The Love Canal Disaster

You know how you hear a story that is so wonderfully funny you want to share it, even if it would cause someone else terrible embarrassment? If it happened to you, you probably would only tell a few privileged individuals, really close friends, maybe, people who share your sense of humor and don’t judge.   This is one of those stories. It involves things you might not want to read about, like periods and tampons. Also, you have no idea who this story involves. Don’t jump to conclusions. You don’t know who it is about, so just shut up.  Names and details have been altered to protect the innocent and the mortified.  Stop it, because you don’t know who it is. Ok, kids, here we go…

Tampons are pretty routine for the long time user, but for a young girl who is new to them, they can be rather tricky. Some girls act like they are no big deal, but a great many  teenage girls balk at the mere idea of a tampon, the idea of sticking something inside their you-know-what, in order to absorb the worst thing that ever happened to them, that happens every month for like ever, well, it just can’t get any worse. The mere mention of a tampon sends fear to their very core, or possibly their vaginas, and that creates a big problem. Why? Because in order to use a vagina properly, it must be relaxed. A tense vagina is just not very forgiving.  You know what I’m talking about, don’t you?

What happens when a vagina is too tense to accept the reality of a tampon? If it’s the initial stage, then that tampon just isn’t going to go in. Then you must resort to plan B, a pad, and everyone moves on with their lives until the next trip to the bathroom or, if not soon enough, the inevitable ruined pair of shorts and ensuing humiliation.

But here’s another scenario. What if you got the tampon in, but later, it doesn’t want to come back out? What if it’s in there like Punxsutawney Phil, scared of its own shadow or the light of day? How do you get it out?

It’s not unheard of. When I was in college, a girl in my dorm forgot she had a tampon in and inserted a new one. The two of them somehow knitted themselves together, and she had to go to the health center to get them extracted. Naturally, we all talked about her because that’s what girls do. I never understood how she didn’t know she already had one locked and loaded, but she could have been drunk or stupid or something.

Sometimes you just plain can’t get it out.  It isn’t that unusual, especially at the end of one’s cycle, to have a bit of dryness in the old cooch. If your flow isn’t heavy enough to saturate the tampon, it gets, well, stuck, too dry to be budged. After yanking on the string of a dryish tampon for a while, the vagina starts to have a panic attack, and bingo, the perfect storm, or drought, since we are talking about dryness here.

I heard this story about a teenage girl who couldn’t get her tampon out. She struggled with it for a good thirty minutes, but it wouldn’t move. She panicked, and that vagina went on lockdown. The girl did what she had to do. She texted her mother.

Her mother came to her aid. On the other side of the bathroom door, to ask how she could be of assistance. The girl explained that her tampon was stuck and that she didn’t know what to do. The mother offered a few suggestions. Relax, she said. Take a few deep breaths. The girl replied that she was beyond that and she needed real help, not new age meditative bullshit propaganda. The mother suggested that she open her legs wide in an effort to maybe help the vagina stretch and yawn and maybe spit the tampon out. The girl began to cry, convinced that she was not just going to remove the tampon, but that the uterus would come out as well. The mother asked to enter the bathroom, but the girl screamed for her to go away.

The mother, who was not fond of being yelled at, went into her room, and soon after, was joined by the girl. She had tears in her eyes, desperate for help. The mother thought and thought. She suggested the girl try a lubricant of some sort, perhaps the well-known brand KY Jelly. The girl stated she didn’t have such a product. The mother thought she had given the teen some when she began using the dreaded tampons, but she was, according to her daughter, mistaken. The mother told the girl she had some personal lubricant the girl could borrow.

This is where the story gets interesting. The mother realized that if she went to retrieve the personal lubricant, the girl would discover where she kept the product. This was a detail the mother did not want the daughter to know. She asked that the girl return to her bathroom and wait for the mother to return with the lubricant.

The daughter left the room, and the mother went to the father’s nightstand, where the personal lubricant was kept. Alas, when the mother removed the bottle, she discovered that the container was almost completely empty. She knew she couldn’t hand the empty lubricant bottle to her child. The day had been traumatizing enough as it was.

The mother devised a plan and joined her daughter in the bathroom. She instructed her child to close her eyes and hold out her hand, so that the mother could dispatch some of the lubricant into the girl’s outstretched palm. The child closed her eyes and opened her hand. The mother began to vigorously shake the lubricant bottle up and down, squeezing it over her child’s open palm. Nothing happened. The mother repeated the steps, up and down, squeeze.

Are you thinking of an empty ketchup bottle right now, one with just one glob of ketchup left at the very bottom? Good, you should.

Finally, with a loud wet noise, the bottle released the last dollop of personal lubricant into the teen’s open palm. The child was visibly disturbed by both the texture and the sound of the lubricant, and asked the mother what she was supposed to do with it. The mother instructed her to slather it around the opening of the vagina and perhaps a little inside if possible, and then to relax and open her legs wide and if everything went according to plan, the vagina would release its hold and allow the tampon to pass.

The daughter instructed the mother to leave the restroom at once, and to close the door behind her. The mother waited for about twenty minutes, but the daughter never left the bathroom. The mother texted the daughter to ask if it had worked, but alas, it did not. After more time had passed, the daughter had decided to take a shower, and the heat and the water were able to accomplish what the mother’s lubricant could not. They both decided to never discuss it again.

You should do what that mother and child resolved to do. Never discuss it again. Just be glad it wasn’t you.

Commando in Chief

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: the only difference between little kids and teenagers is two feet and ten years. The narcissism and horrible decision making skills are about the same, but the scale at which those traits are displayed is much larger with that added decade. Granted, the upside of the older ones is that they usually don’t crap in their pants. Also, they understand sarcasm, so they are not a total buzzkill, but you will still want to shake some sense into them from time to time.

Yesterday was one of those times. My oldest daughter, E, and I had hair appointments. I went for my usual extensive gray covering and small trim to freshen things up, while E needed to get the straw like split ends sheared off so her hair might once again look like hair. She wore a cute little white patterned sundress, spaghetti straps and a mid-thigh handkerchief hemline, and with her hair straight and shiny, she looked just beautiful.

After hours at the salon, we got home and went in the kitchen to grab a snack. She made a comment when I walked past her about not wearing any underwear, one I wish I could remember. I thought she was joking and lifted up the back of her dress. She wasn’t joking. Bare bottom. We both screamed.

” Stop it Mom. I’m naked under this!” she screamed.

“You went out in public like that? What were you thinking?” I yelled at her. “Oh my God, I sat in that chair after you. Other people are sitting in that chair right now!”

“I tucked my dress under me,” she said, “like this,” and showed me how a proper lady would smooth her skirt before sitting. Proper ladies also wear underwear, especially in public.

“Your dress isn’t long enough to do that.” I said.

“Yes, it is,” she said.

“Oh,yeah? Well, bend over and touch your toes. “

The toe touch is my mothering litmus test for all things too short. At some point, we are all going to drop our phones and have to bend over and pick it up. When that time comes, we might not remember to squat demurely. Also, in her current state, the demure squat wouldn’t do the trick any better than the toe touch.  Either way, someone is getting an eyeful.

When I was in junior high, which is what we called middle school in Florida, I knew a girl who was known for her mini-skirts and no panties combination. I am pretty sure that’s how she passed ninth grade. I never witnessed it myself, but the memory haunts me anyway.

My daughter turned her back to me and started to bend over. “Not like that!” I shouted. “Turn your back to the wall; I don’t want to see your lady parts!” She turned around and bent over again.

“Oh, ok,” she said, and stood up. “I see what you mean.”

“What were you thinking? Seriously, what is the thought process that gets you to making a decision like going out in a short dress without panties?”

“Be nice to me!” she said.

My husband poked his head in the kitchen. “She can say whatever she wants. You went out in public without panties. You have lost all grounds for complaining. You forfeited nice when you went out like that. ”

I love it when he has my back.

“So what were you thinking?” I asked again.

“This dress is thin. I didn’t want my panties to show.”

“But you were okay with your pubes showing? I don’t get it. I see your point though. If you don’t want your panties to show, then don’t wear any. Makes perfect sense.”

She rolled her eyes. Too bad she can’t get college credit for eye rolling. She would have a fucking Masters in eye rolling.

“Why couldn’t you just wear your light gray thong?” I asked.

Mind you, when I was fourteen, I didn’t have a light gray thong. I didn’t even have a thong. And I certainly wouldn’t have gone out without anything between my privates and the rest of the world. We had two options back then, briefs or bikinis. You wore whichever ones your mom bought you, or in my case, whichever ones your sisters didn’t destroy before handing them down to you. You didn’t think about panty lines. You just accepted that in certain outfits, your panties would show. It wasn’t embarrassing because everyone had panty lines. You weren’t all that special.

“Oh,” she said. “I forgot about those.”

“Or the peach colored ones. “

“But those would show,” she said.

“Not really, they are the same color as your ass. Your bare ass. Your bare naked in public ass,” I said.

“Just stop,” she said.

“She will stop when you put on panties,” my husband shouted from the other room.

My younger daughter, S, came bouncing down the stairs. “What’s going on? I heard yelling.”

I love that about my kids. They are so nosy. When I was a kid and I heard my mom yell, I would stay right where I was, out of the line of fire.  My kids are comfortable knowing that anger is not misplaced around these parts.

“None of your business,” E barked. Well, anger that isn’t misplaced by me.

“She isn’t wearing panties,” I told S. “She went out for her haircut without underwear. And she sat in the car and the shampoo chair and the hair cut chair all like that. Oh, and the waiting area couch. She has sat in many places.”

“Gross,” S said.

“Indeed,” I answered.

“Shut up,” E said.

“But what about your period?” S asked. S is on her period for the third time ever. It is her new frame of reference. It is the sun around which her whole world revolves.

“I’m not on my period. That’s you,” E snapped.

“But you still have discharge,” S said. Well, whispered. She whispered discharge, like one might whisper cancer or black.

“Don’t talk to me about my vagina!” E yelled at her.

…And scene.

E went upstairs to change her clothes, and maybe put on panties. She came back downstairs in a hoodie and sweatpants. Did I mention it was about 95 degrees outside?  Earlier, it was hot enough to skip panties, now she was covered up like the Taliban was coming over for dinner.  I just don’t understand.

What I do understand is why she screamed so loud when she sat on the hot leather seat of my car after our haircuts, and for that, I don't blame her.

Close but No Cigar

[Part three. This one is more graphic, and probably less funny. Surgery isn't really funny, so I don't know what you expect from me. Also, I need to apologize to those of you who thought my surgery was today. It was last week, and I am recovering quite well. Thank you for your concern.]

I tried to be optimistic, really I did. I felt confident in my doctor’s ability. I had back up help with my daughters if needed. The laundry was washed and dried and folded. The fridge was stocked with all the necessities. I was prepared to have a day or two of down time. I was ready to go.

The night before my surgery, I shoved one pill in my vagina and a melatonin in my mouth and slept well. I woke up in the morning, had a lovely shower, gave my legs a courtesy shave, put on comfortable clothing, and made the morning routine as close to normal as possible for my girls. After making their breakfast, I made my own and took my other pill orally. I slipped my other prescriptions, my vaginal morphine suppository and my Xanax, into my purse. We all got in the car to take the girls to school before heading over to the doctor’s office.

By the time we got there, whatever that cervix relaxer was had kicked in pretty good. I can’t vouch for how relaxed my cervix was, but the rest of me couldn’t walk a straight line. My husband signed in for me and then the nurse called us back to a waiting room. She handed me a cup for a urine sample and then told me to insert my suppository anally after I peed. I must have given her a baroo, complete with head tilt, because she explained that she knew the prescription was written for a vaginal suppository, but it’s not supposed to be.

I stepped into the bathroom and stood there for a few minutes trying to figure out what to accomplish first, the peeing in the cup or the shoving a suppository up my butt. I went for the pee, getting some of it in the plastic cup, the rest all over my hand. I put the container in the little cabinet marked “urine samples,” then flushed and washed my hands.

Next, I attempted to open the bottle containing the suppository. The bottle said to squeeze the sides to open the top, but hell if I could figure it out. I stood there squeezing and pulling and tugging, but it wouldn’t open. I stuck everything else back in my purse and stepped out of the restroom. No nurses were loitering in the hallway, so I wandered a bit until I found the lab and asked the woman who may or may not have been my nurse to open the bottle for me. She smiled and took the bottle, popping it open expertly before handing it back to me. “It’s kind of tricky, I know,” she said without a hint of condescension. I went back into the restroom and inserted the little waxy bullet in my ass, marveling at how easily it just slipped right in. I was still marveling about it when I sat back in the waiting room, next to my husband.

“It’s in there,” I whispered loudly. “I can feel it. Am I supposed to be able to feel it?”

“It has to get to body temperature to melt,” he told me.

“Gross,” I whispered back. "I have a candle wax bullet melting in my ass."

A different nurse came and collected me, and we passed by my doctor on the way to another room. I gave her a friendly little wave. We sat down and the nurse asked me to take out my medications, then expressed surprise at not seeing any pain medicine. I told her I already had ibuprofen and the cervix one and the other thing in my ass. Then I apologized for saying ass. She handed me a cup of water and instructed me to swallow my Xanax, then led me to an exam room, where she gave me an injection of something in my left butt cheek. I curled up on the paper on the exam table to rest because I really needed to rest. The nurse came back a little later and I asked her if I could put on some socks that I had brought from home, but I needed help finding them in my purse and then getting them on the right feet. My nurse was very patient. I didn’t feel quite as sleepy anymore, so I read the book I brought with me, only it was more like I read just one word over and over.

The nurse then led me to the surgical room. I removed my skirt and panties as she instructed me, then got on the table with my feet in the stirrups. She covered me up with a paper tablecloth and left me to pretend to read a bit more. After a few more minutes, my gynecologist came in with the nurse. She settled herself between my legs, turned on the monitor and a bright light. I thought how nice it would be if it weren’t so bright, but then she might not be able to see, and it would definitely make reading trickier. Still, she could do the same with a head lamp, which comes in handy while spelunking.

My doctor inserted a speculum, and then began giving me a series of shots in my cervix. You know how you go to the dentist for a filling and you get those shots in your gums and they are supposed to feel like a pinch but really feel like a hornet attack? Yeah, it was that. A hornet attack inside my forbidden zone. Satisfied, she stepped back out of the room to check her Facebook or something while she waited for me to get numb.

She came back in after some time and settled back between my thighs. This is where shit got real.  My doctor stuck something in my cervix; I think it was a dilator, or a series of graduated dilators. Each one was more uncomfortable than the last. Seriously, messing with a cervix is guaranteed to make you see stars with just the gentlest of contact. Ramming it repeatedly with different surgical instruments was a level of pain I can’t find words to describe.

Okay, graphic time. With everything she put in me, something wet flowed, flooded, gushed, shot, squirted out of me. I'm pretty sure it was a large quantity of blood. I held my book up over my face so that I wasn’t tempted to see what was happening to the bottom half of my body, from which I was becoming increasingly detached. I couldn’t even look at the words, but only used my book as a shield.

“There’s the culprit,” My doctor said. “You have a polyp. Let’s just biopsy that first.” That biopsy was the best part. I couldn’t feel it at all.

Then it was time to put a camera up my cooch to see what was going on in the farthest, darkest regions of my uncooperative uterus. Of course she couldn’t see well, which meant she had to move it around a bunch. Every movement brought a new level of pain. She decided to try without the speculum.

“Is this because of my wonky uterus?” I asked.

“Yes, it’s not easy to get in there and see what’s going on.”

She tried next with a shorter speculum. She tried with a longer one. Finally, she stopped trying and called another doctor in to look with her. Someone kept moaning, and it was really annoying.

The nurse came over to me and held my hand. She was a good nurse. She knew this wasn’t fun or easy or normal.

The other doctor watched the monitor as my doctor manipulated the camera around and around and around. They might have talked to each other, but I could only hear my own breathing, my inability to control it, and that annoying moaning.

“Well,” she said, removing the camera and the speculum, “We can’t do this. I’m sorry, but it’s just not worth the risk. You have a lot of scar tissue in here from those C-sections. Looks like you’ll need a hysterectomy, but at least insurance won’t be a problem since we tried this first.”

“Can we talk about that later?” I mumbled.

“Someone go get her some ginger ale,” she said. “You were a champ. Sorry it didn’t work out. But you’ve had a D and C now, so that’s something.”

And with that, she left the surgical room.

I stayed there with a heating pad on my belly, sipping ginger ale through a straw from a cup another nurse held for me. I don’t know how long that went on. At some point I remember my couch at home. And pain. A lot of pain. My husband found some old oxycodone from my daughter’s wisdom tooth extraction, and I took one of those, which I threw up some time later. I slept. I woke up cramping. I slept some more. There might have been a slice of pizza consumed, followed by more sleep and more cramps. Later, I was pleased to see I was still alive.

My follow up is in a week, at which point I get to talk about the next step. I definitely don’t feel ready for anything that involves any more poking and prodding in my baby maker. I thought about this whole experience today, and I’m curious why general anesthesia wasn’t an option. I had five pills at home, a morphine suppository, a shot in my ass, multiple shots in my cervix, and another pill to help me relax. I probably didn’t feel everything, but I felt enough. You would think with all that, I wouldn’t feel anything. This seems to be one of those in office procedures that probably shouldn’t be, or perhaps it’s so fast when it goes according to plan that some level of pain is acceptable. My question is, acceptable to whom?

I’m healing, but I am certainly not back to my normal. I am having a period from hell, as my very angry uterus retaliates for all it’s been through. And lucky me, no tampons for a week.  At least, I assume none. My doctor told me to not put anything in my bottom for a week, but I am pretty sure that is polite Southern for pussy. So I’m using pads, and no swimming or baths or other activity down under, which is fine by me, because I am just as angry with my lady parts as they are with me. And I am disappointed, that it didn't work, that it wasn't easy, that I went though all that and didn't even have surgery. That too will get better with time.

I’m sorry I don’t have a happy ending to share, but what did you expect? Happy endings are only for movies anyway.

Mise en Place

[Part two. If you read the last disclaimer, it still kind of applies, only this one isn't as gross for you squeamish types.]

After a few weeks of not thinking about my surgery, I now had to face it. Today was my pre-op appointment for my surgery tomorrow, an endometrial ablation.

The procedure is about as much fun as it sounds; the doctor inserts a device into my uterus to ablate, to destroy, my endometrial lining and thus hopefully eliminate a monthly, or in my case, more frequent than monthly shedding of my unused potential. Sometimes this is accomplished through burning, sometimes through freezing. In my case, it is a newer method that uses a tool to take measurements of your uterus before shooting a mesh liner to cover the entire inside of the uterus to burn off the lining. Think of a picklepicker that has the web shooting capability of Spiderman. The entire thing takes about five minutes if all goes well, and it doesn’t require general anesthesia, which means less recovery time. Sounds like a piece of cake, a piece of disgusting, burned, ablated cake, doesn’t it?

I usually see my doctor at a satellite office, but the surgery was to be performed at the main office near the hospital. I thought my pre op appointment was going to be there too, so I left a good forty minutes early since I don’t exactly live close to the hospital. I made it there in plenty of time, found decent parking, and walked into the office with fifteen minutes to spare, just enough to deep breathe my way to a lower blood pressure.

Except I was wrong. My pre op appointment wasn’t there; it was at the satellite office. Which meant I had to get back in the car and drive another forty minutes to get to the correct office. I practiced relaxation breathing techniques as I rushed across town, arriving fifteen minutes late and more than an hour after I left my house. It was an inconvenient mistake at most, but there was no way my blood pressure was going to be normal.

I worry a lot about my blood pressure, which is, of course, the best way to make it high.

Luckily, the office staff knew to expect me to come flying in all crazed-like. A nurse took me to a little triage room and took my blood pressure, which I nailed, then started asking me a bunch of questions about what kind of pain medicine I liked.

I have had a few surgeries in the past, and what I have learned from them is this: pain medication is not my friend. I’ve tried most of them, and experience has shown that if I swallow it, nine times out of ten, it’s going to come back up. I envy Rush Limbaugh his ability to develop an unhealthy relationship with pain meds.

I explained my predicament to the nurse, who assured me I would be just fine with lots of ibuprofen. I looked over the paperwork she gave me which said I was supposed to start taking 800 milligrams of the stuff at least three times a day two days before the surgery. So much for that. She handed me one prescription for a vaginal suppository that I had to get from a compounding pharmacy, and then followed that up with a list of the only three pharmacies in town that might possibly have it. I looked at my watch, thought about how I had time to get that medicine and also pick up my children from school, and asked what would happen if I couldn’t get it. She assured me I would be just fine, it just helps with the pain. She handed me another prescription, this one for a medicine to help relax my cervix.  Lastly, she handed me a prescription for one lonely Xanax, which I could have taken right about then. After telling me, again, it was all going to be just fine, she led me to an exam room to wait for my gynecologist.

My doctor breezed into the room and started reviewing my stack of prescriptions at light speed. She is a very competent doctor, but I swear she was a tornado in a past life. She comes in all blustery and leaves before you know what hits you. She explained how to use all my medicines in rapid fire. One pill goes into my vagina at bedtime. I take the other of the same one with my breakfast. I bring a Xanax with me to take along with my vaginal suppository.  The bad part was every time she said the word "vagina," she spread her legs a little bit and pointed between them, as if I wasn't quite sure where my vagina was.

I asked her about the suppository, since I just didn’t see how I was supposed to get it before 8:30 the following morning. She told me it was morphine and belladonna, but it would be okay if I didn’t have it. But breakfast I had to have, so make it a good one. Why? Because that’s too much medicine on an empty stomach, she told me. She then stressed the importance of me taking ibuprofen before I get there in the morning. I was beginning to think that this allegedly five minute easy procedure was going to be five minutes of pure hell.

As she left the room, I asked her how often she performed ablations. She said all the time. In fact, they are so easy, she never got to do hysterectomies anymore. I almost felt reassured. I grabbed my stack of prescriptions and paperwork and scooted out to the car to call the short list of compounding pharmacies. Lucky for me, one of them was only a twenty minute drive away and, lucky for me, had my suppository in stock.

I walked into the pharmacy, and it was like walking into 1960, except there was no lunch counter. I am pretty sure the items on the shelves were older than me, as was the dust that covered them. I talked to the pharmacist, who was the nicest, calmest lady in the history of drug stores. She looked at my prescriptions and then asked me if I had started taking my ibuprofen yet. I told her I had just come from my pre-op appointment, so I didn’t know I needed to until about thirty minutes ago. She just opened her eyes real wide and didn’t say a word.

“This is going to hurt, isn’t it,” I asked her.

“It shouldn’t be that bad,” she said unconvincingly.

While I waited for my medications, a few other people came into the store, all regulars and known to the pharmacist by name. They too looked like they had been coming here since at least 1960. I snuck out to the car to pop four Motrin and get that in my system, then went back inside to clarify some questions with the pharmacy technician, mainly which pill went in which orifice at which time. I had pills for my mouth. Pills for my vagina. Pills for bedtime. Pills for breakfast. And pills to take to the doctor’s office. No wonder it only took five minutes or so for the surgery. All the prep work was done before, by me.

I left the pharmacy and drove another thirty minutes to get in the car pool line in time to get my daughters from school. I stopped along the way to get some fast food, which I abhor, since I didn’t have time for lunch. I sat in my car eating salty chicken tenders and wondering how bad tomorrow was going to hurt. The afternoon felt like “Planes, Trains, and Automobiles,” a movie I hate more than any other. There are two kinds of people: those who love that movie, and me.

My doctor really should have given me an extra Xanax.