Simone

It was the last night before my second week of midterms. I was cramming and worrying and babysitting. And then it started: the sinking feeling in my lower left side which always seems to come around the end of the month. It was the 31st. It made sense. I was getting my period.

As I’ve gotten older, the severity of my menstrual cramps has increased quite a lot. What once started as tolerable abdominal pains has evolved into nausea, vomiting, and crippling pain in my lower torso. My pragmatic stubbornness led to a loose self-diagnosis of endometriosis, which I believed I could solve with a healthier diet and a prescription for the Pill. As usual, I was wrong.

That night, I spent a half hour or so throwing up any food or liquid left in my body. I told my parents what was going on, but refused to let them take me home. The game of chasing paper is a hard one to quit. The woman I was babysitting for came back, I started to feel better, she paid me, and I left. Responsibly, I didn’t even tell her about the liters of gastric acid I’d dumped in her septic tank.

I woke up the next morning and crammed and worried some more, and then the pain hit me, suddenly, and sharply. I doubled over, and bowed out of the possibility of going to school. A doctor’s visit, ultrasound, and frantic phone call revealed a reality I’d adverted since these pains started years ago. I had a bleeding, 10-centimeter cyst inside of me. And I needed emergency surgery to get it out.

The miracle of modern narcotics has left me with very little memory of the experience. Now I’m home. It’s all over and done, and I’m fine. I left the hospital with one less cyst, one less ovary, and one less fallopian tube.

The only real challenge of this situation was wondering who to tell. It seemed gross and weird to explain my reproductive health to the boys who were asking, but in retrospect this was just socially-induced pettiness. If grown men could examine the areas in and around my cooch for the two days I’d been the hospital, I could tell anyone what operation I’d had. But there was a hint of sadness and pity in everyone’s response, as if somehow my new lack of these organs—and subsequently decreased fertility—would leave me an unfulfilled woman. And on an evolutionary level, does this make me less attractive to potential mates? Will this fateful experience solidify my fear of dying alone?

I knew I needed to stop being so in my head. I’d mastered that before the surgery. I wasn’t worried about bleeding out on the operating table, or finding cancer, or dying, but instead how painful having an IV placed in my hand it would be. And it wasn’t. They found a good vein in my arm. In the end, all things fall into place. Everything will be fine. I just have to keep reminding myself.

In some ways, this was a blessing. I would’ve died from internal bleeding or infection had I not gone to the ER when I did. Also, I have a lot more time to study for midterms now. ♦