Built-in Birth Control~ Who knew?

I just got back from Dr. Bobbie Wax’s office. Bobbie Wax is my "secret pocket's doctor". 

I decided to pay for yet another visit because our phone conversation, a week after my pelvic UltraSound results were in,  was too abrupt, curt and hurried. I hung up feeling like an imbecile. The woman sounded as if she had a stop watch in hand and had to get off the phone within one-hundred and three seconds or else there would be some stiff penalty.  

Squeezing another payment just to get the results explained to me seem like a wiser option. I believe in face-time when I need to learn vital information. I liken it to taking a classroom course versus an online course. 

I ask Dr. Wax to: " pretend that I am a world-class imbecile and breakdown this lab report about my uterus to me." 

My uterus is also known as the womb. I prefer to think of it in cruder terms. It's  an oven, a “baby-baker” essentially. All I know about it is, that it sometimes has to be removed and once it is removed, no babies ever, forever and never.

I have never had to think about these life altering things. So I admit to having dwelled in some avoidance behavior for a bit. I ignored the pain hoping it would just go away, like headaches, colds and flu do. 

She begins the breakdown.  

My "baby- baker "is tilted forward and that is very good real estate in reproductive parlance. The dimensions are in centimeters and the width is just fine.

 Now, onto the hospitality factor. Is my "baby-baker"  a hospitable environment? 

Apparently not.  As it turns out, I suffer from one of the most common ailments that affect over 50% of women of child-bearing years. 

I have a common condition known as uterine tumors, fibroids, leiomyomata, myoma. Non-cancerous growths that may hinder impregnation, cause heavy bleeding, make a woman anemic but most importantly, hurt. 

These growths seem to love my "Baby-Baker". There is a shy one occupying the right side. It is only about the size of a larger plum. One on the left is the size of a ripe grapefruit. And finally, the Grand Pouba of them all, the beastly-bitch,  is located on the posterior wall and is subserosal and exophylic- meaning- it has wrapped itself around the uterine wall and has had the audacity to grow a stalk. Like a tree, this beast may start to grow more branches and bloom- some day!

I am wrestling with how I feel about any of this. I am shockingly calm. For what I do for a living, one would think that this would be an opportunity for hysterics. For me to have a gorgeously poetic meltdown in Dr. Wax's office. Squeeze  prescriptions for Valium, vicodin and xanax while I'm at it. But I don't. 

I go into "adult-critical parent mode". It feels like a failure on my end. A defect. Not a genetic one since my mother and two other sisters have not had these issues. So, something is definitely wrong with... ME!!!

I am not sure if I should be anything about it? I try my positive hot yoga-kale-and-almond smoothie loving hat on to handle this. This Zen version of Nadège tells me  that I should be gratefully happy with the fact that I do have health insurance through the Screen Actors Guild and that now I know for a fact that what I had been describing as stomach pain for the last four years was just a case of being a woman, fully equipped with defective, but fixable female body parts, where stuff happens on the INSIDE.

Dr. Wax throws a few of my options at me. Turns out, these tumors, if not removed can prevent a spermatazoid from making its way onto fertilizing one of my eggs. I chuckle internally. She wonders why my frown is suddenly turned upside -loudly.- This convo isn’t exactly terrific news after all. She is telling me that I am in need of surgery after all.

 I ask her quite seriously: 

         “You mean to tell me that I have had "Built-in Birth-Control" for years?” 

Dr. Bobbie:

         “Well it’s one way to look at it. But had an egg gotten fertilized, the chances of it...” 

she is trying to be Politically correct here.

 “....uh...making it...” she remembers she is not God or something too special 

“...well, let’s just say, it would’ve been complicated.” 

Armed with my referral for a specialist,  where invasive surgery is the ONLY viable option if I ever want to bake my own baby... 

I step out of the Health Center onto another spectacular Southern California day feeling informed yet confused but disoriented and knowledgeable. 

I call my sister Mimie in Petion-Ville, Haiti. She has a decent sense of humor. 

Humor is my coping mechanism and wine is my unwind. 

     "Mimie" , I exclaim, "Guess what?" 

      "OMG" Dadou, "what's wrong?! I am under a deadline here and I really can't take any more shocks. There was no gas to be found in Haiti today and Aristide is gonna go on trial, I just ..., what? what is it?

 Me:   "I just came from my secret-pockets' doctor to get my ultrasound results explained to me. Turns out,  I have had "Built-in BIRTH CONTROL for years and did NOT know it!" 

Mimie laughs so uproariously, she drops her phone! She needed this release more than I did. Who knew?

Sexy Rants & Raves aka Nadègeisms: Tootin' My Own Horn sans Business Acumen

Sexy Rants & Raves aka Nadègeisms: Tootin' My Own Horn sans Business Acumen: When I was a child, I used to watch "grown up" flicks. I preferred them over cartoons. Especially the ones with people who looked...

Tootin' My Own Horn sans Business Acumen

When I was a child, I used to watch "grown up" flicks. I preferred them over cartoons. Especially the ones with people who looked like me. Black and White. Yup!  Pre-technicolor, technicolor, and colored stuff. I love(d) Eartha Kitt, Brigitte Bardot, Sammy Davis Jr., Sidney Poitier, that deep throated scene stealer Katherine Hepburn, and Spencer tracy. "The Apartment" starring a young Shirley MacLaine and Jack Lemmon is still at the top of my favorite flicks.

I would go around proclaiming that: "I don't know nuffin'  bout burfin' No babies!"(you know that movie about some plantation named Tara that the Wind done gone blew off).

And finally, THE line that has haunted me most:
"Success is NOTHING if you have NO one to share it with."
These words were uttered by Billy D. Williams' character, "Brian", to the glamy-iest of the glamest Divas,  Diana Ross!
 The movie, "Mahogany" (1975).

I was being reared outside of the United States of America, so movies would literally make their way to us  decades later. I was forced fed the oldies, but goodies. I barely grasped the subject matters, but somehow that "Mahogany" line had a tremendous impact on my psyche. So much so, that I feared it became a sort of leit motif for my earthly existence.

Diana Ross' character was a woman who raised herself up by her bootstraps, all on her lonesome, managed to have it all, opted for single-hood, speed, booze, false adulation AND a MINK coat, bitches! As if all of that was not enough, she also had a handsome, bleeding heart liberal, highly educated man chase her twiggy-ass around the planet to physically try to shake her out of the seduction of all of the illusory good she'd accumulated. He tells her - no warns her, quite wisely with enough anger and Mandingo juice, squeezing her broomstick-like arms:"Success is Nothing if you've got NO ONE to share it with!". 

Freeze-Frame back to MY, Nadège August's,  reality - 2013.

I haven't bitched, ranted, kissed and sort- of -told in three months. Where have I been?  Replenishing my undried well. Let's call this "well":  procrastination, coupled with a fear of criticism over my still evolving, writing. You see, I have an extra small group of dear friends, led by my all time favorite, the metrosexual Lenny.

 Lenny has been my harshest and most punishing critic. Lenny will not deny sleeping with me because he can not and since he is being accused of it anyway, he's gone along for the ride. Lenny is my parent. A praiser and a stone-throwing critic at once. He loved the blogs that had absolutely nothing to do with him but hated anything where he recognized an iota of himself. But I digress.

I am back, undried well and all and may Lenny be damned! (Sidebar, Lenny is getting hitched, so he is too busy to judge me anymore. I am sad to report too, that I've lost him...again)

Tonight, I am on Television. Whilst writing this blog, my image is appearing on the western part of the United States, but I am opting to "express", to "expose" another little centimeter of my heart to be devoured by an audience of 10. To "publicly journal" instead.

Admittedly, the allure of blogging is that it promises the potential for immediate feedback. For me, it's been a gorgeous, naked ride, where my wit either offends or hooks a reader. In fact, I see one follower who will likely un-follow me before he even reads this because we went on a date, hang out for a bit and the very next morning, he felt the need to send me sexually explicit texts.  After a few days of dodging, I decided to tell him the opposite of an untruth. I told him that his texts were a literal "turn-off".  I will soon blog about him. And, henceforth refer to him as the "Gardner of girth-less wonder". Stay Tuned. (I did warn that this was a public journal)

Smash cut:  back to "Mahogany".

In Los Angeles, part of being healthy involves the help of a" head - doctor", 16 oz of detox green juice, yoga, hiking, boot-camp, cross-training, a couch and a checkbook.
Because I am  a self-proclaimed conservative misfit, my head-doc dared me to TOOT my own HORNS!"
-"It's okay, it's what social media is for."
She confidently proclaimed. I don't back away from many challenges. I tackle this challenge with a plan:

•  I post this TV guest gig on my FB fan page. Immediately, four (4) fans UNLIKE my image.
•  I post on my regular FB account and a few unsubscribe from Nadège-land. 
•  I don't do mailchimp, vertical response or constant contact but rather, go through the tedious process of of sending an email to people in my contact list. 

In the past, I would get a lot of: " Why didn't you tell me you were in...(name the show), I happened to be flipping through the channel and there you were ?"
 So, the head doctor's challenge while fabulous was reinforced up by the mild accusations on my lack of business acumen. I am happy to report that I got no response from more than half. Terrific! Because it was just that, an "announcement". Not the kind of email that begged for a response o a RSVP.
The other half was a panacea of "Really? Seriously?! And head scratching from me.

 Here is small sample:
1) Would love to, but, unfortunately, I am working...tonight
2) Oh no, I just got this text/email now and I...missed it. :-( (sad face) - It's nowhere near 9PM PST where you live.
3) Your email ended up in my spam box :-( (sadder face)
4) Unsubscribe me from your list! (my favorite cause I sure like a threat! Considering we've emailed each other enough that you are on my contact list and not a random stranger) Insert Laughing face (:-)

I am ending this glorious evening knowing that strangers, family and former BF's have written to me about tonight's show. The subject matter, mattered. 

I, Nadège August, understood it to the core and for that week, while we shot, I lived it. 

When a relative skyped me hours before the episode aired Pacific Time and proceeded to give me the play by play of the episode,  I lovingly stopped him and said:

"Brother, I was there!" Sheila Goode (the character I played) was Good.
 Leit motif, courtesy of Mahogany? ~ broken and done.