Flotsam

It is a good thing this is a written journal instead of a podcast, because between my stuffy nose, croaking throat, and intermittent bouts of coughing, I am not sure you would be able to understand anything I say. I know it is controversial, but let me go on the record as saying I hate being sick. Probably I would hate it a little less if I had any sick time left in which to recuperate at home, but thanks to The Great Catastrophe-Fest of Aught-Seven I have already used all of my sick and personal time, and it is only February. Yes, I know I’ve already mentioned this. Rest assured I will be whining about it for the next ten months.

Last week I saw Dr. Doctor. It did not go well. After I lost my first two pregnancies, I had to beg for testing, because two is only one more than one, and everyone who is anyone has one miscarriage, so two is “nothing to worry about.” But three, apparently, gets your uterus upgraded from “unlucky” to “cauldron of DOOM.” At least, that was the impression I got from Dr. Doctor’s sad, worried face and her intense insistence that we not try to get pregnant again until our genetic testing comes back. We hadn’t planned to try until after the wedding anyway, but it is a bit disconcerting to have one’s normally chipper medical professional looking grim and calling you a “habitual aborter.” The Actually and I are being karyotyped this week, but unless that testing shows a rare genetic problem, we are at the end of our testing possibilities. I had a full recurrent miscarriage panel months ago, which came back normal, and I have been put on Folgard and baby aspirin “just in case.” There is nothing more we can do for now, except what I am doing, which is trying to transform my body, if not into a temple, at least into one of those dashboard statues of the saints. So far this involves a lot of spinach and therapy.

Actually, the appointment with Dr. Doctor got off to a good start. She has been on a bit of a kick lately of trying to convince me to go to medical school. She scoots her chair closer to mine and starts earnestly assuring me that it’s not too late, and that I’m halfway there already. I’m not sure that a love of Google is the same thing as being half-way through seven grueling years of study and clinical practice, but it is certainly sweet of her to say so, and it never fails to cheer me. So, there was that, and then things slid downhill with the woeful recitation of statistics and pleas for chastity outlined above, and then the appointment took a dramatic turn for the horrifying.

I was mourning the fact that, despite the Metformin, I have been unable to lose so much as a pound, and Dr. Doctor chirped “Well, you’re pudgy because of the testosterone.”

Excuse me? I’m what now?

She went on about steroids and adrenal something, but I didn’t really listen, because I was too busy hearing the word PUDGY reverberate endlessly through my auditory canals. And then she did it again:
“So, you see, it’s the androgens that make you PUDGY” (emphasis mine). At this point my world began to go dim.

Pudgy. PUDGY. I’m sorry, but isn’t that just about the least appealing word to have applied to your body? I think she was trying to be nice, and not say “overweight,” because she has never, ever mentioned my weight to me before, and I am truly not that large, and probably she didn’t want to give me a complex. After all, according to the CDC’s Body Mass Index charts, I am only barely overweight, just teetering on the thinnest edge of overweight, only one point separating me from “normal,” whatever that means. But that doesn’t seem to matter now, because I am PUDGY. If I were described in a news story it would be as “Alexa Flotsam, a PUDGY resident of St. Paul, Minnesota.” Probably if I were a gangster, this would be my sobriquet. I would be Alexa “PUDGY” Malone, wanted in three states for a series of donut shop heists.
I should stop now, before I am tempted to hang myself.
Of course if I did, it would have to be with a high tensile strength rope, to support my PUDGY swinging corpse.

Part of the reason I decided to do a weekly wedding post is so that I would stop feeling guilty for writing about things like what kind of earrings will look best with my dress and whether or not to have a vegetarian option at dinner. For some reason I get embarrassed talking about the wedding—-as someone who was previously not interested in even having a wedding, it is a bit disconcerting to find myself suddenly obsessed with registry items and flower arrangements. But I am. God help me, I am.
Maybe it is because immersing myself in the wedding is safe—after all, the worst case scenarios are all pretty tame. I still end up married if the flowers aren’t delivered or the cake explodes, whereas other areas in my life (school, work, infertility) have much higher stakes. There is something delightful about putting my energy towards something purely happy and fun: A big party! With everyone celebrating me and the Actually! I suppose it is no wonder I would rather think about place cards than, say, the genetic testing I am having in a week. Of course it is possible that I am just the sort of shallow person who is content to spend two hours contemplating what size pearls might be best suited to her, but either way, a weekly feature gives me license to post long, tortured musings about things that I can hear my grandmother calling frivolous all the way from her grave. I consider you all warned: Wednesdays are all wedding talk-—and just to get things rolling, lets discuss strapless bras.

My dress came in last week, and my best friend/maid of honor accompanied me to the store to see it. First of all, let me just say that trying on wedding dresses is very different from putting on your very own heavy fancy wedding dress that belongs to you. Once I had it on, I stared at myself in the mirror, feeling slightly queasy. Dessa stared at my reflection. Then we stared at each other. I am the first of my friends to be married.

“This is your wedding dress,” Dessa said, “Your real, actual wedding dress that you will wear on your wedding day.” We stared at each other again for a moment, our minds officially blown.
She went on, about it being the DRESS I WOULD WEAR ON THE DAY I WAS MARRIED, until I suggested she maybe stop it, because she was freaking me out.

It feels a lot less like playing dress-up once you’ve paid for the dress and had it delivered to the shop and seen the thick, protective garment bag with your name and wedding date on the side. Suddenly you wonder: what if this isn’t the right dress? And won’t I look silly in a beaded bridal gown, like a kid in her mother’s clothes? And then you try it on, and realize that now that it has arrived, fittings will start, and weren’t you meaning to lose twenty pounds by then?

But slowly these feelings passed, and Dessa and I spent a highly enjoyable, if surreal, hour trying various veil-necklace-earring combinations and wearing down the battery on my digital camera. It was determined that my first fitting will be February 26th.

“Make sure that you bring your shoes and foundation garments,” said the clerk.
I tittered nervously.
“I guess that means I should decide on shoes and foundation garments,” I said, causing her to give me a horrified look. I wish people would stop doing that.

The problem is that my dress is both strapless and has a very low back. I tried on a sort of strapless corset-y thing that had a low back at the shop, but it wasn’t low enough. So I will have to go corset-y bra shopping, and I don’t know whether this is the sort of shopping that can be done at a regular store, like Nordstrom, or whether there is some special scary-backless-strapless-undergarment emporium. Do you know? I had originally planned to wear a boa constrictor-y slimming thing as well, but I will already be wearing a heavy dress, and will be nervous and probably ill-feeling and I can’t help but think I would end up wriggling out of it during the ceremony in a fit of pique. Or, alternatively, it will be like the time in high school I tried on a rubber dress and couldn’t get out of it. Nothing says “wedding night romance” like calling tearfully to your new husband from the bathroom that you will need him to cut you out of your girdle. So all I will be wearing is the corset-y bra (well, and underwear) assuming I can find one before the 26th. Somehow. Somewhere.

The other thing I will need to buy is a pair of shoes, but I have no idea what color of shoe I might want. You have seen the dress, so feel free to chime in with your opinions. I don’t know whether I want to wear an ivory shoe to match, or whether to wear, for instance, a blue shoe. Well, two blue shoes, actually. But could I even find shoes in a blue like our wedding colors? Should I do something completely unrelated, like a nice oyster satin? What about our other wedding color, the dark brown? How high of a heel? I saw a lovely pair the other day, but they were nearly a flat. Maybe I should just go barefoot.

I can’t believe how long this post has gotten, and I haven’t even written about my newly hired judge or the lovely, lovely bridesmaid dress(es). Or the mysterious affair of the overpaid musician. Or the fact that this weekend we are going to a Crate&Barrel registry event where there will be Free! Mimosas and pastries, an event I have been dreaming about for the last few nights, waking up with my stomach growling and reaching for a cruller.

I am reasonably certain that I passed my kidney stone last night. “Reasonably certain” because I did not actually catch the stone in my cup. I peed into my tiny, inadequate strainer. I felt a searing pain, as I had every time I’d used the bathroom for the previous hour. I looked into the strainer and saw nothing.
However, whilst wiping my undercarriage with a piece of tissue, I discovered a small rock. It looked like a kidney stone. It was the right size for a kidney stone. But as I explained to the Actually, my mother, and a doctor, it could have been a piece of gravel that somehow found its way into my pants. But no one seems to find that explanation plausible, (“How on earth would gravel have gotten into your pants?” asked my mother), and the pain seems to have gone, except for some lingering soreness, so as I said, I am reasonably certain that it is finally over.
For now. At my appointment this morning the doctor looked at the stone, congratulated me heartily, and then breezily informed me that my CT from last week had shown another small stone in my kidney, a stone that would likely make its way out sometime between today and my death from old age. Dr. Damocles then gave me a referral to a urologist and sent me on my way.

The Actually and I went out for lunch to celebrate, and as I chewed my patty melt the Actually said:
“You know, last night I was trying to decide if I’d leave you if your stone hit a nerve and left you paralyzed, like Stephen Hawking.”
“What nerve exactly, in my urinary tract, would completely paralyze me?”
“The Stephen Hawking nerve,” the Actually replied, stealing a fry from my plate.
“Ah. And what did you decide?”
He shook his head mournfully, “I never did make up my mind.”
“How sweet.”
“Well, what kind of life would I have as your caretaker?” He switched to a computer voice: “‘Bring me some cheese,’” he droned, “‘Lift me from my chair and make love to my limp body.’”
“You flatter yourself.”
“Ooh, snap.”
We are going to be such a delightful married couple.

Speaking of which, wedding planning is back in full swing, as it seems to somehow be February, which, sources tell me, is to be followed this year closely by March, which can only lead to April, which will inevitably give way to May, the month of my wedding. Gulp.

A few days ago I started having some…pain. Mostly in my back, but also in the groin-al area. I assumed it was somehow related to my Lady Parts and the recent miscarriage. Because surely, there is some sort of limit on the number of medical catastrophes that can occur in a two week period.

Well, here I sit, dosed liberally with Vicodin–just like my beloved Dr. House–and gazing at the strainer I will be peeing into.

There is nothing like a kidney stone to add color to a gray winter Friday. The red of blood, the orange of prescription bottles, the bright, cheery yellow of urine.
This is my second kidney stone; I had my first at seventeen. Two kidney stones and an ulcer under my belt, and I am only twenty-seven. I think I should start wearing suspenders and a porkpie hat.

This morning I had bloodwork, a CT and a horrifying encounter with a catheter. Two people were required to catheterize me, because of my “petite anatomy.” In other words, they couldn’t find the goddamn hole. A student was there to observe and remarked how it was “good she got to see this,” because I am basically child-sized. I prefer “fun sized,” but the Actually prefers to compare me to a hamster, what with my tiny, tiny parts.
“I am a delicate flower,” I said huffily.
“A delicate hamster,” he corrected me. He is so supportive. While I writhed with pain in the front seat on the way home, he reminded me that both he and his sister weighed ten pounds at birth.
“You can just shut up,” I told him, my hand massaging my kidney.

So that is what I have been up to—how about you?