told that the decision I was trying to make was so right my body had already made it for me years ago. Mother? It was not ever meant to be. I've been spending years duplicating a decision fated for me in my youth, woven with tangled threads of scar tissue into in the very fabric of my body. I am so very thankful that this is so. I don't believe in benevolent fate, I don't believe that the things that are best for us will always happen for us. I don't believe in the best of all possible worlds, and I don't believe that everything works out for the best. Which is why I am so thankful that fate struck in my favor this once. Even if it meant I went through all that trouble for nothing, it feels like my choice has been utterly, irreversibly justified.
I am thankful also, very thankful, for acceptance.
Irony: I'm thankful for acceptance because there are those stricken in youth with infections that destroy their ability to bear, and they live in misery, more pain than I can possibly imagine, trying to undo what fate has wrought. I can't imagine the difficulty of trying to come to terms with it. I know now just a fraction of the pain of being jilted like that. I felt a little of it today, when I learned that what I wanted was gone.
When I found out the procedure hadn't gone through, I cried. I cried like a baby once I got home and the happy drugs wore off and I realized that all the suffering I've gone through to get this done was for nothing. I broke down and sobbed like a whipped bitch.
Whether I've talked about it or not, there has been a lot of suffering involved - almost all of it spiritual, which is harder for me to bear than simple pain. I felt - I still feel - like I've been thrown back to square one. I may not be able to have children, but I'm not trusting myself, my life, to that chance, especially not now that I know it could be dangerous. Just to be safe, I still have to go through just as much trouble to end my fertility as I would if it were intact. And to have my best plan yanked from under my feet in one fell swoop - that hurt. It still hurts in a way I cannot even begin to describe. All my other options are poorer ones; I'm now stuck weighing unpleasant choices. Some of them frighten me a great deal. Others are just crappy choices.
I'm not sure what lies ahead, or what I'm going to do. My hands feel empty, and I still feel like I might cry or scream or hurt someone, because I am very frustrated and very, very angry at nothing in particular. I had a plan and it failed. It derailed everything I had planned for the coming months. I truly had not forseen this. Yes, I'm afraid, now that I have nothing to work for. I feel adrift, empty, confused.
Yet the truth is there, in my body. For once, my anatomy agrees with my spirit, and my spirit with my heart. There is only one path, and I have to walk it. There's no question of whether I should do this. Not now.
And this strange dress fits me, doesn't it? It fits what I am. What I will become. I will be silver-haired and old, with graceful blue veins in my birdlike hands, and skin like old parchment. I will be wise and gimlet-eyed and old/young, I will be acidly insightful and sometimes cruel. I will not be gentle, I will not be kind. I will carry candy, but I will wield a sharp tongue from between viper teeth. I will never have children, because I was not meant to. Ever. I will simply be me, as I have always been. It will be simply wonderful.
Fear Me. I have the alpha uterus. It is battle-scarred and angry. It is wounded and treacherous. It lies in wait to devour the unwary. It is savage and hostile and probably dangerous when provoked. It is a nightmarish place, full of blood and old wounds and angry, angry pain. And I have discovered today that it is not as much of a traitor as I had thought. That it, like me, is only flawed. And its flaws are suddenly what make it so very, very dear. In its horrible way, it has only been trying to do what is right.
Let us salute my salted, scarred, bitter womb that will never bear, and let us salute Fate, who works in mysterious ways.
link
To clarify for those who aren't aware of exactly what I was having done this morning, the procedure, Essure, involves placing implants in each fallopian tube, which cause the formation of scar tissue to block the egg's pathway into the uterus, thus preventing pregnancy. This is done non-surgically, through a hysteroscope threaded into the uterus through the cervix. It is very safe, very effective, and comparitively painless.
Two statements, both true, one ironic.
Truth: I didn't get sterilized.
Irony: And yet I am sterile.
Yes. You read that right.
The doctor couldn't perform the procedure because apparently my uterus is already so webbed with scar tissue and adhesions that she could not thread the hysteroscope up to reach one of my fallopian tubes at all. The other is completely blocked by a mass of scar tissue. In her opinion, I am extremely unlikely to ever become pregnant, and if I did, my uterus would be unable to expand, meaning I would miscarry very early on.
Go on. Do what I did. Laugh. Laugh until it fucking hurts. Laugh until the tears roll down your face. It is funny. It's so funny I don't know where to start. It's so fucking funny I don't feel like I have to make a lot of jokes about it, because this fucking stands alone, the situational equivalent of a visual joke. I literally can't make it funnier.
Little did I know that when I referred to my uterus as a spider-infested crevice inhabited only by the wailing spirits of the dead, I was actually not wrong. It is like a haunted house, a cursed place never meant to hold life.
We don't know what caused this. I have never had unprotected sex with anyone but Sargon, and I have never contracted any venereal infections. The doctor says that to create the kind of scarring she saw, it likely occurred when I was very young, still a child. It might even have gone unnoticed. In other words, it was just one of those things. And I never knew. The doctor never suspected, either, since my medical history is so very responsible and so very clean. It completely blindsided her.
Irony: I lied about being sterile for many, many years, from the ages of about 14 - 20. I claimed a "fever in childhood" had rendered me unable to have children. I felt guilty for lying, but in actuality, I was telling the truth . . .
When I first went to see her, the doctor asked what I'd been using for birth control, and when I indicated that our primary method for years now has been condoms she seemed surprised that I'd never become pregnant, since apparently most people who rely on them as the sole method of prevention usually have at least one accident. Today, she told me this is probably why I never "oopsed." My uterus is like the surface of Mars - seamed and angry, hostile to all life.
So, anyway, there is still a small chance that I could get pregnant, and since the results of that could be Very Very Bad, my doctor has graciously agreed to help me out by making sure that it never happens, even though it actually probably can't. I'm calling her tomorrow, and we'll decide if I want to try for a tubal, or if I'll just go for an IUD just in case and get my husband clipped. I'm leaning toward the latter, provided scar tissue won't impair implantation of an IUD.
Right now, this minute, I want to say to all of you thinking about being sterilized with Essure that while she was unable to complete the procedure, she told me I will still have just as much pain as if she had. Just as an experiment, because I want to know how bad it is, I have not taken any of the pain pills she gave me. I haven't touched the heating pad.
I am telling you right now that it only hurts as badly as a mild period. Your mileage may vary (especially since I have a high pain tolerance and my adhesions are probably why my periods are more painful and plentiful than most), but I wanted to throw that out there for reference. It's just not that bad at all.
If it had worked, and I'm incredibly sorry it didn't, it would have been worth it a hundred thousand times, and a thousand times again. So please don't be afraid of the pain. It's nothing. I'm not in any real discomfort, and I wasn't even sick from the drugs. Everything went very well, except for my long-suffering doctor not being able to fit the implants in because of the hellspiders that have been spinning webs in my living-deathcradle.
Here's where I wax philosophical.
While I was waiting to go into surgery, I explained to Sargon that one thing bothered me about all this. I'm cutting myself out of the Mother role, going from Maiden to Crone. A lot of people have given that up in pursuit of other things, goals spiritual and physical, lofty and mundane. I'm hardly the first. And yet, to someone very much raised with the triple goddess imagery of the life and spiritual cycle, it felt odd to contemplate damming my physical creativity up, to sacrifice it in the fullness of its power. I have such respect for life, and such holy dread of it, that I feared by giving this up, I was possibly performing an act of spiritual sabotage.
"You were never much for the Maiden, dear," he said. "But I think you'll make a great Crone."
Oddly, I'd never felt so complimented. I think he's right. I'm a dirty old woman already, thoroughly enjoying my years in a pretty young body, but halfway there already. I love crabby old women, and I have always understood that youth and age are just like the two wings of a Dutch door, separate but the same.
For all my pagan goddess fertility-cult fears that I was doing something vaguely blasphemous, I awakened and was told that the decision I was trying to make was so right my body had already made it for me years ago. Mother? It was not ever meant to be. I've been spending years duplicating a decision fated for me in my youth, woven with tangled threads of scar tissue into in the very fabric of my body. I am so very thankful that this is so. I don't believe in benevolent fate, I don't believe that the things that are best for us will always happen for us. I don't believe in the best of all possible worlds, and I don't believe that everything works out for the best. Which is why I am so thankful that fate struck in my favor this once. Even if it meant I went through all that trouble for nothing, it feels like my choice has been utterly, irreversibly justified.
I am thankful also, very thankful, for acceptance.
Irony: I'm thankful for acceptance because there are those stricken in youth with infections that destroy their ability to bear, and they live in misery, more pain than I can possibly imagine, trying to undo what fate has wrought. I can't imagine the difficulty of trying to come to terms with it. I know now just a fraction of the pain of being jilted like that. I felt a little of it today, when I learned that what I wanted was gone.
When I found out the procedure hadn't gone through, I cried. I cried like a baby once I got home and the happy drugs wore off and I realized that all the suffering I've gone through to get this done was for nothing. I broke down and sobbed like a whipped bitch.
Whether I've talked about it or not, there has been a lot of suffering involved - almost all of it spiritual, which is harder for me to bear than simple pain. I felt - I still feel - like I've been thrown back to square one. I may not be able to have children, but I'm not trusting myself, my life, to that chance, especially not now that I know it could be dangerous. Just to be safe, I still have to go through just as much trouble to end my fertility as I would if it were intact. And to have my best plan yanked from under my feet in one fell swoop - that hurt. It still hurts in a way I cannot even begin to describe. All my other options are poorer ones; I'm now stuck weighing unpleasant choices. Some of them frighten me a great deal. Others are just crappy choices.
I'm not sure what lies ahead, or what I'm going to do. My hands feel empty, and I still feel like I might cry or scream or hurt someone, because I am very frustrated and very, very angry at nothing in particular. I had a plan and it failed. It derailed everything I had planned for the coming months. I truly had not forseen this. Yes, I'm afraid, now that I have nothing to work for. I feel adrift, empty, confused.
Yet the truth is there, in my body. For once, my anatomy agrees with my spirit, and my spirit with my heart. There is only one path, and I have to walk it. There's no question of whether I should do this. Not now.
And this strange dress fits me, doesn't it? It fits what I am. What I will become. I will be silver-haired and old, with graceful blue veins in my birdlike hands, and skin like old parchment. I will be wise and gimlet-eyed and old/young, I will be acidly insightful and sometimes cruel. I will not be gentle, I will not be kind. I will carry candy, but I will wield a sharp tongue from between viper teeth. I will never have children, because I was not meant to. Ever. I will simply be me, as I have always been. It will be simply wonderful.
Fear Me. I have the alpha uterus. It is battle-scarred and angry. It is wounded and treacherous. It lies in wait to devour the unwary. It is savage and hostile and probably dangerous when provoked. It is a nightmarish place, full of blood and old wounds and angry, angry pain. And I have discovered today that it is not as much of a traitor as I had thought. That it, like me, is only flawed. And its flaws are suddenly what make it so very, very dear. In its horrible way, it has only been trying to do what is right.
Let us salute my salted, scarred, bitter womb that will never bear, and let us salute Fate, who works in mysterious ways.
link