I am an [Oxy] Moron

It seems I haven’t heard the last of my pelvic pain. I gritted my teeth through the first round of acute pain. It was not nearly as bad as ectopic pain, but bad enough that I went looking for some Percocet and spent some time with Dr. Google. Then the sharp pain went away, and was replaced with a gentle throb. Throbs, I can ignore, deny, give the cold shoulder. After a brief but welcomed hiatus, blood returned. Now this is an entity that demands attention. No matter how many ways I attempt to explain it away, I can’t.

So I have an appointment for an ultrasound this Thursday, made after calling different places for almost an hour to find someone, anyone who would take me. I am prepared for the stoic sonogram technician and know that s/he is not allowed to offer up any info. They can go ahead and probe my most private of parts but they can’t offer a sliver of information? I know, I know, it’s the law blah blah blah. Luckily I have gotten pretty good at reading scans. At the very least, I am good at knowing when the technicians are measuring something. Plus, as long as I can see the screen I can get an idea of what is going on. And, I have been know to gently extract some information “off the record” from technicians in the past. I guess they see the panic in my eyes. That, or they just want me to stop talking.

Of course it will take a while for the scans to make their way to my doctor and my doctor to get back to me with an Official Diagnosis. My head has always gone to the worst case scenario. Nicole says I do that all the time. I think “all” is a bit of a stretch, as I did, for example, walk through an ectopic pregnancy that was excruciatingly painful without thinking I was dying, but I will agree that this is a coping mechanism I do indeed employ. I need to walk myself through, say, cancer, so everything is will be a cakewalk. If I can figure out what to do if the worst of the worst happens, then surgery to remove cysts? No problem.

I have four reasons why I am extra Cancer-worried:

1. I took so much fertility medication and, well, studies show that those meds have lead to cancer. On the other hand, studies show that those meds do not lead to cancer. Let’s just say I am not happen that there are studies, period. Where there are studies, there is justification. Somewhere, there is justification. Somewhere someone’s inside exploded from too many rounds of injectibles.

2. My mother had surgery to remove some cancerous growths form her uterus when she was about 40, two years older than I am now. I was in ninth grade I think. Let’s just say I have had a hard time finding out EXACTLY what it was and what the diagnosis was. But I do remember, clear as day, a lovely diagram she drew for me and when she had surgery and that the word pre-cancer at the very least was used. I also had to skip a field trip to see a Frederico Garcia Lorca play in the city on surgery day.

3. My c-section was so not smooth. They had a hard time stuffing my uterus back in. And then there was the whole kidneys shutting down thing. Not sure how I get from botched c-section to cancer, but there you go. Maybe that is what Nicole is talking about.

4. I am from Long Island, which is basically a 90-mile-long cancer cluster.

My back-from-Italy friend Jen is convinced that all will be fine based on her very scientific reasoning that horrific things only turn up in random appointments. Like a routine physical that turns up skin cancer. I guess I should believe her because her husband is a surgeon, so she is one heartbeat away from a medical degree and first-hand knowledge of these things.

I’m not going to lie. I am a little worried and am more than ready to have this over and done with. I could use some distraction right about now. Not the distraction that the aforementioned Jen offered today, which included a horrific story about a friend’s husband who is battling cancer. (I had to cut her short on that one!) But some sort of distraction would be good.

And I’m not going to lie about this either: There is a small part of me that wants to just blow off the entire sonogram. Just ignore the appointment. I have never done that before. I have become a person who wants medical information immediately, more so than ever before, now that the girls are here, but I am strangely, bizarrely and uncharacteristically willing to pretend that everything is fine, even when I know something is wrong. The real question is, big wrong or little wrong? Chances are very much in my favor that it is little wrong. And here I am, caring and not. An oxymoron.

Pictured above: Maddie, in Leif’s and-me-down orange sweater. It still has his Leif scent on it! Below that, a weird tree thing. And Avery holding an inchworm. This child of mine is so ready for a pet! And last but not least, my most joyous hide-and-go-seeker. Maddie looooooves this game, even though she only hides in two spots (the closet and the under a coushin in the couch).