Before we get started with anything, please know that Fluid Pudding Dot Com is a safe place. I will NOT be talking about Miley Cyrus here. (I WILL be talking about my gynecological issues in a few minutes, and that’s SORT of related, but I see no purpose in trying to link my stuff to the stuff of a twenty year old girl. We all do weird things. Once, when I was twenty, my best friend and I took a midnight stroll from a friend’s house back to my dormitory. It was a super hot night, so we used the heat as an opportunity to be FEMINISTS and why can BOYS walk around without shirts but WE CAN’T?! Suddenly (SUDDENLY!), we each took off our shirts and walked down that back road wearing nothing but our bras and shorts (and shoes, as feet freak me out and feet on streets? stop it.). Because crazy things always happened to us, even though it was the middle of the night, a car pulled up beside us, and the car held two or three of our friends, and they sat there and talked to us for a few minutes as if nothing was out of the ordinary—as if they didn’t even notice that our shirts were wadded up and tucked into our shorts. Anyway, we didn’t have cameras on our phones back then. And thank God for that.
I’ve been wanting to talk to you about endometrial ablation for over a week now. Every time I sit at the computer, I think, “I really want to draw a picture of my uterus being ablated.” And then I grab some paper and draw a tube (my uterus) with something that looks like a curling iron stuck inside of it (the ABLATOR) and something’s not quite right, so I sit back down on the rocking chair and think about life and dinner and how this cardigan is absolutely perfect.
It occurred to me that I’ve ALREADY drawn pictures of my insides, and despite what I’ve been reading from The Bloggers Who Know How to Blog (I hate the word Blog. HATE it.), not every idea needs an accompanying image. I like to think that you are all smart and creative and can see things in your heads with absolutely no Sharpie prompts from me! Anyway. No drawings. Just a lot of words.
(The following few paragraphs are related to the monthly adventures of my insides in regard to the tossing of eggs and the stripping of linings. Proceed gently.)
When I was 18 (here I go again with the stories!), I was in the university marching band. I loved it more than I loved just about anything—not because of the actual MARCHING (I was pretty terrible at marching) but because of my fellow marchers. (I’m in touch with very few people from my university days. All of those people were in the band with me.) Anyway! My uterus! One afternoon I was in a friend’s dorm room after rehearsal, and I was complaining about how miserable I was feeling.
Friend, who was a male, so let’s call him Jason, because that’s his name: What on earth is wrong with you?!
Me: I can’t find it in me to march. I can’t run. Can you please turn down that music?!
Jason: Talk about your troubles.
Me: I don’t want to talk about it. Let me just say that it’s the hottest week of the year and I’m on Day 12 of my monthly lady thing and I’m cramping and…
Jason: YOU’RE ON DAY 12?! Isn’t that supposed to last for just a day or two?
Me: Mine sometimes lasts for more than two weeks. I want ice cream for dinner.
Jason then jumped up, ran to the bathroom, and came back with a lovely toilet paper pageant sash on which he had written Queen of Day 12. And I wore it to dinner, but never told anyone what it meant.
Let’s jump forward 15 years. I’m now 33 and I’m pregnant with Meredith and as much as I didn’t love that pregnancy (I had to have my appendix out at the end of my first trimester, and that really sucked.), I DID love not having my extended monthly adventures. When Meredith was born, I nursed her (which made my periods much lighter because of SCIENCE), and when I stopped nursing her we decided to have a Harper and then Harper was born and she nursed FOREVER, and suddenly I had experienced five years with little to no cramps/migraines/et cetera. I’m now at 773 words. Are you still with me?
Anyway, now that I’m 43 and it’s time to put on some yoga pants and Chaka Khan my way through the rest of my days, I really don’t feel the need to be “forced” into staying at home two days out of the month because of heaviness and cramping and CRAMPING and HEAVINESS. Also, if I still had the banner, I could have worn it earlier this week if you know what I’m saying. And you do. Because you’re smart!
Last week I visited my gynecologist and she said the following words: “I’ve been wanting to do an ablation on you for a long time.” Who am I to stomp on her dreams?! (Although I wasn’t really expecting it, she also asked me to remove my pants. After examining my color, streak, hardness, cleavage, specific gravity, and crystal form like a thorough geologist would, she said, “Your endometriosis is back. I can feel it up in your cul-de-sac. We can take care of that during the ablation.”)
The ablation will take place during the holiday season. And that’s pretty great because although I know it’s a quick and easy outpatient procedure, I’m now picturing myself like Deborah Kerr on Christmas Eve in An Affair to Remember. I’m in a red robe (I already have one!) on the couch (I have one of those, too!) and Cary Grant lets himself in and I do not move from the couch and suddenly Mr. Grant realizes that I’ve been ablated and THAT’S what has prevented me from meeting him on the top of a building somewhere and we embrace and I say something like, “If you can paint, I can walk; anything can happen, don’t you think?”
And I Will Not Move From The Couch. (Christmas is less than four months away. In other words, less than four Queen of Day 12 banners to go!) ‘ ‘ ‘text/javascript’>