Going down swinging

"There's significant scarring."

I expected it for weeks.  I came to this appointment alone because I knew - in my mind I knew and could handle - what this competent, trim doctor with his neat, thin face would say.

It didn't stop the tears from overflowing down my cheeks as I nodded.

He launched into a long lecture on what would work while I sat there with glazed eyes.  He is a fertility doctor, I understand that, for him it is about wanting a child or not and how best to get there. But, I came to him because I couldn't get answers on my lack of periods and my health.  I don't want a child.  Not exactly.  I want my uterus back.  I want it not to be damaged beyond functionality.

I am angry. I am angry. I am angry.  I am angry because I lay on an operating table and asked my OB with absolute clarity right before my third and non-emergent D&C, might this damage my lining and he said no.  And while statistically, that answer is correct, for me, for my specific case, for my individual circumstance, six weeks post partum and on my third D&C, it was not correct.

I am angry because when I failed to have periods after Nate weaned, I went to my OB practice and they said it was my weight and I believed them for months, though I knew I was the same weight I have been my entire life including three healthy pregnancies.  When I went back, months later, I had done research. I made an appointment with the doctor who did the D&C for retained placenta.

I think it's Asherman's syndrome, I said my throat dry, my heart tight (scarring of the uterus after trauma like a D&C).

He laughed at me.  He shook his head. That's so rare. He said it was more likely Sheehan's syndrome (She-has syndrome, nice, no?).  He mocked me.  And I believed him as I walked out the door with a prescription for estrogen because low estrogen related to my weight was most likely not letting my lining grow. I believed him because I wanted to believe him because I knew what the real answer would mean.  It would mean he had - unintentionally or no, carelessly or no, following standards of care or not - sterilized me.

I finally managed to break into this new doctor's enthusiastic recounting of his success rates.  I want you to fix it, I told him. I didn't know how to explain.  I still don't.  We can live with it if we don't have any more children, we might even choose that.  It's this anger I can't live with. 

I don't want another child for sure, I want my options back, I want Dr. Z not to have damaged my uterus. I'm so angry.

The kind specialist stared at his desk.  He followed standard of care.  I shook my head.  I've done all my reading now.  Maybe, for some imaginary, average woman, but he didn't give me the best care he could have based on my concerns.  He certainly never said that there is a 40% incidence of uterine damage for woman who have a D&C without preventative drugs or a balloon in place to prevent scarring in the first six weeks post partum.

Because I would have said no surgery.

Of course, he said, there's a good chance we could fix it, but there's no guarantee.

When is there ever?

I don't know what we'll do, but I know that I had decided not to write about any of this. And it wasn't because it's too much information - although it probably is. I'm past all that.

It's because I don't want to be this person in my life or in this space.  I'm happy and content.  I'm the woman who had three babies in just over three years.  I'm the crazy lady with all the little kids.

Except now, I'm not. I am, but that's not the whole story. We don't get to create who we are against the grain of time and knowledge and experience.  Or we can try, I suppose, but it will ring a false note in the world and in our souls that only leaves us feeling alone.  Yesterday, I was a happy, content, crazy mother of four small children.  Today, I'm happy and content and angry all at the same time.  Today, I'm not able to have any more babies and it hurts even if we don't want any more for reasons that I'm not sure I'll ever be able to sort out.

Sometimes I want the surgery and sometimes I want a therapist to help me figure out why it is so hard for me to let go.  Why it's so important?  Sometimes I don't care if I ever have another period, I want to raise our kids and keep publishing my novel and direct and co-produce a show.  I can hardly believe that these good, gorgeous things are happening to me and I don't want this heaviness, this angry indecision, to be a part of it all in any way.

Sometimes I want to keep my estrogen prescription follow up appointment with my previous OB at the end of this month so that I can tell him face to face to shove his Sheehan's syndrome up his ass. Hard. And I hope it sterilizes him.

Sometimes I know that no amount of anger can change the past and the best way out is through and the only way to feel happiness like I do, to live the highs to their very highest, is to sit in the sadness when it comes. Life happens and mine is a good, good life.

So, there you go. I wrote it out.  I will be who I am, even when it's a fight.

Hi, I'm Stacey and I'm the crazy lady with four babies, but now I can't have babies any more without surgery and I have absolutely no idea how I really feel about that.