Nursie-poo says I need to come back, all the scary test results returned with a HALLELUJAH negative, but there weren’t enough cells for them to complete the scariest of all. She also rambled about my thyroid – which has behaved itself to the best of my knowledge since that radioactive iodine uptake over ten years ago – but I’d already checked out.

Let’s back up. What. The. F___. Not enough cells? For what, cloning me? I’m pretty awesome with my grey streak and sharp wit, but let’s not go overboard. How many do they need? And really, when you’re shoving a toilet brush up my hoo-hah so far I actually used the sweat sock covered stirrups to bear down, I’M CERTAIN you got more than your fair share of my fleshy bagel.

But yeah, okay, I’ll cut my over-earned vacation short to come for a bad boomerang visit because it has to be a certain time in my cycle and you’ve got a drunk frat boy working in your lab. Sounds like a hoot!

So I get there painfully early (as I arrive everywhere painfully early, a side effect of waiting on my perpetually tardy father during those dark days before cell phones) and sit reading and guzzling water in the lobby for half an hour next to a woman and her one month old who are chaperoned by every woman in her family over 30 because she clearly can’t be trusted to carry this precious cargo to a check-up on her own, or because they’re that bored. The latter is more likely since they were passing a cell phone around & yammering on in Spanish as the clock ticked like tar and I intermittently checked to see if their volume knob was somewhere I could reach.

When I couldn’t take it anymore – and by that I mean I figured it was close enough to my appointment time that I could check in without being judged – I went upstairs to find a continuation of my nightmare that will surely catapult me straight to hell for even considering documenting.

A creature I’d never fathomed was in the waiting room: a blind woman screwing with her cellphone that talked to her while babbling to no one in particular about how loud her phone is and how it doesn’t allow her privacy. Ohhhhhkaaaay. So for the next 15 minutes I endure her telling someone at the office how to sort files by type in Windows Explorer, and when it was finally, joyously over snapping her phone shut and muttering a hostile remark about mentoring.

Both impressed and annoyed (I had never contemplated a blind woman going for a pap smear and my imagination now has far too much fodder), I was not to be outdone.

When my name is finally called, I shift my mindset to a single focus: to be the first person to ever heed the request of the lab tech via her pleading post on the wall of the sterile loo – to write both my first and last name on the specimen cup. Oh, but wait. I plan to take the game to a whole new level and do so legibly.

Not to toot my own horn, but I accomplished my mission with execution that should earn me a gold medal, and don’t think for a second that I wasn’t tempted to take a picture. The only thing stopping me (with the exception of you seeing my legal name) was that in the time it takes to launch the camera on my nearly antique iPhone 3G, the nurse surely would have assumed I was taking an atomic poop. Which I wasn’t. In fact, I’m shamed I even wrote/typed that word. No one but the lab tech and I and I may ever know how skilled I am, and you, if you believe. Do you believe, Peter?

Off to delousing station #3, where I get to do that thing we all dread and push the red button on the wall and wait…eyeballing the tiny torture instrument on the counter and attempting a telepathic ceasefire with an inanimate object.
I swear it looks just like the little device I’d get from my orthodontist when I wore braces with bands to get the chunks of Wonderbread out of their homesteads between my brackets.

They look like this, and I bet my GYN pays more for them than I would at CVS.

Now, boys; I encourage you to imagine having that bit of modern medicine shoved up your pee hold and swept around a bit, because that makes you even with every woman reading this whose knees just clamped shut at the memory of her last visit and filled with dread for her next. Unless you’ve had children, in which case you’ve seen and heard worse and I’m sorry for that, but let’s be honest, that’s your own damn fault.

It’s all normal from there except for the part where she talks about my misbehaving thyroid while my ass hangs out the back of the threadbare sheet on my lap I attempted to pull around me. She asks if I’m tired. Sure I’m tired, but am I tired because I’m aging and had a 5 year bout where the most exercise I got was standing for 3 hours at a time during a Tweet-Up, or am I aging and tired because of the thyroid?

Either way, I’m going to take synthroid every day. With all that said, I’m writing this on my yellow tablet (see previous illustration) at my favorite haunt where I waddled in mentally willing that feeble cotton attempt to control the possible aftermath of my assault not to fall out the leg of my shorts (every woman reading this knows what I’m talking about, don’t act like you don’t).

What IS that? I mean I know what it was, but really – “here’s a pantyliner in case you bleed out from my having just scraped 10% of your lady bits off your cervix with a device we haven’t bothered improving on since the middle ages.”? It isn’t quite the antidote I’d go for after such an…interaction.

In fact, I motion that there should be a bar between the exam room and the checkout counter.

That beautiful nugget of innovation? Another of my under appreciated talents.

Yesterday was a blue sky, sun hovering in that sleepy spot on the horizon kind of day here – and eerily, unexpectedly, moderately warm. A rarity these days to be sure, which can only mean Mother Nature must not have known I was planning to go for a walk or she would have made it rain. Again. Always with the rain. As it was she kicked up the wind on us, but too late old woman. Too late.

Had a decadent 5 mile walk with my girl J down The Beltline and around a bit of the park. Talks of singledom and partnerdom and work challenges and heath hiccups passed effortlessly while we waged a strategic stealth assault on my muffin top/bottom/cream filled center.

When I met The Mc, I’d just gone to a wedding where I’d worn a size 0 dress. My wardrobe was full of size 2 suit skirts, I had a six pack and ran 5 nights a week*. Then that courting thing started, with lazy Saturday mornings complimented by Belgian waffles and a pound of bacon and more laziness and the next thing you know, POOF: Stay-Puff-Marshmallow Girl.

I’ve tried – oh how I’ve tried – to get back in some sort of routine to shake these extra 10, 15, now 20 pounds. I tried boot-camp, I tried Weight Watchers, most challenging of all – I downloaded apps to my iPhone.

The fact is, nothing takes it off my like a good routine and having my heart rate up for an hour +, and if I’m out going for a walk with a friend I’m not spending money in a bar/restaurant. BAM!

Last night I snapped at The Mc when I’d slid the pocket door closed in the bedroom and he asked what I was doing. “Taking my FAT picture…gahhhh”. And I did. Profile and front on shots (which should make for a real pretty triptych), and I weighed myself (oh Gad) which I’m not quite ready to share, but eventually. I will. 2011 is my year of transparency, even when it hurts.

Anyway — if you need me, I’ll be walking. Probably to California.

*I was also broke, which helped the whole run vs. eat out with friends program. Pic of 6 pack, NSFW

At least, I think it was love. Either way, it passed like that “headache” I got on prom night.

Perimenopause is like puberty in reverse. Remember the days of sweaters around your waist? They’re back. Never knowing when she’s going to show up? Also back. Not knowing how angry or vindictive she’s going to be when she gets here? You got it. Oh, the joy.

On top of several months of that delight, I had a different surprise last week.

Listening to my body as I do, when something wasn’t right a few months ago, I locked in. I focused and monitored and documented. Like a fat girl and a skinny girl on a see-saw I had it front of mind then ever so briefly and with great effort to back of mind and then it stuck, front of mind. Months later, when documentation was as informative as it needed to be and I had avoided going to the doctor for long enough thankyouverymuch I called and went in. This brings us to last week, and the rookie nurse who left a mark on my arm drawing blood that makes me look like a junkie.

That wasn’t enough, though, and my good Dr. Ruth (shut up! Her name really is Ruth.) confirmed what I already knew – that one of these things is not like the other. That there was something on/near/in the same zip code as my uterus that clearly wasn’t invited or intended. “No, it’s not a pony”, she said. Damn it.

The worst part of any medical malady could be the waiting and the voices in your head that fill that space between identification of the issue and the appointments or appointments and results, or results and action plans, or action plans and a Doctor as the BFF lifeguard of the pool of youth yelling “adult swim over, all swim!” I tell myself that I’ve been through this before – more or less every 6 months for nearly 15 years (has it been so long already!?!). That’s only kind of true, and further proof that the voices in my head are constantly battling and bickering. With my boobs it was early in life, when I was still ignorant and invincible. I’ve grown into it, now it’s just as much a part of me as the gray hair. But this is different. I’m not invincible anymore.

This morning The Mc was every bit the generous and kind spirit I fell in love with. He drove us to the hospital, trying his damnedest to keep my spirits up as I pounded the 32 oz of water in an hour (!!!) prescribed, even if I kinda think he was trying to make me pee and the hoisted spirits were a byproduct. His smile and hand squeezes were the only comfort I could ask for.

After the seemingly eternal check in with said 32 oz of water sloshing around in places I don’t like to think about, the radio tech took a quick peek at my belly via ultrasound from the outside, then insisted on looking from the inside. That shit right there should be illegal, my friend. I’m pretty sure she was up there so far she went back in time.

And now, we wait. The Mc worked from home this afternoon and after a nice lunch together and some cuddles, I took off to process and do intern homework and write a bit.

I’ve called my tribe together to meet me tonight at my favorite pub – to talk about anything but this, to laugh and love and bridge part of the gap while the 2-3 days between now and the results trickle past.

While [rationally] I’m sure it’s nothing, right now [emotionally] I feel old, and fragile, and broken. I’m a little angry that I did everything right and there’s still something wrong, and I’m a little bitter about the piddly crap people – me included – whine about when there are bigger, uglier, scarier issues out there (feels a lot like when my folks passed, oddly enough). In the end though, the beauty of it all – if there is anything beautiful about it at all – is that love takes the edge off. I’m thankful for those in my life who have love to spare and who share with me, and I’m thankful I’m able to ask for and receive it.

What their timid article about our friend FP should really say is: “Those suffering from food poisoning will frequently clutch their stomachs, beg for death and run unexpectedly towards any object that might serve as a receptacle for their projectile vomiting.”

It should continue on to say that people in the throes of poisoning can be quoted as saying “oh God…oh God… oh God… oh God…honey, it hurts … oh God… oh God…”

That would have made it much easier to diagnose, which is key in treatment. I mean, I could treat him for something else, like lice, but I’m not sure the desired effect would have been reached.

With regards to treatment, the article should list the following:

Things you should *not* do:
- Allow the barfer to consume liquids within 30 minutes of last explosive episode
- Give the barfer Emotrol, Pepto or Immodium

Things you should do:
- Call your health insurance nurse line after the second “episode”. Do not wait until five hours later when the sickling is finally ready to accept defeat against the unseen
- Take copious notes so you can mock the ill when they’re – un-ill.

Nothing says “love” and “healing” quite like getting a laugh out of your PFL’s misery…then sharing it on teh interwebz.

But you didn’t, and I didn’t expect it, which makes it all that much more delightful.

I can’t being to explain why I went for it after my girls already had – especially when they described what would happen. By no means am I a prude (exhibit a: skinny dipping with some of my other girls at The Hostel in the Forest), I do have some body issues and don’t typically prance around in a swimsuit let alone nude in front of perfect strangers.

But there I was. As the day I was born – plus or minus my extra bits – in the middle of the whirlpool/steam area, trying to catch the eye of one of the older women working the scrub tables before I completely chickened out. “Maybe it’s a sign. I shouldn’t do it. You can’t walk out now, you’re already here. C’mon, pull it together.” That inner monologue is bossy and sassy!

Two Russian women beat me to the punch, and I clutched the hand towel that was theoretically supposed to cover my nether bits a little tighter. I eked out my request and was ushered with a nod into the steam room for “two minute” by a woman in a black bra and granny panties: my scrubber.

Okay.

If she’s okay, I’m okay.

I’m OKAY.

I did my time in the blazing hot steam and was collected by my scrubber, quickly ushered via hand gestures to a half-walled off area with eight identical tables and told to lay down. “Face down?” I ask, she nods and slaps the table.

Oh, God. Don’t hurt me. (Someday, after lots of therapy, I’ll write about the most abrupt, jerky, slappy, pokey massage I’ve ever had a half an hour before.)

I’m doused with a bucket of warm water, then another. I’m reminded of jumping off a cliff in Jamaica and being told to keep my legs tightly together. Too late.

For the next thirty minutes she scrubs me with mitts and soap, nudging me to turn onto my side, lifting my arms over my head, nudging me when I needed to turn again. Scrubbing, scrubbing, scrubbing.

At some point after rolling onto my back I realize: I haven’t been cared for like this – physically – since I was a child. I haven’t had someone carefully cleansing me, washing me and renewing me. It occurs to me this would have been a perfect compliment to what Malinda did for me over the course of 5+ years, with once a week visits to her office. Boxes and boxes of Kleenex, and hugs, and painful recollections and purging.

This wasn’t some shi-shi spa salt scrub bullshit, this was the real deal. This was rough without being brutal, it allowed me to be vulnerable without being ashamed, and it allowed me to rejoice in someone else taking care of me in ways I (clearly) couldn’t take care of myself.

The charcoal sauna may have ridded my body of toxins and the massage may have loosened more up (note to self: drink a GALLON of water tonight with all that red wine) but the body scrub? Ridded me of so much more, for which I have no words.