On Female Pain

How is it possible to be in this much pain, and not be believed? This question is informing a large swath of popular culture at the moment, though in that instance the pain referred to is typically emotional rather than physical. But there is physical pain, too. A recent piece made the rounds of the things people read problematizing the assumption of female pain that we all live with. That sex will involve pain. That the pain is not important.

Yesterday afternoon I was reduced to begging, in tears, on the phone, for painkillers, and I wasn't given any. I awoke from egg retrieval surgery writhing. The pain was acute. I was gasping. Tears sprang to my eyes. I can't properly account for the pain, or describe it. The nurse asked if it was like menstrual cramps, and it assuredly was not anything like menstrual cramps. It was a slicing and a burning. I begged for help. I sobbed. They finally relented and put Dilaudid in my IV. The pain receded into a dull roar, though it took away my equilibrium. I sat swimming in pain and confusion as my husband was brought back to me. I slowly dressed. They gave me a hot pad, which made my skin hot, and still in pain.

We got home and I was installed on the couch and almost immediately fell asleep, with my knees up, which I didn't think was possible. I was curled in sleep from the pain. I dozed fitfully in the last Dilaudid haze, and woke up with a tearing and a roaring and I started to cry.

I was told to take Tylenol. I did.

Finally, we called the doctor. Weeping. I was told they'd leave a message for the nursing team. The nursing team never called back. My husband called. They put him on hold to transfer him, and instead of transferring, they hung up on him. We called and called and called. I finally made the doctor's assistant go downstairs and physically locate a nurse. The nurse called back and told me that what I was experiencing was normal, and they would not give me a prescription, and they were sorry.

Earlier in this process I had an imaging procedure that involves rinsing my insides out with iodine. I experienced cramping during the procedure, and burning pain afterwards - for three weeks. I called them, worried. They said they doubted it was because of the procedure. I asked to be checked to make sure nothing was wrong. They said I should talk to my regular doctor. I said I didn't have a regular doctor yet, I had started treatment with the clinic the minute I moved to New York City. They shrugged and said it wasn't because of the procedure. I said it had begun right after the procedure, was occurring in the exact same region of the body as the procedure, and had never happened before. I insisted they look at me. They did, and shrugged. Nothing wrong here, they said.

Pain is temporary, fortunately. But when one is inside it, and it is bad enough, it becomes consuming. It replaces my identity. I did not recognize the woman who was weeping and begging on the phone last night. I knew I sounded like a manic drug addict. But I didn't know what else to do. How can you beg without begging? How can you convince someone that while most people do not experience "discomfort" like this after these procedures, that human experience actually falls along a bell curve, and out here, in the long tail, I am suffering so much that I do not even recognize myself?

It's hard not to read their persistent doubting of my account of my own experience of my body through a lens of gender. The highest ranking doctors in this practice are all men. Most of the residents and attendings are also men. The nurses are all women. The entire power structure of this system consists of well-paid men telling women that they should give over control of their bodies, that they do not understand themselves, that only expert men can help them. The fact that they cannot experience our pain, be it emotional or physical, means that the pain does not exist. We are as guilty of hysteria as any fainting harpy in Freudian Vienna. And it doesn't matter.

Bangles

Hauled myself out of bed at 5:15, unsure the state of taxicabs at that hour. To my surprise I got one almost immediately, and so rolled into the clinic before 6. Ten minutes with my eyes closed on a couch in the waiting room, and then ushered into the conference room for my pre-op orientation.

Parked in the conference room alone, filling out forms and wishing for death. Enter two women, my age or a little younger than me, clearly strangers also.

1: "It says here you have to take all your jewelry off for surgery. But I can still wear this, right?" points to gold bangle

2: "Oh I know! I hope I can wear it. I don't even know where the screw driver is!"

1: "I know! I'd have to, like, buy one."

Me, interrupting: "You have to take them off. It's surgery."

2: "I can't!"

1: "I haven't taken it off in, like, years! [to 2] They always want to polish it for me, but I'm like, no! I like it! It's my thing. I have foreign sand in there!"

Me: "Y'all are both wearing bracelets you can't take off?"

1 haughty: "Yes. They're from the seventies, like a love bracelet? The idea is, your lover screws it on you and then you can't ever take it off."

[Sidebar - I know this. They're by Cartier, and cost about one zillion dollars.]

2: "That's the whole idea. They're like a modern chastity belt."

Me, having had no coffee, so dangerously free of filter: "You mean, like a handcuff? That's fucked up."

THUD

Anyhoo. Onward to retrieval tomorrow!

Well Well Well

Six nice plump little follicles in there. Tonight, my friend Jane will come over to give me a shot. Tomorrow bright and early I go to my orientation. And Tuesday at 8 am, we see how many eggs are warming inside me right now.

This is the farthest we've come, Succotash.

The farthest we've come.

Are you in there right now? I guess we'll see.

Morning Farm Report

Well. Would you look at that.

Three or four follicles on the right ovary. Another four or five on the left. All about the same size.

Scanned by none other than Dr. Big Guns himself.

Now I'm home waiting to be told what my medication regimen will be for the next couple of days while L is out of town.

I don't know, Succotash. We keep this up, we might even make it to egg retrieval. How wild would that be?

Jackhammers

At six I heard the dog lie down heavily, with a thump, and then I heard a faint whimper. I've been worrying about him. The arthritis in his hips seems to have worsened. We're giving him a pill in the morning and at night now, to help him be comfortable, but old age comes for us all, and the arthritis will only get worse. He's a brave boy, and when his pills make him comfortable he wants to romp and play. He's still my baby dog, stuck with the hips of an old man.

I was awake anyway. I slept on my neck weird the night before and then, with a locked-up muscle under my scapula, I went on a march in midtown Manhattan with about half a million other people, holding a sign over my head for much of that time. It felt necessary, and important, and I'm glad I did it. But then last night I added two more injections to the arsenal of pills rattling around in my own aging body, and now I feel like I've been hit by a truck.

I don't have the energy to take the ferry to Red Hook to look at art and see friends I haven't seen in a long time. I don't have the stamina to continue on to my sister in law's house.

I haven't even yet mustered the energy to get in the shower. Which, since ibuprofen is forbidden, is the only option on the table to unwind whatever is going on in my back. There are half a dozen things for me to do. Write this, write that. Research this, research that.

The dog and I are tired. And jackhammers are breaking the street thirteen stories down.

Damn, Yo

Clomid, man. It's no joke.

Just the act of sitting in a chair having someone give me a haircut, and having to hold very still, while mentally writing a cover letter for something, has now made me ready to take a nap.

Ridiculous.

Ridiculous.

Ridiculous.

Here We Go

Hello sweet imaginary Succotash,

Why would I assume you're sweet, first off? I haven't met you. You could be a demon beast for all I know. But right now, you are wholly hypothetical, and I choose to address you as though you are sweet. Never a moment's trouble. Easy. It's a fantasy, one shared by many no doubt, but intensified by how demonic is the process I am presently undertaking to grow you.

After tracking my ovulation date over Christmas and phoning it in to the nurses, I was told precisely when to start applying a hormone patch to my belly. My poor belly, used and abused even before being stretched out of recognition. Right now it has shadowy outlines of adhesive in three spots. I patched and patched and patched. I left my vacation early to be sure I didn't miss the window. I patched some more. My period didn't come.

"Where is it?" I asked the doctors.
"This happens all the time," the doctors said.
"Not to me. I have never been this late. Ever," I pointed out.
"Well," they shrugged. "Your blood work says you'll get it this weekend."
Then the shrugged me out of the room.

"It's the patch," said my new acupuncturist, who, poor creature, is also serving as my de facto therapist, since I tell her about my mood as soon as I show up.
"I thought it was," I said.
"It is. We can deal with that."

I resisted acupuncture. I'm not, despite being someone who tells woo woo stories, someone who is actually a woo woo person. But enough smart, educated women I know - at least one a scientist - said it was worth trying. I gave it a stab (ha! Oh, dear) back in Ithaca, and walked out halfway through. It hurt. And it stressed me out.

I warned my new acupuncturist about this on my first appointment. "I'm squeamish," I said. I didn't go on to tell her that my husband refers to acupuncture as witch-doctoring and that I thought it was probably all a load of hooey. But I suspect she could tell. "Squeamish" is code for other things.

"Don't worry," she said.

Anyway. My period finally started last night, about two hours after my acupuncture appointment, and with it came instructions from the doctors office to start my pills. We are off and running.

Here's the recipe for Succotash this time: Two 50 mg tablets of Clomid, at night. Plus prenatal vitamin with DHA. Plus small spoonful of royal jelly, per acupuncturist book. Plus L arginine supplement, which acupuncture book suggests is good for poor responders. Then, after three days of that, add 150 IUs of Follistim (which must be kept in the fridge, and injected into the tummy fat using a cool pen device). Also add 75 IUs of Menopur, which must be drawn up and mixed with diluent and injected using a disposable syringe, also into tummy fat, though it burns going in there, so sometimes I resorted to using my inner thigh. So we do all that for a couple of days. Then we get checked out again. I bring consent forms and a prefilled syringe of Ganirelix in my handbag and a positive attitude, which is hard for me early in the morning, but I'm pledged to do my best.

The details, Succotash. They're killing me. They're taking up so much room in my brain I barely have room for anything else. No wonder I feel so stupid and slow. I feel dense. Uncreative. And tired. 

What else have I done? I have stopped putting sugar in my coffee. I have stopped drinking alcohol. I am down to only one coffee a day. I am trying to prioritize sleep.

This regimen is probably going to last about two weeks. The goal, Succotash, is to get my follicles to grow. Last cycle I had one that drastically outpaced all the others and so there was no point continuing. It was a disappointment.

Waiting

"So it's Day 2, right?"

"No," I said patiently. "It's day negative one. My period's due tomorrow. They told me to come in anyway."

"Oh." More probing. "Yeah, I don't think we'll be able to start the cycle tonight."

"Well that makes sense given that I haven't had my period yet, because it's DUE TOMORROW."

"We'll see what the blood work says." 

*later*

"So it looks like maybe your ovulation predictor was off? Because you're still in luteal phase."

"I know. My period's not due til tomorrow."

"The hormones suggest it will be later than that, maybe this weekend."

"Okay."

"So just come in on Day 2, whenever that is, or next Wednesday if you haven't gotten it yet."

"Great."

*click*

"I'm not starting tonight, because I don't have my period yet. Shocker."

"Good thing you cut your vacation short because they told you to come in," said L.

"I have the same conversation with them every. Single. Time. I ovulate on day 10 or 11. I menstruate on day 28. They're always shocked! That's more like a 21 day cycle, they say. Well, shit, it's 28! Oh my God! Who knew? Could it be that the fact that my cycle isn't what you expect is somehow related to the fact that I am INFERTILE? HUH?"

"I know."

*sigh*

"I know."

New Year, New You

I have never been so fat in my entire life.

Okay, I can admit that by objective measures, I am not actually fat. But I am fat for me, and I am finding it upsetting. I am ten pounds over the weight that, for my thirties, used to count as "too many burritos." Ten pounds OVER. My pants are too tight. Panty hose waists roll down instead of digging in. I'm starting to panic.

"Do people always gain weight like this?" I asked the nurse, who was trying to hustle me out of the examination room.

"It's very common, yes," she said. She's heavier than me, and also I'm being irrational, so she wasn't in the mood to hear me complain. But learning that this is normal didn't make me feel better.

Sweater dresses, imaginary baby. Sweater dresses have replaced skinny jeans as my go-to lazy outfit this winter. Loose, voluminous sweater dresses. I've also just laid in a store of kale and unsweetened soy milk and chia seeds to put myself on a crash smoothie diet. It's possible some of this chub is the fault of our vacation in New Orleans, where food and liquor, both of it excellent, flowed freely and often. But even then, I've had vacations before. I never gained weight like this. Never.

Anyway. I'm home now, after a paint-by-the-numbers morning get started appointment where I learned that I have a couple of ovarian cysts the size of a fist hanging out in there, and so I can't start my new cycle tonight. I don't know why they had me come in before my period, but whatever. They've punching holes.

I'm due tomorrow. I will probably be told to come back in a couple of days, at which point we will see if the cysts have gone down, or if they're releasing hormones, or whatever the fuck. There's a good chance we'll have to push this cycle to February. Also known as one month away from forty-one.

It's a shame. I was feeling optimistic. I even made an acupuncture appointment for Friday, game to throw all the spaghetti at the wall and hope some of it stuck to something, somewhere.

Something. Somewhere. Just maybe not in here.