February 19th

So.

February 19th. That’s the day my uterus and I will part ways.

The day passed in a sort of hazy blur, with only a few events and conversations striking me as relevant or funny enough to make a note to remember them.

I dressed for my early appointment in jeans, a black cashmere sweater and some little black ballet-style flats and topped it all with my mid-thigh length khaki trench coat. It was cold out. Really cold. Darn cold.

The surgical nurse chatted with me as she made notations on my chart, checked my pulse and blood pressure. 123/82. It’s usually about 102/60. They call it whitecoat hypertension. There’s no pathology to it; it’s caused by anxiety and fear. And I guess we nurses aren’t immune–no matter how many patients we’ve wheeled into surgery. It’s different when it’s you. It just is.

Brenda breezes in to my exam room as I sit reading an old issue of Texas Monthly magazine. She talks to me about just about every subject under the sun but I find myself distracted by how long her hair has grown. Today it was freshly washed and looked all soft and shimmery hanging down her back.

The surgical nurse came back. Said the doctor needed to “sound” my uterus. That’s a new one for me. I didn’t know what that meant.

“He’ll use this stick that has graduated markings on the side. He’ll stick it in your uterus to measure its depth. Just like checking your oil.” Then she adds, “You can go ahead and undress from the waist down.”

Brenda stands up. “When her clothes come off, that’s when I leave.”

I take my shoes off and realize that I need to pee before having my oil checked. I slip them back on and walk out of my room to find Brenda leaning against the desk talking to the surgical nurse. I offer my explanation, “I need to use the bathroom first but it looks like there’s someone in there.”

Brenda says goodbye and heads for the door and I am once again mesmerized by her hair. I call after her, “I think your hair grew this weekend!” She calls back, “I’m getting it cut soon!” I frown a little as I turn to the bathroom.

It turns out that my uterus doesn’t need to be sounded because, after some discussion, the doctor and I agree that a hysterectomy is in my best interest. No sounding needed for that. But I’m not off scot free. I still need a pelvic exam. I sigh and scootch down on the table. The thought crosses my mind that as often as this man has seen me naked lately, he ought to buy me dinner.

The appointment winds to a close and we discuss dates for the surgery. “Well, I am going to visit my best friend on Valentine’s weekend and going to Chicago on March 27th. After that, I am going to San Diego in April. So, I either need to do it the week after Valentine’s or not until May.”

And February 19th is what we came up with.

Brenda stopped by my office and asked, “We don’t need to plan your funeral today?” She says this because last week, after my ultrasound confirmed that I would need a hysterectomy, I cried and asked all of my friends, “If I die, will you come to my funeral?”

Sharon assured me she wouldn’t miss my funeral for the world. I cried to my friend Angie, “Will you come to my funeral if I die?” She promised she would be there but added, “You won’t die in surgery, silly.” I ask Brad if I will be missed if I am gone and he is pained that I would have to ask. “I couldn’t live without you! How could you even ask such a thing?”

And then, I ask Brenda, “If I die, will you come to my funeral?” She laughs, “I’m not coming to your funeral; I’m coming to your surgery so you DON’T die.” I calm down a little and start sniffing back some of my tears. “But we should probably plan your funeral, just to be safe,” she quips.

So we spent the afternoon selecting pall bearers and polling the cath lab staff as to whether they will attend. We discuss details: I don’t want an altar call at my funeral. People can wear my favorite colors and be happy if they want but I will understand if they are too sad to pretend it’s a party. I don’t care if I am buried or cremated (though I lean toward cremation) so long as my children have a headstone to visit. No, don’t play “I Did It My Way” because I am not fond of Sinatra. I like the music from the Broadway version of The Color Purple. You can play that. Or else ask Sharon. She knows what music I love.

There were some who were not at all amused by my funeral planning. Brad and Sharon, to name two. But Brenda and I laughed and schticked for the benefit of anyone listening all afternoon and it actually cheered me up.

I must have a macabre sense of humor.

Or else I believe that you have to laugh to avoid crying sometimes. In this case, I had to laugh so I could stop crying. Brenda learned long ago that the best way to deal with crazy people is to jump into their delusion with them.

And it seems she is right.

February 19th. So be it.

girls’ room

I was a late bloomer. I took some teasing about being flat-chested and lanky and I always hated it when my friends started talking about being on their periods — because I didn’t start mine until I was fifteen. I felt like such a baby around most of them.

But when I finally did start my period, it was in the afternoon only about an hour before my mother was to drive me into town to choir practice. She was kneeling in her flowerbed, patting the dirt around some bedding plants she’d just transplanted when I walked over and blurted, “Mom, I started my period.” No embarrassment. No fear. Just matter-of-fact. Because I knew it had to happen soon. I think I even rolled my eyes a little when I went to the bathroom and finally saw the tell-tale spot in my underwear.

My mother got teary-eyed, stood up and embraced me. I stood there, arms at my side, refusing to act silly over it because, well, it’s not something you want someone else going gah-gah over. I mean, I had a reputation to uphold. I was too cool for all that. But I do remember her saying we needed to leave early for practice and get the necessary supplies. It was then that I proclaimed that I wanted to use tampons because I was a busy, active girl and I didn’t have the time or patience to be dealing with the more primitive sanitary supplies.

(What I didn’t reveal was that a year prior I had witnessed a friend’s “accident.” We’d been on a school trip and, when the bus stopped and she stood up, there was a dark stain on her pants and her face colored bright red as she tied her jacket around her waist to hide it. I was determined not to use her methods.)

We stopped at the store, bought the stuff and pulled up outside the high school. Mom offered to go into the bathroom with me in case I had any questions. I declined. I’d had sex ed and health classes. I had plenty of friends who already had periods. I could figure it out.

After that, I didn’t give the whole initiation into womanhood much thought. I didn’t let it slow me down, ever. I was on the swim team, I was a lifeguard, I was in the swing choir. I was involved in so many activities that I rarely stopped running and there were occasional days when I would become so exhausted that I’d stay home from school just to sleep.

It was important to me that I live my life, whether I was on my period or not.

And now, many years, three pregnancies and two children later, I find myself at the opposite end of the spectrum from that of the late-maturing teenager: I find myself looking down the barrel of a hysterectomy.

When I am wheeled out of the operating room in several weeks’ time, I will be free from periods for the rest of my life. Never again will I have to make impromptu trips to the store because I somehow failed to notice my courses were sneaking up on me. I’ll never have to worry about stopping every so often when we are traveling to prevent “accidents.” I’ll never wake up in the middle of the night to change the sheets because of a particularly vicious period.

But I’ll also be devoid of a womb. I’ll no longer possess the internal organs necessary to grow and nourish a fetus. I’ll never feel the fear mingled with excitement when my period is a few days late. I’ll always know, for sure, that I am not pregnant. (For the record: Yes, Brad had a vasectomy. But I’ve always kept the healthy fear that it could have been ineffective.)

It seems to me, even though I’m someone who’s never hung all of my femininity and womanhood on having the right parts, that it is emotionally and psychologically harrowing to give up the part of me that is magical enough to nourish and protect a child of my own flesh without any effort on my part. To give away my last chance to ever bring a child of mine into the world is . . . sad. To know that I will never, ever –even by accident–have a daughter is . . . a little heartbreaking.

And I am trying not to feel sad or heartbroken or harrowed. I wasn’t planning on having any more children. I strongly encouraged my husband to have a vasectomy; though I also cried from the emotion and finality of it all on the day he had his procedure, too. I know that I am nurturing and feminine and 100% woman whether I am possessed of a uterus or not. I know I will not stop being a wife, mother, sister, daughter, aunt, or someone’s best girl-friend once I am no longer part of the rite and ritual that comes with the ebb and flow of a menstrual cycle. (I said flow. *snort*) I am trying instead to remember how determined I was to never be slowed down by my period so many years ago. I try to remember that I was always determined to live my life with minimal interruption or hassle.

The truth is that now it is impossible not to have my life upset every month when the same uterus that is capable of growing a child begins to slough its lining and cause me excruciating pain. It’s become difficult to maintain the pace at which I normally live my life. Most months, I lose a day or two because I am in bed with a heating pad over my abdomen, counting down the hours until I can take more Tylenol and Motrin. There are also the days that I fear leaving the house because of the almost inevitable accident that happens no matter what kind of measures I take to avoid it. There’s the times I have to excuse myself from meetings to rush to the bathroom. There are the nights when my family eats McDonald’s or Ramen noodle soup for dinner because the cramps, the headache, the emotional lability and the general inconvenience of it all makes me a sorry dinner companion indeed — not to mention a sorry cook.

Surrendering myself to anesthesia and my surgeon’s skilled hands will enable me to get my life back. Once again, I will be able to live my life the way I want to live it, at the pace I want to go, and with the energy and enthusiasm that’s been sapped from me over the last couple of years.

It is still important to me that I live my life, whether I have my period or not. And this time, it seems that the only way to do that is to embrace the last part of that statement– the not.

thanks for the memories

We got a new mattress today.  We strapped it to our trailer, hauled it home, and proceeded to huff and puff to heave the old mattress off the bed and the new one onto it.

Our new mattress is soft and springy and comfortable and fantabulous.  I lurve it.

And yet.  I am kinda sad.  Just kinda.

Because the old mattress was the first major purchase Brad and I made together.  We bought it with our first income tax return (back in the day when we were so poor that the government gave money back to us instead of making us pay more).  We had been sleeping on Brad’s old queen size mattress up until that point and it had a sink hole right in the middle and we went to sleep on separate sides of the bed and woke up smashed together like sardines–which Brad loved and I did not.

Because I snuggled my oldest son into the bed with me when he was a baby and he nursed and then fell asleep in the crook of my arm and he was so warm and smelled so sweet and his sighs as he slept were so precious.

Because my youngest son and I snuggled on the old mattress and watched Tarzan approximately 3, 526 times when he had scarlet fever.  He would fall asleep leaned against me and I would lean against the headboard and sleep or read a book because he would wake up if I moved him and he was so very sick that I would have done anything to make sure he rested so he could get well.

Because I fell off of the old mattress a few years ago on my birthday after my friends took me out to celebrate and I had a few too many margaritas.

Because when I had my miscarriage and subsequent emergency D&C, I laid in the hospital bed yearning to be home in my bed, on my old familiar mattress and because it felt like an embrace when I was finally able to collapse onto it after that horrible experience.

Because I laid drowsing on the old mattress many a morning as Brad dressed for work and  then turned my face up for a goodbye kiss and neck nuzzle just before he left.

But it’s just a mattress.  This new mattress will have just as many memories attached to it with time.  I know that.

But I didn’t feel right sending my old mattress away without saying:  Thanks for the memories.

what I got for Christmas

Notice the smooching noises at the end.

(The shrieking in the background is my mother.  She covets my gift.)

[youtube]http://youtube.com/watch?v=_ICs5GX4K-Y[/youtube]

in case you were wondering

In my hair: Paul Mitchell Super Skinny shampoo and conditioner

On my face: Bare Minerals Make-up (shade: fairly light)

On my skin: A yummy almond scented lotion given to me by my mother last weekend.

On my toes: OPI nail polish in Rockette Red, with an oriental-esque design painted on my big toes.

Adornments: Emerald earrings, gold necklace that was a Sweet Sixteen gift, wedding rings and ruby, heart-shaped ring

In my CD player: Mix CD (on which my favorite song is In My Secret Life by Leonard Cohen)

On my tub: Milk, Honey and Oatmeal candle and soap, Snowcake soap by LUSH, coconut shampoo and conditioner

On my bedside table: The Color Purple by Alice Walker

In My Heart: my nephew (currently in utero), my husband (who drove a 180 mile round trip just to see me sing one night in the Living Christmas Tree), and my friends and family for whom I have been happily buying Christmas presents

On My Mind: The (sometimes) seeming futility of caring, the ecstasy and agony of loving, the exquisite ache that comes with watching my children grow and change, how lucky I am and how I never want to take my blessed life for granted.

got culture?

I was exposed to more culture this weekend than in the entire past year. Brenda and I attended a Bat Mitzvah for our friend’s daughter yesterday morning and attended a Diwali celebration last night. I also attended a special function at my church this evening.

Out of all the celebrations, I enjoyed Diwali the most. I was mesmerized by the dancers in their traditional Indian attire and immediately proclaimed that I wanted to dance too. Brenda says I just want to wear sparkly, flowy costumes and bells on my feet and she is not altogether wrong.

The Indians told me I can dance next year.

They think they’re making a joke. I think I’ll be there with bells on.

quirks

A little over a week ago, while I was recovering from the plague my second stubborn cold in as many weeks, my friend Jellyhead popped online for one of our regular chats. She asked how I was feeling and I responded that I was better but my voice was very hoarse and froggy. The thought of me sounding all croaky was just too funny to her and thus she declared, “That makes me want to ring you so I can hear it for myself!”

And that’s what she did. She called me up on the telephone while we were still on the webcam.

And me? Well, I got very, very self-conscious. Something about knowing that she wanted to hear my froggy voice and something about her being able to see my face as I talked to her on the phone just overwhelmed me and I felt really . . . shy.

I told her as much and she was bewildered. “What?” she sputtered. “But I look at your face all the time while we are chatting!” I had no explanation for why I was suddenly so bashful. I just was.

We hung up and continued our chat via IM. Jellyhead remarked later on how . . . interesting she thought it was that I’d been unwilling to talk on the phone earlier in the evening. She was good-naturedly giving me a hard time and I remarked, “I think you sometimes forget just how quirky I am.”

And it’s true. I AM quirky. I don’t eat white foods. I get claustrophobic when I have to wear shoes. I sleep with a pillow on top of my head. I hang a sheet over the case full of china dolls in the guest bedroom at my in-laws house because I don’t want them to watch me sleep. Monkeys scare me. I can’t stand to wear my hair up.

I get shy on the telephone.

The list of my neuroses and idiosyncrasies is long and more than a little twisted, I suspect. But, as entertaining and/or downright pathologically insane as they may be, they are part of what makes me, me.

And it’s nice to know that friends like Jellyhead (who has plenty of quirks all her own!) accept that this is the way I am and love me in spite of (and sometimes because of) my quirky ways.

How about you? Do any of you have any unique quirks to your personality?

where i’ve been

Where have I been?

I’ve been volunteering at the school and ironing work shirts. I’ve been kissing tears away after flu shots and counseling about heart attack and stroke risk at health fairs. I’ve been hugging my body pillow as I sleep and chasing away nightmares at 3 AM. I’ve been watching in amazement as my little son learns to read and my older son learns to be himself.

I’ve been giving presentations to nursing students and going to lunch with old friends. I’ve been organizing birthday parties and mentoring colleagues. I’ve been calculating statistics and petting puppies. I’ve been singing in choirs and comforting best friends. I’ve been shopping for jeans and pacing hearts.

And, I’ve been ice skating with these people.

My brother, Brad, me, my stepdad

Who’s Your 80’s Hunk?

Swiped from Jill:

Your 80s Hunk Is

John Stamos

Who’s Your 80s Hunk?

the unstoppable force

A few months ago I watched a movie in which there was discussion regarding what happens when an unstoppable object meets an immovable force. (Anyone know which movie ?) The answer: the two can’t exist together.

If an object is truly immovable, there is no unstoppable force. If a force is truly unstoppable, there is no immovable object.

This bit of trivia has been swirling around in my head ever since. It’s rolled around in there, becoming smoothed and polished into something I can understand. I’ve known for a while that I felt the discussion was significant. But I wasn’t sure why.

I think I’ve figured it out now.I think love is the unstoppable force. I think there is no such thing as an immovable object. I think the people who gain the most out of life are those who are able to make themselves vulnerable to the gale force wind, the unstoppable force, that is love.

Think about it. What happens when something that fancies itself to be an immovable object, say a boulder, comes against a raging river or a roaring wind? It is eroded. Chipped away. It eventually breaks apart and crumbles to be scattered by the water or wind.

But there are times when the water and wind only make such objects more beautiful. They are smoothed and polished (much like my thoughts on the subject over the last months) and carved into exquisite and majestic natural sculptures. They become the beautiful river rocks that are taken into the palm of those who would take a piece of the enchanting landscape home with them. They become the red rock mesas that frame the flaming desert sunsets.

I like to think that such objects are beautiful because they’ve assented to be changed by the unstoppable force –to be changed by love.

Rather than clench their jaws and stand against the force and be determined to lose no ground, they open their arms wide and consent to be carved, etched and reworked, like malleable clay, into something more beautiful, more unique.

It makes me feel more determined to open myself up to love. To be more vulnerable. To acknowledge that I do not have to be strong and proud and immovable. I want to trust the unstoppable force that is love to meld me into something ever more lovely and striking.

I don’t want to struggle against love and resist change so much that I find myself eroded and broken and scattered. I want to submit to the unstoppable force that is life and love.

I want to look back on my life and see, not a broken, lonely, cold woman, but a woman who is a masterpiece after spending her life as a willing work in progress.