All questions. No answers.

It has been three months since I started the saunas and mayan spiritual healing. In those three months I have been almost pain free. However, in the last couple of days the old familiar knife up the ass sensation has returned. My mind is spinning. What has changed? What am I doing differently? All of a sudden I am less free and more rules. I am checking my bones...all there? I am checking, inventorying, assessing, and measuring.

Is it the bites of frozen yogurt I had? The nibble of chocolate? I skipped a few days in the sauna.

Is it going to be like this now? Always questioning. Is my freedom a mirage of conditions? If I follow the rules than I will be able to live pain free. Somehow, this irks me. Not knowing what controls the sleeping dragon, the endo, is frustrating.

So, today I will avoid sugar and dairy. I will sit in the sauna. I will take a long walk. I will try to feel roots under my feet. I will try to grow roots. I will try not to try so hard. I will let the soft belly of earth remind me to stay here - in my body - although I imagine it might feel good to be a bird.

The Pain Game, Part 3

          Smith College. Haven House. 1995. I shared a room with Iris, born in Korea, raised in Queens. We were sisters from the start. I was tall, she was short; she possessed deep conviction while I was ideologically awkward.  But we shared Wordsworth, Blake, and Keats over cheese pizzas, roasted nori strips, and vodka. If I labored over a paper, Iris knew how little I slept. If I had a call from the doctor telling me that I needed exploratory surgery, Iris was the one to overhear. My friend and my roommate, she knew more than most. If I was going to let anyone close, it was Iris, though even her I kept on the other side of a deep crevasse of intimacy as a point of personal policy.

            On September 19th, I was scheduled for laparoscopic surgery. Images of my uterus had come back with dark stains. No one knew what would be found, but probably, they promised, nothing too serious. Exploratory surgery is just a look-see; a hide-and-seek game between long steel utensils and soft, slippery organs. At nineteen years old, I had just had my first pelvic exam by the resident college doctor who was, peculiarly, male at an all female college. Although the military schools in which I was raised had educated me ad nauseam about the female reproductive system, I was still so young and tender at my own exploration. How was it, then, that strangers now possessed the power to do all the exploration they wanted while I was defenseless under a veil of drugs?

            The night before the surgery, Iris stayed up until the small hours of morning with me as I traveled the terrain of my grief. She laughed when I imitated flapping vaginas and fell silent when I raged at the injustice of surgery, pain, and fear. And when I cried angry tears and Iris drew closer and put her hand on my leg, I swept it away and growled like a rabid animal, “Don’t touch me!” 

            Iris had asked if she could walk with me to Coley Dickenson Hospital in the morning, but I had told her that there was no need since there would be nothing for her to do except wait around in a boring room with a boring TV broadcast that she probably couldn’t turn up or down. Besides, the hospital was two miles from Haven House and in the mornings, the road would be gridlocked with sucking and wheezing cars huffing it up a hill expelling their heavy exhaust. Although there was a path that snaked between the broken pavement and an overgrown field of Queen Anne’s Lace and plantain plants, it was one that seemed less intended for walking and more for shredded tire scraps and runaway hubcaps. I wanted to protect Iris from this harshness - this sensory assault.

            At 4:00 a.m. I finally got out of bed, still dressed in the clothes from the day before and made my way to the empty shower room. From the time I was young, taking a shower frightened me; I heard things on the other side of the water like doors opening, floorboards creaking, sinister voices whispering. I regularly turned the water off and on to see if I could hear more – but always nothing, just the few drips of water falling off my skin. Although I was tired and bloated from crying, I tried to look my best for surgery. I oiled my skin with Palmer’s coconut oil, imagining that my surgeon would have a flash of regret at having to cut into my perfect, beautiful skin. I put on my best Calvin Klein underwear in the event that anyone noticed.

            Downstairs in the kitchen, Diane and Thelma, the Haven House cooks, had already started washing potatoes and peeling Roxbury Russet apples.

            “Hi Diane,” I mock flirted. She was a stout woman in her late 50’s who was stern in the mouth and feather soft in the eyes. In the two years that I had lived in the house, I had developed a kind of working partnership with the cooks: I complemented them on their hair or their mashed potatoes and they made special poached eggs for me even if it was not on the menu or warmed up left-over pasta for me if I was going to miss dinner.

            “Whatcha doin’ up so early, girl?” This was Thelma, always calling us Smith women girls no matter how many times we lectured her on our politically correct status.

            “I’ve got exploratory surgery at Coley Dick this morning,” I said casually as I reached for a water glass. Thelma smacked my hand away before it could disturb the perfectly constructed glass tower.

            “Girl, don’tcha know that you can’t drink anythin’ before you get the knife? You gonna go and mess up your drugs and then you’ll be real sorry if you wake up before they done. Now, whatcha doin’ getting surgery anyway?”

            “I’ve got tumors or something. I don’t know. Maybe it’s cancer, or maybe it’s nothing. I have to go find out,” I choked out. Thelma and Diane were okay as long as I could joke, but the second either one of them expressed concern for me, the deal was off. I wanted to get out of the kitchen as fast as I could.

            “Who’s goin’ to take you, honey?” Diane asked.

            “I’m walking. I’ve got to go.” Dismissing their questions, I put my head down and headed for the door. Although it was still early, I grabbed my coat and left Haven. The brisk September morning air cooled my cheeks where tears started to run into crooked rivulets. I wanted this alone walk. I wanted this alone pain. I wanted each step along the polluted roadside path to hurt just a little. I wanted to feel the pain of my body before the knife gave it cause.

            This pain, I already knew, could not be discovered by a knife. It had no diagnostic code, no prognosis, no treatment plan. This was a pain that moved like dark smoke through my veins; lurked behind my kidneys, my lungs, my liver – it was lighter than my breath and faster moving than a surgeon’s hand. It was an ancient pain whispered into my infant ear by my drunken father. A pain he called rage. It was a pain that dripped out of my mother’s breast – a woman beaten by the hand of her father, her husband. It was that nameless ghost that was to forever be my playmate.

How, then, do you fix this pain? Is it by naming diseases? Biopsying tissues? Blood tests? Bone tests? Through bottles and bottles of pills? Is it through therapy and cruel diets? Through writing and telling? How could I have looked that surgeon in his eyes and told him that although his cuts might be mastery he would never find the source of all this suffering – all he could do is give me a scar to prove the endless trying.

            Hours later, I was wheeled out of the operation room. My eyes were slick with petroleum. I heard the surgeons at my side explaining that they had removed two blood-filled cysts and discovered stage IV endometriosis. The surgeon had pictures of the offending uterus, but all I saw was a blur of some primordial cave. “Probably this will affect your fertility,” he said keeping pace with the fast moving gurney, “if that was something that you were thinking about.” Was I thinking about my fertility? I don’t know. All I was thinking about was how empty that hallway felt with all the nurses and doctors hovering over me.