Better Never Than Late
As with many of the idioms in the English language, I don’t know the origins of “a brush with death”. But like most of you, I have heard it used many times. Sometimes in the midst of juicy hyperbole. Sometimes laden with all-too-palpable truth. When I use it to reminisce on THAT day in June it falls, like a failed high-wire act, into the net of actuality; safe, but suspended.
When my body first decided to betray me, I was working in Minneapolis, far from my birthplace in rural Kentucky and even further from the place I first came alive: Colorado. But, one follows family, and instinct, and the inclinations of a medium first visited at the insistence of a coworker. So during the summer of 2016, I packed up a trailer, found an apartment, found a job and left the mountains in my rearview mirror.
After the first significant bleed, I started my research, quickly discovering why a common moniker for the internet is the “web”. Deep, entangling dives into articles, forums, journals and even web series revealed what actual gynecologists that I had visited (and various amateur gynecologists aka my friends) suspected; fibroids.
Ok. Fibroids. Very common. Very treatable.
Usually.
The evening following my first diagnostic appointment, I battled a gnawing, sinking feeling about the prospect of treatment. Generally I lean into avoidance when it comes to medical issues. Why simply treat a UTI when you can lay in your bedroom floor and go partially blind with pain? But since I refused to concede to wearing all black and keeping a stash of puppy pads in my car for the rest of my life, I knew there had to be a reckoning. So, as I lay in a boiling hot bath to counteract being preserved in permafrost during a Minnesota winter, something in me knew this wouldn’t be the straightforward procedure that 77% of women endure, and overcome. Call it 20/20 foresight.
I moved back to KY after a little less than a year in Minnesota. Fast forward to gynecologist #3, who finally seemed to ease my instincts for pursuing the best. Fast forward to his assurances, that although he hadn’t seen the exact symptoms with which I presented, he was sure this procedure was best. Fast forward to waking up in the Intensive Care Unit with 6 more inches of scar tissue and a few less units of blood. Full stop at the words of my surgeon “I’m sorry but we couldn’t save the uterus AND save you.”
I have heard the phrase “a brush with death” my entire life. It’s a hollow phrase to me now. Traditional routes to motherhood died that day. Ideals about dating and marriage experiences that I held for years died that day. My need for tampons died that day. My uncompromising need to wear black died that day. I could lie and say I turned some sort of corner; that I stepped from death’s darkness into light that evening I was finally discharged from a prolonged hospital stay. But rather than that arguably life-changing experience actually changing my life, I healed up, and proceeded as usual back into the same workplace, in the same city, with the same expectations. Rather than an epiphany that strikes one's conscious awareness like a slamming door, this event has been more like that moment in childhood when you try to put on your favorite pair of cutoff jeans and they no longer fit. While you were living, your body was growing. There is nothing you were doing to aid that process other than just staying alive as best you can. Life and change just, sort of, happen.
I’m navigating this emotionally dulling season in secret. It might be that I am at the precipice of a greater emotional struggle. Or, perhaps not. For now, I choose to live my life outside of a closed door. Behind that closed door is undoubtedly more pain, more to process, more to reconcile and explain. I am willing to bet hidden there is also deep affection, purpose and the opportunity to be loved in spite of my difficulties. But frankly, I haven’t worked through or resolved any aspect of this issue. I just keep pushing it forward, intact, waiting for moments when I will be presented with opportunities to open that box and sort through the mangled, dusty wreckage. Maybe that is meeting someone, falling in love, partnering for life, but falling short of that prescribed notion of traditionally creating little humans. Two become one, but two produce none. Well meaning, lovely folks used to suggest adoption, but mercifully, those well meaning, lovely folks eventually forgot to mention it.
I suppose the rest is yet to come, but who knows if it will be the best. I’m hanging onto that high-wire of hope...for now.