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?