" . "

soon it will be over. 36 years of agony. no, no, i'm not about to off myself on New Year's Eve. the thought never even occurs to me even during my darkest moments. and besides, who would take care of the cats, the bunnies, the fish? and god...how i would hate the thought of someone going through my STUFF. so no, not gonna happen. what IS gonna happen is surgery and the removal of what i call that useless bag of flesh (though i actually think it might be muscle) - my uterus! since america is all about renaming things (i.e. the vagina has become the va-jay-jay, the kasloppis, the hot pocket) i will rename the uterus. since Useless Bag of Flesh is too long i'll rename it the Ute. my apologies to the indian tribe of the same name.

others get alot of use out of the ute, for instance that horrible Jon & Kate Plus 8 on TV and their counterparts 17 Kids and Counting. how i would like to neuter those folks. but alas, i am not queen of the world. i never had any use for mine. from Day One it's been nothing but a source of misery. when i was an innocent 12 my family was on a camping trip and at some lake in Wisconsin where we'd spent the day frolicking in the water. that night i had the top bunk in the camper and the next morning i awoke in a pool of blood. i stared at the murder-sized pool, horrified that perhaps a fish had bitten me in the lake and i'd suffered a delayed bloodletting. i called plaintively to my mother. the mother who had never told me the Facts of Life, mind you, and as the oldest i had no big sister to clue me in. hence my blame on the fish. she herded the rest of the family out of the camper then said to me, smiling, "you're a woman now". my inner response was 'what the fuck?' the next bit is blurry, but i assume we stuffed my underpants with toilet paper and changed the sheets, perhaps even flipped the now-stained mattress. then it was off to the store to buy me my very first Kotex and naturally i was completely mortified. the box looked gigantic on the check-out counter. the rest of my family was confused and curious and i just wanted to die. why hadn't i been warned about this horror???

we had places to go, things to see, so the six of us jammed into the station wagon and before long i found myself sicker than i'd ever been in my life. my gut suddenly cramped with pain and all i could do was vomit, so they gave me a bucket. no one had much tolerance for my condition and the other children grumbled about having to give the middle seat up to me so i could lay down. i begged to be allowed to just lay in my misery in the camper we dragged behind us, but that was Against the Law. fuck the law, i needed to get away from these people and puke and writhe in peace! finally i got my way and thus went the first day of my newfound womanhood. well, whoopee.

those cramps never relented. OK, sometimes i'd be spared for one month, but mostly i spent a day or more laying in bed in the fetal position or cycling my legs to distract me from the pain. i recall my youngest brother david coming up one day to console me when he was around 6. he brought a saucepan of hot water and a washcloth to put on my forehead, which was very sweet, and said "i hope i don't catch it". oh david, what i would have given to be a boy right then and rid myself of menstrual cramps. and penis envy had nothing to do with that wish!

my father had little pity for my condition. he seemed to think i was faking it and should get outside and help him cut wood. men have no idea and just once i would like to inflict a painful period on all of them for just one month so they'd learn a little compassion. instead, they seem for the most part to be revolted or at least uncomfortable by the very idea of a period. yeah, like we like it? to me it's nothing beautiful, no celebration of womanhood. 'aunt flo', 'my friend', all those stupid names . . . it's just a pain in the ass. or the ute, as it were.

i'll never forget the red flood that ruined my beautiful white jeans on a boat trip through some caverns in upstate New York. i'll never forget being unable to get up for (ironically) change of periods at school because my pants had soaked through to my wooden chair. i'll never forget my friend debbie's disbelief that i didn't know what a tampon was. hell, mom hadn't even told me about a period, much less a tampon. so debbie helped me buy some and described how to put it in. i was very wary. stick that thing up there? OK, so yeah there's a string . . . . but what if it came loose? how would i ever get that tampon out? so i didn't want to stick it up too far and spent the day leaping out of my chair every time i sat down. apparently, you can't stick a tampon in just a little ways. it will constantly remind you that it's there. then came the day (again, camping) that the string DID give way. any woman out there can imagine my horror. i tugged and there was no resistance, and all i held in my hand was a limp little string. how the fuck was i going to get out of this??! i spent what seemed like hours in the campground ladies room stall doubled over fishing around in there. i had no idea how deep this hole was! i didn't know where it could travel if i didn't get it out! and god, no way could i tell my parents "er...i need to go to the hospital to have this tampon fished out". i was 16 for god's sake. that was out of the question. finally, sweating profusely from the effort, i hooked the damn thing and pulled it out. no one has ever known such relief.

of course i swore off tampons at that moment, but a modern woman can't stick to that resolution. i was just never going to use that brand again.

i thought every girl experienced the same kind of cramps i did. i was too shy to compare notes on the subject. so i just withstood the monthly pain even though it reduced me to cold sweats and near or outright faints on many occasions. the nurse practicioner i went to for my first OBGYN appointment told me my cramps were "just normal". take some aspirin. aspirin didn't cut it, sister. and neither did percosets or anything else she prescribed, always with a tsk-tsk look as if she thought i was exaggerating. finally during one Thanksgiving dinner my entire family witnessed the distress i was in when i left the table to lay in the living room and cry in pain. if i left a table filled with food, after all, it had to be bad. my olive skin was white and clammy. the otherwise robust valerie was reduced to whimpering and writhing. the only thing that ever made any dent in the pain was a heating pad, and probably only because my burning flesh was preferable to what was going on inside my ute. my mother finally said "get rid of that nurse practicioner, go see a real doctor!"

and so i did. and so i was diagnosed with probable endometriosis. and, since they cannot really know for sure without going in, i underwent a laparoscopy which proved the diagnosis right. two little holes in my belly and the sensation that a truck had run over my abdomen, and i was cured! for a couple years anyway. endometriosis has this nasty little cancer-like habit of just going right on about its business even when you remove it if you are unlucky. and i was unlucky. endometriosis, if you don't know, is when endometrial tissue from inside the ute decides to go on a roadtrip through your gut and attach itself to various organs. in truly horrific cases it forms webs from the ute to other organs like your intestines or bladder. i read one horror story where it took a full 8 hours to remove such a web of tissue from one woman. the laparoscopy is really a piece of cake, especially when compared to years of monthly agony. they pump your belly full of gas through one little hole and stick a laser through another little hole to cauterize the adhesions. the gyno showed me polaroids afterwards of what had been going on in there all those many years and, while it wasn't pretty, it was rather fascinating. and so a couple years later when the endo returned i had no qualms about subjecting myself to yet another surgery. beats all the motrin and painkillers in the world.

but now it's gotten ridiculous. i'm 48 and i've been through this bullshit since the age of 12. enough already! i knew from a young age (12, to be exact, the year my brother david was born and i decided i wanted no part of babies) that i was never going to be a mother. i have no maternal instinct. i sucked at babysitting and i can't stand the caterwauling of an infant. i don't even consider babies human until they're old enough to be amusing (around at least 3) and even then i have about a 2 hour tolerance limit. that doesn't mean i am not able to be nurturing (though i dislike that touchie-feelie word) and compassionate. i have a passion for animals, for instance, and will defend them with my life, rescue and care for them. and don't call that a maternal instinct. it has nothing to do with mothering. Mother Theresa was one of the world's most compassionate, caring and doing people in the world - and yet, not a mother at all. go figure.

ironically, children like me. they think i am great fun, probably because i just treat them like little adults, i enjoy scaring the shit out if them with items like my genuine human skeleton, and they like it. even babies like me and i'll never know why. babies will stare at me in the most abnormal fashion and smile away, toddle up to me trying to look all cute, but in my head i'm saying 'you don't tempt me, kid. i want no part of your kind.' i don't coo over babies, i think they all pretty much look and act alike, and while i have no trouble working with incontinent cats, a baby diaper would make me lose it for sure. i am not impressed with reproduction. after all, the whole world is doing that in excess and ruining the planet with over-population. why is it a 'miracle' when a human does it .... and not when a rodent or roach does it?

too many people have children to have 'something to love' even though they are completely unprepared in so many ways to raise a child. adopt a pet, for chrissakes. others want to fill some hole within themselves. fill your hole in a psychiatrist's office first! (well, not literally, that would be wrong). and more people want little carbon copies of themselves. gotta make sure those genes live on! and yet, in a lot of cases, those genes really should be put to a screaming halt. but, like i said, i'm not queen of the world and i can't put a stop to this. sure, some people truly do have good reasons for having children, will be fit parents and have the means to raise them and know enough not to go overboard. i'm OK with that. moderation, people, moderation. on the flip side, there are so many unwanted children in this world already there's a good argument for adopting and giving them homes. i was with Angelina Jolie when she first started down that path, but now i just want to neuter her and Brad Pitt too.

some people, women that is, think i must be jealous of their status as mothers. nothing could be further from the truth. i've been accused of that by both one sister-in-law and one step-daughter. to that i say have you met me??? obviously they don't know me at all. they translate my failure to cootchie coo over the cute baby ad nauseum as envy. such an accusation is actually highly amusing to me. do they think they hold some exalted status for having reproduced? i don't get it. honey, i too can do it, i just don't wanna. i chose this childless status and i've been nothing but happy with that choice. so those out there who think we the childless must be unfulfilled, must not know some higher love, know this: different strokes for different folks. we actually can be whole without replicating. we're not lacking in anything.

what i want to be lacking, ladies, is a uterus! and soon, oh happy day, i'll have my wish. i would have done it a long time ago but i was never into the long 6 week recovery. i'm too active to opt for that. and now, more than ever, i can't afford to be down for the count for any length of time. since bob's death (another one who wasn't big on kids though he had 2 and 4 grandchildren) i seriously don't have time to be bedridden. no one is going to do all the work around here for me. but now, through the grace of medicine, i can have that ute removed through a mere 4 little holes in my belly. isn't science great? they've figured out some way to peel that thing like an apple and extract it through an itty bitty hole and reduce the recovery time to a week or two! several months back, when i was bleeding excessively, doubled over by bursting ovarian cysts and endometriosis, my gyno did exhaustive exams. i have fibroid tumors up the wazoo, some disease called adenomyosis (not life-threatening or painful so i don't care about the details), 2 cysts on one ovary and endometriosis. she gave me a list of 4 options, which started with 'wait for menopause and hope it comes soon.' uhhh.....fuck that! i've been waiting for 36 years! painkillers (yeah yeah, none have impressed me), some pill to fake menopause (no thanks, on enough meds as it is), OR the most radical - this surgery. radical? i'm in. take that useless bag of flesh!

so, on january 9 i am checking into the hospital to rid myself of the accursed ute. i had a biopsy the other day (why, i am not sure) and that hurt, but not as bad as the complete agony i was in just 2 weeks ago when i lay on the couch sobbing "make it stop, make it stop" and almost dragged myself to the ER. all i can say is thank god for 800 mgs of motrin and a vicodin. wouldn't you know my last period had to go out with a bang. that is one vindictive ute.