Two years ago today I woke up in a hospital room after the first of what would be two major surgeries, nine weeks apart. At this time two years ago, I was still waiting to hear what the results of the surgical pathology were, and in fact, what surgery had been done – had I woken up with cancer and in menopause, or just missing an ovary and a fallopian tube, and healthy? The result ended up being a third option they hadn’t prepared me for – a precancerous tumour that would ultimately still cost me my entire reproductive system.
I’m thinking about that day a bit today. Mostly because, two years on, I’m still dealing with daily fallout from those surgeries. I think most people expect that it’s in my past, that I’ve moved on, and I suppose, in some ways I have. But also, I’m in daily pain from an incisional hernia where my surgical incisions never properly healed. I take an extra daily medication to manage the gastrointestinal side effects of that same hernia. And I deal with muscle aches and pain caused largely by my lack of ability to use my or strengthen my core, due to the hernia.
It’s been a bit of an odd few days, with highs and lows. I was accepted into graduate school this week, with plans to start in September. That’s a pretty big high. And, if I’m honest, maybe one that wouldn’t have happened had I not been forced by the reality of a tumour diagnosis to reconsider what I wanted out of life. And this, this is something I’ve wanted for a long time. But also, it’s been two years and I’m still suffering physically, and we never would have predicted that, when it turned out to not be cancer.
I’m holding these things in my hands, the ongoing suffering and the newfound joy, and considering them. I feel curious and maybe a little melancholy today, and as I consider those two things, I think that curiosity and melancholy are probably the right mix of emotions in this situation.
It’s almost the end of another Maundy Thursday. My social media is all over the place tonight. People touting the importance of Maundy Thursday – the washing of feet! the institution of the Eucharist! the institution of the priesthood! And then, then there is the report from Maryland this week. The kind of report that just keeps coming – priests and victims and coverups. The kind that reminds me of stories not mine to tell. The kind of report that reminds me of my own traumas, too.
Fifteen years ago, in a season of deep brokenness, after I came home from Malta, in the midst of relationships coming to an end that I’d never expected to end, I penned a poem that contained the following lines:
goodbye hard words to say not the cry for unity that I’d desired no John 17 goodness left in me
just Abba, Father, my heart hurts “Would you hold me?”
a rosary twined around my wrist fingers caressing the tiny, broken body of Christ
if it be your will let this cup pass from me but not my will yours be done in this in everything a cup to be drunk (and I will drink) a cup of suffering and a desperate cry for hope
~~~
It has been fifteen years since those words poured from my pen. I can still see the chair I sat in as I wrote. I wasn’t Catholic yet, but had brought a rosary home from the Vatican – one I’d chosen for its simple beauty, and in that season of wordless prayers and broken relationships, I sat often, wordlessly, caressing the tiny crucifix, and begging Christ’s intercession.
And now, all those years later, I find myself returning to that line “no John 17 goodness/left in me”. It’s Christ’s prayer in the garden, his cry for the unity of his body left on earth. There are stories that are not mine to tell, reasons why I struggle to see that unity as even a remote possibility tonight.
On a Maundy Thursday evening, 10 years ago this month, I had my feet washed and kissed by a priest, and a few days later, I was confirmed at the Easter Vigil into the Roman Catholic Church. After that confirmation several people greeted me with the words “Welcome Home!”
I wanted to slap them for their trite comments and lack of understanding of what this cost and would and does cost me.
I felt I’d just left home – I grew up in a home where Jesus was honored deeply, where I was encouraged to pursue faith in Christ, where I was, for lack of a better word, discipled. And after all of that, Jesus had led me to meet him in his body and blood, and I chose to follow that leading into a church that believed what my heart already knew – that Jesus was present in the Eucharist. I left a sure thing, a family, a community, to follow Jesus into my own personal wilderness with him.
A lot of hearts broke at my confirmation service, including mine. The cost has been high and I feel it most strongly each year at Christmas and during the Triduum. The high holy days of faith, and I’ll attend services alone. My family has a number of people in professional ministry, so we’ll gather as a family to celebrate Easter dinner tomorrow night when they’re available, rather than Sunday when they’re not – and I’ll navigate again the complex narrative of celebration of resurrection on a day when Catholics fast and abstain. I’ll join them for dinner, but it’ll be my only whole meal for the day, and I’ll skip the meat. And my heart will break as I realize all over again the way the unity that Christ prayed for is lacking on earth – is lacking in my life.
It’s Maundy Thursday again, and my heart is breaking. It’s Maundy Thursday and the cry for unity is strong. It’s Maundy Thursday and the abuses are enormous, the pressure great.
It’s Maundy Thursday and I just don’t know if I have any John 17 goodness left in me, so tonight, as I fall asleep, I’ll twine a rosary between my fingers. I’ll caress the tiny, shattered body of Christ, and I’ll pray for this cup to pass, but only if it’s His will, not mine.
Fifteen years ago today I stood in a field in Malta, balancing my weight precariously as it was freshly plowed and the turned up ground was soft and unstable beneath my feet. The field was surrounded by limestone walls. I was with two others, people I’d asked to witness and participate in that moment.
A stock photo, but so very like the field I found myself in, that it takes me back.
Several months prior I’d had a dream in which I met Jesus at a banqueting table. I ended up seated across from him, but with my head bowed in submission, unable to look him in the eye. But somehow, without words, I knew to cup my hands out in front of me, across the center of the table. He took a decanter of red wine, and poured that wine out into my cupped hands, until it spilled out onto the snowy white table linens. And then I woke up.
I wondered what that dream was about, curious, but not worried. More surprised than anything, because while I often had spiritually toned dreams, this was was more vividly real than anything I’d dreamed before, and, well, I met Jesus in it. Later that day I was listening to a sermon podcast as I walked home from the train station after work, and found myself wondering again about the wine. I rarely drank the stuff, I was from a church that used grape juice for communion, and very few around me at the time imbibed either. Suddenly the words of the preacher penetrated my musings – “wine,” he said, “is about the shalom of God, the healing of God, the wholeness of God.” I remember pausing on the corner of a major intersection, waiting for the light to turn, and asking Jesus, “Did you just pour your shalom, your healing, your wholeness on my hands in a dream?” I didn’t get an answer.
I later shared that dream with a few people in my life, and then set it aside. Until, that is, I found myself in Malta, a place that had been introduced to me as a place with a history of healing tracing back to St. Paul shaking the viper off into the fire and not falling ill, and then carrying Christ’s healing power to the Maltese people. During the trip we’d visited the spot where St. Paul was supposed to have made landfall, and St. Paul’s shipwreck church, which housed two relics of the saint – a piece of the column on which he was beheaded in Rome, and a portion of his wrist bone in a creepy looking silver reliquary.
Something about that time was stirring images of the dream again, and I communicated to one of the people I was there with, that this was happening. I said that I thought I needed to see it played out in real life. She questioned me a little, then helped me make it happen.
And so, there I was, standing in a field of dark dirt, cupping my hands. The two who were with me filled my hands with the rich, dark soil, and some wildflowers, and then began pouring wine over them, washing them clean with the blood red liquid.
It’s been fifteen years since that moment. A moment that ended up being the beginning of a shattering in me, in the relationships of the people with whom I was travelling and praying and serving. A day that was the first of a series of four days, that were traumatic to live, and sad to remember.
It’s been fifteen years, and still I wonder about that moment. I wonder about that dream. I’ve had undeniable moments where my hands have been used in healing, where my hands and by extension the rest of my body, have contributed to bringing shalom, peace, healing and wholeness. I’ve experienced shattering of my own self, moments where I was certain that I’d never again know peace. And I’ve experienced the healing brought by the hands and feet and voices of others.
Fifteen years later and I still rarely drink alcohol, including wine. But also, fifteen years more whole, more experienced – fifteen years further into a life where I really do hope my presence brings with it some form of shalom. I still don’t know what to make of it – what to make of the dream or the shattering, or the healing. I don’t know how to express the trauma, the brokenness, the years that followed, the way that trauma has shaped me into who I am today. But today, I’m pausing to remember it, to remember the impact of Christ’s touch on my hands in that dream, to remember the unstable ground beneath my feet, the scent of the wine mixed with soil. I’m holding it in front of Jesus again, and asking anew, “what does it mean that you blessed me with wine poured out over my hands?”
Shrek: Ogres are like onions. Donkey: They stink? Shrek: Yes. No. Donkey: Oh, they make you cry. Shrek: No. Donkey: Oh, you leave em out in the sun, they get all brown, start sproutin’ little white hairs. Shrek: No. Layers. Onions have layers. Ogres have layers. Onions have layers. You get it? We both have layers. Donkey: Oh, you both have layers. Oh. You know, not everybody like onions.
I’m thinking about these lines from the 2001 movie, Shrek, tonight, as I ponder my life right now, and more importantly, who I am in the midst of my life right now. I relate to Shrek, feeling misunderstood, knowing there is more to me than meets the eye. I’m an enneagram 4, after all. But mostly, right now, I’m thinking about onions and layers in relation to grief.
I was deeply relieved when July 30th came and went, and I was past the first year of anniversaries of surgery and loss. The day itself, and the few days leading up to it, were somehow harder than I expected them to be, having pre-processed many of the memories with my therapist using EMDR and other techniques. In fact, I was angry that they were as hard as they were, precisely because I’d pre-gamed it all out and expected to be okay. I wasn’t okay. I spent about three days having crying jags, mild anxiety, and remembering. I took a lot of naps, studied my scar in the mirror, and tried to come up with ways to distract myself that only sometimes worked.
And then I was better, or so I thought.
It turns out that when my 39th birthday arrived, eight days after the surgery anniversary, I would begin to discover that, like ogres and onions, grief has layers. I have found myself, for the past few weeks, caught in a whorl of grief that has caught me completely off guard. It took about a week for me to identify that it was grief, and not the sudden onset of a new depressive episode, because my depression has been so much a part of me that every low feeling scares me into believing that we are starting the cycle of pain again. I was watching a home renovation show when it hit me. I stared at the happy host couple, and their two adorable, precocious children and thought, “That. That is what my life was supposed to look like.”
I never imagined a life where I would be 39, single, and childless. It doesn’t matter that if I stop to consider it, I’m not particularly looking for a life-partner right now, and I’m relatively settled in my independence as a single person. It also doesn’t matter that long before I made the decision to prevent tumor recurrence by having a hysterectomy, I was already coming to the conclusion that perhaps children were not in the cards for me, thanks to my hormonal and mental health challenges. I never imagined this life. Never. I imagined lots of hazy futures for myself, stepping into new things, new dreams, but however hazy those “castles in the sky” as Anne Shirley coined them were, they always contained a hazy spouse, an image of me bearing a child in my body.
When I gathered with friends last July, to mark the forthcoming transition to menopause, I asked my sister-in-law, Laura, if she would read over the beginning of the gathering a “Liturgy for the Death of a Dream” from the lovely book “Every Moment Holy: Volume 1”. It begins with these lines, that ring true now, as I enter this newest layer of grief:
O Christ, in whom the final fulfillment
of all hope is held secure.
I bring to you now the weathered fragments of
my former dreams, the broken pieces of my expectations,
the rent patches of hopes worn thin, the shards of some
shattered image of life as I once thought it would be.
What I so wanted has not come to pass.
I invested my hopes in desires that returned only
sorrow and frustration. Those dreams, like glimmering
faerie feasts, could not sustain me,
and in my head I know
that you are sovereign even over this –
over my tears, my confusion,
and my disappointment.
But still I feel, in this moment, as if I have been abandoned,
as if you do not care that these hopes have collapsed to rubble.
A Liturgy for the Death of a Dream from Every Moment Holy: Volume 1, by Douglas Kaine Mckelvey
I am heartbroken and yet recognize God in the midst of that, healing and opening new places. I’m starting school in a few weeks, taking prerequisites to a masters degree I’ve dreamed of obtaining since I was in the middle of my first undergraduate degree in history, and realizing that I wouldn’t go on to become a teacher. I’m looking forward to new beginnings. I’ve rearranged my house to suit me better, and I’m making plans for things that seemed impossible only six months or a year ago, thanks to my mental health journey and my tumor and surgeries. And yet, my heart aches all encompassingly. I cry in all the wrong places, and I laugh in a few of them too. I texted a friend today that I’m struggling to find my equilibrium as this particular layer of grief has knocked my feet out from under me.
And so this is where I am today, laughing with Shrek, and weeping with liturgy. My grief, it seems, is an onion. It has layers, it stinks, and it makes me cry.
(especially in the Roman Catholic Church) a Mass for the repose of the souls of the dead. an act or token of remembrance.
“Bleed until your heart becomes a river of possibility and a reservoir of fierce grace.” Frieda Kahlo
It’s a bloody thing, a womb, and mine is gone. The scar slices vertically – soft pink where once there was angry red. splitting me in half splitting my life in half.
I bled first, at ten only a few drops embarrassing me completely shyly telling the grandmother who was caring for me that I needed products.
Somewhere around three hundred and twenty four times my body prepared to bear a child three hundred and twenty four times that preparation ended in blood
the reality? messy. cycles missed, diagnoses found this isn’t normal – I’ve never been normal.
begging, pleading for help one supposed healer told me I was angry when I wouldn’t accept her lack of solution when I pointed out that her medicine had already made me sick
maybe I was angry maybe I should have been angry my voice as a woman my knowing of my body was being denied
no one listened NO. ONE. LISTENED.
until someone did to placate me, yes, but still, she listened
“we found a mass, but we think it’s nothing, but we’ll get an MRI”
a broken system means a four month wait until sedated, I lay on the table and beg
Hail Mary, full of Grace Hail Mary Hail Mary Hail Mary in rhythm with the banging of the machine
it’s the only prayer that will fall from my lips. it seems right, somehow, to beg the intercession of a woman
“the mass is irregular and we’re worried now” my world speeds up and then halts
I am parked beside a funeral home pulled over to answer the ringing phone
“we think it’s cancer the numbers are high we want them under one hundred yours are thirteen hundred” a friend, a palliative care nurse, hears this number and is speechless offering tears and a hug, and this unfamiliar treatment from her tells me more than any doctor
“we think it’s cancer” my world is racing now instruments slipped through the cervix into my womb for biospy, to rule out other cancer
“we need to operate sooner than later. do you still want children?”
Do I still want children? I’m thirty seven, single, a geriatric mother by medical standards but yes, a thousand times yes I still want children.
I built a career on this, this love of babies. Since childhood I’ve dreamed of feeling the butterfly movements of a child growing beneath my ribs
I never dreamed of cancer of a baseball sized growth that might threaten my life.
I sign the consent – take my womb if necessary Please God, let it not be necessary.
Surgery will be in four to eight weeks says the fellow except I think we should operate sooner than later says the oncologist
It is just over a week the oncologist used his influence and I am on the operating table for the first time stretched cruciform, I pray again, Hail Mary, but also, knowing Christ with me, a nearness for which there are no words.
I wake and wonder. my womb has been spared it is not cancer but has potential to come back more sinister than before
and my womb, they say, “it needs to go by forty” I’m weeks from turning thirty-eight I wait and pray again, once again seeking the intercession of a woman St. Gianna, this time, who had her own uterine tumor
I wait and pray and beg I want more than a half-way miracle it’s not cancer but it will still cost me my womb my ability to bear life that butterfly of movement beneath my ribs that I’d dreamed of will never become reality.
the doctor will be relieved, she says she showed her hand. they never show their hand. I am relieved. I made the right decision. I have given my fiat, my “let it be done.”
Eight days before thirty eight I am once again cruciform on a table this time annoyed at the nurse who WON’T. STOP. TALKING. Let me fall asleep in peace leave me to pray and grieve in peace.
This time when I wake, menopause. It’s a seemingly innocuous word a pause, a rest. such a simplistic way to describe the end the end of my childbearing years the end of my closely held dream
Cut short with the steel of a scalpel a harsh ending.
A new beginning?
The scar marks eight vertical inches cutting my soft flesh in two cutting my life in two.
From life-giving potential to emptiness in the blink of an eye
From new life to old hag old sage wise woman?
My soul is slow to catch up. All the menopause books speak of the transition of perimenopause, of the learning it brings I am denied this slow transition Mine is fierce harsh cutting instant
It still seems right to ask the intercession of a woman I pray to the Queen of Sorrows for empathy and relief
My soul is slow to catch up. I have no womb – the dream has died. It’s been a year, and yet, every month I expect the bleeding it never comes three hundred and twenty four cycles or so and then nothing.
I remember what it felt like to be dropped off in the morning that day. My brother’s caring face. Drinking the pre-surgery protocol apple juice on the way to the hospital. I remember what it felt like to walk alone in the semi-darkness of pre-dawn light into the hospital. To be screened over and over again for covid. To explain to someone who recognized me from work why I was there as a patient. To feel the jarring nature of those words.
I remember Minnie Mouse’s smiling face on the carry-on bag I’d borrowed from my oldest niece. She looked bright and happy. I felt scared and lonely, invisible behind my omnipresent mask dictated by covid. It had happened so fast I still felt shocked. My anxiety was running high.
I remember changing into a gown, now just another wrist-banded patient. I remember the cruel indignity of a pregnancy test, just before a surgery that could potentially take from me the ability to bear a child. I remember the vulnerability of having to tuck my phone and glasses into my luggage – my last connection to the outside, and my ability to see clearly gone. I remember the porter being a bit put out that I couldn’t walk like the other patient who was going to OR holding – but I couldn’t see – I couldn’t walk blindly with that porter across the hospital – I needed that wheelchair.
I remember the anesthesiologist coming to talk to me, putting in my IV. I remember telling him my great fear of waking up vomiting, that it had happened to me before, and I didn’t want to wake up vomiting and aggravate the pain of an abdominal incision.
I remember talking to the surgeon briefly, the nurses busily preparing and positioning me. I remember laying with my arms spread wide on the OR table, cruciform, and feeling Jesus closer to me than I’d ever experienced. Then… nothing.
I remember shuffling myself from the stretcher to the bed in my hospital room. Moving oh so cautiously, experimentally. I remember the kind aide or nurse who washed my body, as I lay somewhere between waking and sleeping, cleaning off the excess surgical disinfectant so I wouldn’t itch later. I remember the wondering – the desperate wondering of what had happened, of how much of me was missing. I remember asking the question – what happened – and an angry nurse shoving her papers at me for me to read in the dark room. I didn’t have my glasses yet, I couldn’t see, couldn’t understand.
I remember asking for a phone, or for my phone, but my bag hadn’t yet arrived on the unit. I just needed to speak to my family, to hear a familiar voice, to have someone tell me it was going to be okay, that I was loved, even with missing pieces.
I remember the midnight ECG because my anxiety had driven my heart rate up and the nurses and doctors were nervous. I remember the lights flashing on in the room at 3:30 am, a lab tech cheerily greeting my groggy self as she came to fulfil her role as vampire, and take some of my blood.
I remember the first walk, feeling faint. The second walk – okay, that’s better. I remember feeling a sense of commiseration for all the patients I’d ever dragged out of bed to walk after their cesarean sections.
I remember finally learning what pieces were missing – ovary, fallopian tube, appendix, omentum, a tumor on one side and a cyst from the other. I remember the ambiguity of the diagnosis – the we think it’s good but we’re not quite sure. I remember meeting the milestones, and my surgeon stopping in to say hi. I remember sitting and waiting, and waiting, and waiting for his fellow to make her second rounds. I remember the pleading way I asked to go home, having recognized that my anxiety was demanding a safe place, safe people, and the hospital under covid restrictions couldn’t provide that. I remember the relief when she conceded, the wait as she tracked down a prescription for me, the joy when, as evening arrived, I dressed and was rolled downstairs to meet my mom.
I remember hobbling into the pharmacy, waiting for my painkiller prescription to be filled. And I remember the relief of arriving at my brother and sister-in-law’s house, after their kids were in bed. I remember lifting my t-shirt to show them the lengthy bandage, hiding the incision that split my abdomen from top to bottom. I remember their caring words, and they way they worked with mom to settle me into bed. And then sleep, blessed sleep, interrupted only by the need to wake and take more pain meds. And relief from some of the anxiety.
I’m notorious for reading many books at once, little pieces here and there until they’re complete. I read pretty broadly, because my interests are broad. Right now, there are two themes to my interests in the non-fiction world. First, what it looks like to be at home in my body, and second, what it looks like to be empowered as a woman, living in my context as a single professional, who is not a mother, who is a faithful (if at times wrestling) Catholic. This is my list of non-fiction reads on the go right now, shaped by those two themes:
Intuitive Eating: A Beginner’s Guide to the Most Incredible Joyous Anti-Diet Programme, by Kirstin Engelmann. Someone in my life recommended this book to me ages ago, and as I am now working with an anti-diet, intuitive eating trained dietician, in conjunction with my therapist, I’m finally picking up this little book out of curiosity and interest both.
Seven Transforming Gifts of Menopause: An Unexpected Spiritual Journey by Cheryl Bridges Johns. I’m not the exact target market for this book – it’s written more for those who are going through the slower, natural process of menopause than people with my experience of instant, surgical menopause, but I’m finding the journey it describes to be similar to what I’m experiencing, though mine is perhaps a bit sped up and helter-skelter compared to what the book describes. This book was a gift from a dear friend in the aftermath of my surgery, and I’m so thankful for the christian wisdom it is bringing to this stage of my life.
Untamed by Glennon Doyle. My therapist almost never gives homework. She’s even less likely to ask me to read a book. In fact, in the three years I’ve been seeing her, it’s happened exactly twice, and this is one of those books. She recommended it with the caveat that though my journey is entirely different than Doyle’s, she felt that there was also similarities in the wisdom and freedom the journey was leading us towards. I’d listened to this book in audiobook format when it first came out, but am currently making my way through a physical copy of the book. I’ve found it maddening, challenging, and inspiring, and I feel just a bit sorry for my dear friend, Sarah, who is at the receiving end of my at times lengthy text diatribes about what I’m reading here!
The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth by Beth Allison Barr. I’m just picking this one up, but it comes recommended by several internet voices I trust. I’m sure I’ll have more to say on this topic soon.
The Wisdom of Your Body: Finding Healing, Wholeness and Connection through Embodied Living by Hillary L. McBride, PhD. So far I’ve only read the first couple chapters, but I’m so appreciating the way that McBride includes the way culture and society have subjugated bodies. This one is a bit academic at times, and maybe even intense, if you’ve never stopped to think about the things it contains, but each chapter ends with a list of suggestions of things to think about, and things to try, bringing it back to a place of understanding and embodiment, rather that just head knowledge. I’m also looking forward to reading McBride’s Mother’s, Daughters & Body Image, and am giving both books bonus points for being written by a fellow Canadian woman.
And finally, Breaking Free from Body Shame: Dare to Reclaim What God has Named Good by Jess Connolly. This is a re-read. I read and was deeply moved by the kindle version of this book sometime last year. As the topic of being at home in my body has come to the forefront again, I found myself picking up a physical copy of this book that I can mark up and flip through and study in a way you just can’t with the e-version. I’m also hoping to order the Bible study that Connolly has recently released to go with the book, and work my way through that, though as with most smaller businesses, shipping to Canada is somewhat prohibitive, so I might wait until I know I’m making a trip to the United States again, and have it sent to whichever friend I’m visiting.
And there you have it, my current list of non-fiction books on the go. I usually have at least one or two novels on the go as well, but just finished one today and haven’t quite decided which one to pick up next, so a post about fiction will have to wait for another day.
I said in my last post that I’m working on learning to love my body. I find myself thinking a lot about that today. About what it looks like as a woman, as a catholic woman, to love my body now that I don’t have a reproductive system.
Today is Mother’s Day in North America. It’s a complex day for all kinds of women, because we are not all mothers in the way we’d like to be, or children of people who were mothers in the way we’d have liked them to be, or so many variations that I’ve seen in post after post on my social media, acknowledging those for whom mother’s day might be hard.
I’ve never found this day particularly hard before. Motherhood, especially biological motherhood, was always still on the list. It was something I hoped for and dreamed about. Something I knew I’d probably enjoy and be good at.
But today, this year, the day hits differently.
I don’t have a reproductive system. It was sliced out of my abdomen last year by necessity. I’m still healing in so many ways from those events. And I find myself thinking about what it looks like to love my body now that it bears both internal and prominent external scars. I find myself caressing my still at times swollen abdomen, the way my pregnant friends caress their growing bellies. Their caresses speak of hope and new life, while mine speak of grief and attempts at comfort.
I’m part of a religious culture where the epitome of womanhood is virginal mother, both chaste and fruitful. As a newcomer to that Catholic culture, I watched as the womanly ideal that is touted has one of two offshoots – the religious sister, or the mother of many. I don’t think the culture means to shame those of us who don’t fit those norms, but it is shame that I’ve felt. The language around openness to life as essential to marriage seems to most to mean a rush to reproduce prolifically. This messaging is so strong that last year, before surgery, I found myself tearfully sitting across from a trusted priest, asking if I could still be married in the church someday, should a hysterectomy become necessary.
Do you hear that? Eight years of study and formation as a catholic and I believed there was a good possibility that the church wouldn’t accept me as a bride if I couldn’t biologically reproduce. I’m thankful for the priest who heard my fears and gently corrected my impressions, but I remain deeply concerned that those impressions were what my years in the church had formed in me.
I worried then, and worry still at times, whether a man will even want me, with my internal and external scars. I perceive my body’s beauty as marred, slashed down the middle, from well above my navel to my pubic bone with the scar from my surgeries.
And so, this year, on Mother’s Day, I find myself asking what it looks like to live in, and to love this body – the one that has been marked by physical suffering for close to three years now; the one waiting for still more surgery and scarring. What does it look like to love this body that will never follow the scriptural command to “be fruitful and multiply”.
I think it looks like this: it looks like caressing the belly that will never carry a child, and naming it good. It looks like rubbing lotion into my calves, and thanking them for holding me up during these years of illness, for getting me out of bed, for carrying me to the places I found hope and help. It looks like staring in the mirror at my unruly hair, badly in need of a cut, and loving the curls that I see. It looks like reading the quote jotted on a whiteboard on my fridge – the quote that reminds me that while the Old Testament saw children as a sign of God’s favor, the New Testament sees the making of Disciples in the same way. It looks like trusting the God who made me in his likeness, believing he spoke truth when he called this body beloved.
I saw my doctor last week for an annual physical – never a fun appointment – but even less fun than usual right now. In the aftermath of last year’s health drama, I expressed some concerns to my primary care provider about the care I’d received from their practice. I’d done some digging and found that if they had ordered certain tests sooner, or at all, there was a good chance they’d have found the mass on my ovary while it was smaller, before it would have cost me my entire reproductive system. And here’s the thing, while no one who knows me well would describe me as shy or retiring, conflict, and speaking truth to someone in an authority position in my life doesn’t come easily to me. I’ve been seeing the same physician and medical practice since I was a teenager, and my sense of her authority was only compounded by my training as a nurse to always treat doctors with respect (even when they’re wrong). We had an awkward meeting after I expressed my concerns, and then I hadn’t needed care from the practice (I get my hormones from a different practitioner) for almost a year. I was going into the appointment with some specific concerns and wondering if I would be heard.
I spent a lot of time obsessing over whether my doctor would actually listen to me, about how she’s handled certain health topics like my weight in the past, and just generally feeling anxious in the way that only someone who has experienced some recent medical trauma can understand. I also did some reading on advocating for yourself at the doctor, especially in regards to weight, BMI and health measures associated with weight. I investigated schools of thought like “health at any size” and “intuitive eating” and even made a pre-emptive appointment with a dietician who specializes in those schools of thought. I decided to try out one little tip, which was to ask that the nurse who weighs you not share your weight with you.
It started well. The nurse, though seemingly flustered by my request, said “no problem” and asked me to face away from the display on the scale. She locked in the weight and my height, and had me step off the scale. She then immediately directed my attention to the numbers, saying “this is your height and this is your weight.” Whoops. She didn’t notice that she’d just done the exact opposite of what I’d asked, and took me back into the exam room.
Next was blood pressure and pulse. In the last year or two my anxiety around medical appointments has skyrocketed, and my blood pressure and pulse at these appointments always reflects that. The nurse chided me for having “white coat syndrome”, asking why I was nervous because the doctors here were so nice. I explained that I’d had some bad experiences with the clinic and she asked me to clarify. I explained that because of lack of testing her beloved doctors had missed a tumor until it was so big that it had spread, and removing it meant a complete hysterectomy. She left, and the doctor herself came in.
We reviewed the things I was concerned about, and the questions I had, first and foremost about follow-up care and monitoring for future cancers, especially given that the hormones I take do somewhat increase my risk of breast cancer long term. I also told her that I wanted her to check, but I was 99% certain that I’d developed an incisional hernia where my incision from my surgery last summer never healed properly.
It was all well and good, until we got to the annual lecture about weight, diet, and exercise. Here’s the thing, I’m a registered nurse, and I’m quite well educated in what lab values mean. I’m also pretty educated about what makes up a healthy diet, and the importance of exercise. She could have simply told me she was concerned about a couple of things in my lab work, made a brief statement about the value of exercise, and left it there. But she didn’t.
Instead I got the full meal deal lecture. The same one I’ve gotten every time I’ve seen her since I was a teenager. I get it. I’m heavier than she would like. Frankly, I’m heavier than I would like. However, I’m also aware that I’ve just come out of three of the hardest years of my life health-wise, first with a two-year long major depressive episode, and then with the tumor, and subsequent two major surgeries and recoveries last year. I’m also aware that I take no less than four medications which all have weight gain and increased appetite as a side-effect. But I can’t say those things to her, because historically she doesn’t hear them. She’s a tall, skinny woman who went on a cycling trip around Europe for a summer vacation last year. Basically my polar opposite.
She asked why I don’t exercise much. I said, “I hate it.” She said, “Really? There must be something you like, what about doing one of those zumba classes?”
(Reader, I cannot express to you the horror I feel at shaking my jiggly, non-rhythmic midsection about in a room full of strangers at a zumba class!)
The kicker, this year, was that the lecture to exercise more and lose weight came AFTER she diagnosed me with a large incisional hernia. A hernia that will require surgical repair, likely more than a year from now, given current wait lists. A hernia that restricts my ability to do core exercises, any sort of heavy lifting, and is already causing discomfort when I walk. When I pointed this out to to her, she stuttered and started suggesting ways I could spend money I don’t really have right now on exercise that might work. Emphasis on might.
And here’s the thing, while I hate exercise, I’ve been slowly contemplating and getting ready to introduce more movement to my life. And then the hernia popped out fully a few weeks ago and starting causing achy and sometimes even sharp, painful discomfort. I don’t want to be a statistic of heart disease and diabetes, which I know is my doctor’s concern, but I’m also feeling flummoxed by the reality of my current place in time with my body the way it is. I’m looking forward to meeting with a health at any size and intuitive eating dietician coming up soon, and working with her and my therapist on some issues around food and satiation in my life.
Honestly, I know myself pretty well, and I can typically manage to work at change and or self-discipline in one area of my life at a time. I’m not a tackle things on many fronts kind of gal. I just wish my doctor would let me express some of those things, rather than giving a rather tone deaf lecture that displays her bias against ideas like “health at any size.”
Because that’s my goal – to be healthy. I want to be around to see my nieces and nephews have get married and have babies. I’m okay with whatever body shape gets me there, in a way that lets me play with those grand-nieces and nephews. For now, I’ll work on my diet and explore my relationship with food. I’ll include movement where I’m able, but I’m not going to focus too much on that at this time. And I guess I’ll continue to work on my ability to advocate well for myself, rather than feeling cowed by my doctor’s authority. I’ll get my chance to practice that one soon – I have a follow-up appointment in about a week and a half to discuss some tests I had done or need to have done, and the surgical waiting times for the hernia repair.
I want to close by sharing that in the last year I’ve been thinking, learning and reading a lot about what it means to be comfortable in my own body. Writers like Shannon Evans, Hillary Mcbride, and Jess Connolly have been my teachers from afar. I think about things like not dissociating from my body, not buying into patriarchal definitions of beauty, not sucking in my belly just to look skinnier, finding the definition of health that works for my body, rather than trying to make my curves fit into a skinny woman’s world. I think about the woman in my life who pays me a compliment by calling my curls “mermaid hair”. I think about the fact that I gain weight like a pregnant woman, and I think about how it felt to be asked if I was pregnant at a friend’s baby shower, because I was cradling my round belly to support my tender hysterectomy incision. I’ve slowly started to fall in love with this faulty, at times broken, body I’ve been given, and to name it beautiful. I’m thinking more about exercise and movement because I’m thinking about stewarding the gift of a relatively healthy body well. And I’m thinking continually about what it means to be called beautiful, simply because I am created in the image of a marvellous creator.
So this is it, after two plus years, it finally happened. I’ve got covid. I caught it from fully vaccinated people, who, last I heard, aren’t sure where they picked it up. I tested positive on Sunday, but I’ve been sick since early Saturday morning.
I deactivated my facebook account a few weeks ago. It happened for a variety of reasons, and suddenly the timing was right. And now, now I wonder what would happen in that space if certain people in my life heard that I’ve tested positive. Would there be compassion? Maybe. But I can’t help wondering how much of an undertone of “I told you so” there would also be.
I’m triple vaccinated. I’ve gotten quite ill for 24-36 hours with all three doses, felt miserable, rued the vaccine, but never regretted my choice to be vaccinated. I don’t regret it now. Science proves that the vaccine dramatically reduces chance of serious illness. That’s important to me, as someone who has struggled with bad lung infections in the past. Lung infections that had me coughing so much and in so much pain that we did x-rays to check for broken ribs. There weren’t any, just badly sprained muscles, but enough to cause severe pain when I coughed or breathed.
I’ve been fortunate, because of those doses of vaccine, that thus far my course of illness has been quite mild. I felt terrible yesterday, with a high fever and aching muscles and joints, but medication helped, and the fever broke in the night, and today I’ve had the energy to begin to contemplate just how much time there is to fill when you are isolated alone in your basement suite for five days or longer.
Today I missed facebook for the first time, because it’s a good time filler, and I was feeling just well enough to be bored. It’s absolutely the right choice for me to not be there. Especially since there’s a new policy at work where if a caller asks, we have to provide our last name. My instagram is more circumspect – it has my name, but there aren’t the other identifying and locating details that Facebook lent itself to. Mostly though, my thoughts have been more peaceful since I left there, and that’s something worth paying attention to for me. You can still find me on Facebook messenger, but not on Facebook itself, and I kind of love that.
I’m thankful, today, for peaceful thoughts. I’m thankful for leaving facebook, and for a relatively mild thus far course of covid infection. I’m taking precautions to protect others until the full ten day infectious period has passed. And I’m grateful that my biggest problem at the moment is figuring out how to fill the long days of isolation I’ve got left in front of me, as I start to feel more and more recovered.
Lisa From Canada 