Sep
07

Molehill Into Mountain.

Last Friday morning I checked in at the hospital, took a seat in the radiology waiting room, and paged nervously through an issue of People while listening to the man across from me discuss his leg injury. He was explaining to a trapped-looking fellow patient that there had been “groin involvement.”
“My testicles,” he says loudly, “You know, and that tube? The Vazzy something?”
His fellow patient nods, and looks around wildly.

The woman next to me is on the courtesy phone trying to arrange for a ride home after her appointment. I hear her responding to possibly the lamest excuses ever.
“It’s not that hot out,” she says, and then “Can’t you tape it?” She moves the phone away from her ear and stares at it. “He hung up!”
She starts dialing again, and glances over at me.
“I might use some words you don’t want to hear.”
“Go right ahead,” I tell her. But this time, nobody answers the phone.
“Exes, huh?” she sighs at me.
“I know,” I say sagely, “They’re nothing but trouble.”
She sighs again. “I wish I had some Valium. I get panic attacks at the doctor, and they’re putting some goddamn needle in my spine today.”
“I have Ativan,” I offer helpfully.
“You’re shitting me.”
I am not shitting her, and am reminded of my high school days as I slip a pill into her palm. She wanders off in search of water and I return to my article about the tendons in Nicole Richie’s neck.

I am feeling pretty good about myself (Alexa! Helper of Panicked Women!) when the nurse calls me up to the desk.
Dr. Doctor has been delayed. My procedure has been pushed back by an entire hour.

By the time I am finally brought, gowned and pantyless, to the procedure room, I have worked myself into a state. I make increasingly lame and hysterical jokes to the nurse as she helps me onto the table and drapes my bottom half. Dr. Doctor comes in, reassures me jauntily that this will be a breeze, and inserts a speculum, twisting it a bit as it goes in, which is just as pleasant as it sounds. She swabs the hell out of my cervix with frothy pink soap, and then the nurse hands her a catheter and something else I cannot identify. I can’t see what is going on, but I can feel various implements being jostled about my nether regions.
The radiologist takes his position, and Dr. Doctor tells me to relax as she begins to inject the dye. At first I feel a mild cramping, but before I can even form the thought that really, this isn’t so bad, I am filled with pain that I am still, a week later, at a loss to describe. It feels unbearable, and I am paralyzed, able to do nothing but say “Oh, oh, oh!”
I hear Dr. Doctor say “left side” and “distal” and then the radiologist says “No, there it goes.”
And then it is over. I am shaking, and panting slightly, and realize that I completely forgot to look at the screen.
Next there is apparently some bleeding, and Dr. Doctor explains that she will have to use pressure to get it under control. She smooshes some gauze firmly against my cervix and I stare at the ceiling.

The nurse helps me sit up and Dr. Doctor shows me the films.
“Your uterus is perfect,” she says, “It’s shaped like a cocktail glass.”

It is shaped like a cocktail glass, which seems appropriate. It is adorable, my uterus, and much more petite than I had imagined—about the size of a deck of cards. My right tube is lovely as well, resembling one of those ribbons used in Rhythmic Gymnastics.
My left tube—like my left ovary—is large and homely. The dye did not spill at first, and Dr. Doctor was concerned about the wide, sausagey shape of the tube, but apparently you can see “sub-mucousal folds,” and since the dye did spill eventually, she assures me there’s nothing to worry about.

Now, you all know how much confidence I have in doctors who tell me there is nothing to worry about, but I remained uncharacteristically silent. I tried to think of questions to ask, but I was dazed and shaky. I just wanted to go home.
As I changed, Dr. Doctor chatted with the nurse, who is getting married next month.
“Alexa has a wedding coming up, too,” she says as I emerge from the changing room. “They started trying to get pregnant before they got married.” Dr. Doctor mocks making a tsk tsk gesture at me with her fingers. “Maybe that’s why it’s not working!” she says, laughing.
It was only a joke, of course. But there is a time and a place, if you know what I mean, and that wasn’t it. And as much as I would like to believe that showers of eggs will pop from my formerly reticent ovaries as the Actually and I are pronounced man and wife, it seems unlikely.

I promised to call if I had further bleeding and then I drove home, where I started to cry.
I don’t know why. The worst pain was over, and the cramping wouldn’t come back until later that evening. My tubes weren’t blocked. My uterus was shaped cunningly like a cocktail glass.
There’s just no pleasing some people.
The Actually had arranged a little bedroom nest for me to recover in while he was at work—laptop, West Wing DVD, sweet note on the pillow. But not even the peripatetic charm of Josh Lyman could lift my post-procedure funk. I cried for hours, and then I drank a tumbler of wine and went to sleep.

I do a lot of research. I ask many questions of my doctors. I do everything in my power to exert some measure of influence over my reproductive life.
During Friday’s procedure I was filled with instruments and paralyzed by pain. I have never felt so vividly out of control. Afterwards I was unable to think clearly–confused by the results and what they might mean, but unable to ask for more information. I felt tiny and powerless and sad. While I waited for the films to develop, I realized for the first time that it is possible that I will never get and stay pregnant, that contrary to the way I have been behaving, no amount of research and hard work can ensure that things will ultimately work in my favor.

I feel silly writing this, which is why it has taken me a week to do so. I sound overdramatic and whiny–or worse, stupid: What, you say infertility involves a shattering loss of control?
You’re shitting me.
Contrarily, it seems the realization that I may never have a biological child is one more suited to someone who has at least undergone an IUI, for heaven’s sake. But there you are. Or rather here I am—getting ahead of myself, as usual.

I still don’t know what to think about my left tube. The online pictures I found that it resembled were of hydrosalpinxes (hydrosalpinges?). But it is my understanding that my tube cannot be a hydro, as it was either open, or opened under the pressure of the dye. So it remains a mystery.
The other films I found that showed a resemblance to my own were those of a woman with genital tuberculosis, but I think we can rule that out, much as the idea of spending a few months reclining in a wicker wheelchair with a blanket over my lap appeals to me.

To sum up:
HSG=Painful
Right tube=Normal
Left tube=Wonky, unattractive
Uterus=Cocktail glass

Now, let’s talk about something else.

By Alexa | Posted in Ceci N'est Pas Une Ecrivaine |