New Uterine Tenants

“Holy shit, that poor girl,” I hear the doctor say outside the exam room door. I can’t help but chuckle. Clearly he doesn’t know I can hear him. He lightly taps on the door and walks in. I’ve never met him before. I’m here for the first time because my she-parts are malfunctioning and I am due for my yearly exam. Anytime a new doctor learns about my plethora of issues they shake their heads with amazement. He is no different.

“You’re a mess,” he announces without introduction. I like his style. His irreverence is calming in a warped way. I liked things warped.

“Yeah. Doctors see me and they cringe,” I reply not missing a beat.

“I’m not cringing,” he says as he washes his hands. “I feel sorry for you.”

“Eh. It is what it is,” I shrug. I’ve lived with this body long enough to know that there’s nothing I can do about its hate of me.

I go through my problems and concerns with him. I tell him about my raging PMS, my migraines, my cramps, my bleeding through one super tampon an hour and being left to die on the couch with my ibuprofen and heating pad.

He sits there and interrupts with questions digging for more detail.

I explain the weight in my stomach, the problems with weight consistency, the feeling of hormonal imbalance, the bleeding in the middle of my cycle for a week, the sex that is more uncomfortable than fun. I tell him everything I can think of, sure that something is wrong with me.

He tells me he thinks he knows what is going on, but with my annual pap he wants to do a biopsy and send me upstairs to have an ultrasound. He tells me to undress and he will be back to exam me.

He returns, takes the biopsy, and does the pap. We make small talk, crack jokes at my stretch marks, and how 3 weeks more of gestation from my youngest was all it took to destroy my stomach. He sits in front of me.

“You have polyps and I think you have endometriosis.” I tense up as he continues. “We will see what the ultrasound today says and then we will have you come in the office to do a saline ultrasound as well.”

He continues with more explanation about what this means, when my biopsy results will come in, and what comes next. We say our good byes and I head upstairs for my first ultrasound.

During the ultrasound I lay on the cold hard table with a sheet over my knees. I wonder what the sheet is even for since they’re seeing all my girly bits anyways. I clutch to it nevertheless. As I lay there looking at the screen making out the organs of my reproductive system and when the goes over to my ovaries I gasp, “Oh My Gosh.”

The ultrasound tech stopped, quizzical, and asked, “What do you see?”

“The cysts.” There were at least ten staring at me on the screen.

“Don’t you have PCOS, Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome?”

“Not officially, but I’ve thought that I have had it.”

“Why?” she seems doubtful. Perhaps she is concerned that I am Dr. WebMD.

“PMS problems and pain,” I answer not sure I should even be telling her this. Radiologists aren’t supposed to say anything to you at all about what they see. Then again, I saw it and there’s no denying those 10-15 black empty sacs as being anything but cysts.

“Hmmmm. I’m sending this to your doctor immediately.”

“Ok.” I have nothing more to say. I have so much to digest.

I walk home that afternoon worried, sore, and in pain because whatever is in there has been jostled around by the doctor and ultrasound. That day, I discovered I have polyps and possibly PCOS and Endometriosis. Great. It could be worse though. It could be fibroids and cancer instead.

The following day I return to my gynecologist’s office for the saline ultrasound. I’m sore from the day before and I hobble around the waiting room. Even sitting sends shooting searing pain through my pelvis. The exam begins and as they insert the saline the doctor pauses.

“I see a fibroid,” he says with almost a moan. The ultrasound tech agrees and they capture a picture.

I throw my head back in annoyance.

“Oh, there’s a second one.” Yet another picture is snapped.

Great. Then to my ovaries and at this point I close my eyes. I’ve seen these before and really don’t want to be reminded.

After the ultrasound we walk into his office. He sits me down and sighs. He puts his hands to his forehead as he reexamines the ultrasound pictures.

Somberly he begins, “Ok, so we have multiple issues going on here. You have one large golf ball sized cyst on your left ovary, both ovaries are polycystic, you have possible endometriosis, there are quite a few polyps in a good portion of your uterus. And you have two large, not huge but definitely larger, fibroids in your uterus cavity.”

And that is when my personality takes over and I speak without thinking, “I guess my uterus realized I was done having kids and put out a “For Rent” sign and everyone showed up.”

He started laughing and said, “I like you. You mean business, but take the punches.”

“Yeah, but I have a mean right hook.”

My hysteroscopy is scheduled for today. I will find out if any of this is cancerous in the next few days, but my doctor says he’s almost 100% positive it’s not. We will see. I will have surgery in two weeks to evict my uterus’ new tenants and possibly my complete endometrial lining of my uterus.

Until then the “For Rent” sign remains and my tenants annoy.

This is in response to the writing prompt “An inappropriate time to laugh.”