It took my mother seven years of fertility treatment to conceive me. A few years later,, she had to have her uterus removed, then both of her ovaries, and still they couldn’t quell the disease. She was only in her thirties. Every few years throughout my childhood, I visited my mother in the hospital after another surgery to remove the growths. I watched her in immense pain. I saw her disappointment at her falling figure and her growing scars. I watched her wither under the fatigue. I felt her sense that she had lost her womanhood because while she was less than forty years old, she was in menopause. And I knew the whole time that there was a chance it was my future too.
When I was a teenager, they put me on birth control at the first sign of irregular pain. They told me the hormones would stop the disease; that maybe I didn’t even have it. They told me I was fine. And for a while, I was.
And then I wasn’t. Intense pain crashed into my life on my 24th birthday. I’ve lost almost thirty pounds since then. Between February and this August, I have been in the ER four times and to a myriad of doctors. I have had a CT scan, an ultrasound that was rendered incomplete due to the pain (and still they said I was probably fine!), blood tests among blood tests to rule out lupus and rheumatoid factors for the pain… I have been given every explanation from kidney stones to UTIs to celiac disease to colitis to neurosis, given pain killers and told to go home.
Finally, a doctor, a good doctor listened to me. Unfortunately he is a gastroenterologist, not a gynecologist, but he knows what he’s doing. He ran another CT scan, this time with contrast to make sure that my colon, etc. were fine in and of themselves. He told me that he can feel there is something wrong. He brought up endometriosis before I did. I told him about my mother’s case. Immediately he referred me to a gynecologist and told me to hold firm; that I am not being neurotic.
In the next few weeks, I’m going to be scheduled for a laparoscopy and they suspect that there are growths on my bladder and small intestine, at the least. The surgery doesn’t phase me. The pain of it doesn’t shake me. Maybe they will find this. Maybe the pain will stop. Maybe I’ll be able to eat again without throwing up. Or have the energy to stay up past midnight again. Or begin to feeling like I am only 24. Maybe I’ll go on adventures again. And smile again. Maybe the shadows under my eyes will go away.
But I know that maybe this will only get worse. And maybe I won’t be able to have children. And maybe my life will be riddled with pain. Maybe no one will be able to love me through this. Maybe I won’t have the strength to love myself.
I used to say that I didn’t want kids. That was when I was afraid that I was too crazy. I was afraid that I wouldn’t be able to care for them. I don’t feel that anymore. And I know that the hardships I felt during my childhood do not need to be repeated. And it seems that at the brink of that realization comes the blow, the very real blow that I might not be fertile. That it may not be my choice to remain childless. I have always wanted to adopt. And while genetic commonality bears no relation to the amount of love felt for a child, I still find myself these nights lately crying myself to sleep at the thought that I may never know what it is like to be pregnant. I may never have a husband run his hands over me and sing into my belly button. I may never know the pain of childbirth; the greatest pain humans willingly endure; yet I have to live a life so heavily saturated with pain from the very parts that may likely deny me a child.
