Gebärmutter: A Uterus in German
I’d known my pussy was acting curiously before I left for Berlin but I was hopeful my box would resume normalcy on its own accord. Between packing and making last minute arrangements, I hadn’t left myself much time to check in with a doctor. Despite my mom’s insistence we go to the hospital before my flight, I refused.
“Everything is fine,” I said, not knowing whether everything was fine, “I googled it and WebMD says its nothing to worry about.”
My thumbs had darted over my mobile keyboard earlier, punching in ‘spotting’. Spotting sounds like something you do at the beach when looking for friends or an apt description of my sister’s dalmatian. It’s a cuter term than the more visual alternative: ‘vaginal bleeding.’ The only time I’d experienced ‘spotting’ was when I was coming off birth control as my hormones were bouncing around trying to find their baseline.
However, a week following my last period, I’d started to bleed again with it gradually growing heavier each passing day. According to the internet, though, this was ‘perfectly normal for a few days’. If the bleeding persisted, the article continued, ‘speak with your doctor.’ But I had plans and no uterus of mine was going to ruin them. I was finally jetting off to Europe — for business no less — and hopeful my body could take care of its own unusual tantrum.
As the plane took off, I felt a stiff pinch on my left side, clenched my eyes shut and swallowed. “I’m fine,” I told myself. When the plane landed I made my way to the airport washroom; something certainly didn’t seem fine. My molars grinded against each other like hormonal teens at a high school dance, but the scene staring back at me only strengthened my resolve to feign comfort. Visiting a hospital at home was stressful enough, the thought of visiting one in Germany held zero appeal.
Imagine the bedside manner, I thought.
By the third day in Berlin, the pain and bleeding had steadily grown worse, so I decided I’d go to a hospital when I got back to Vancouver.
By Saturday, sitting across from Corey in a neat little part of Berlin nursing a beer, the pain began to pulse. When I went to the washroom there was black blood streaming down my thighs. Dark, heavy rivers that reminded me of death. There was blood on my shoes, and on the cement floor. I gritted my teeth and returned to the table, hoping my swelling fear wasn’t showing on my face. When we left, I could feel my fragile molars about to give way from all their stubborn gritting. I stopped on the street outside with the pain clenching at my insides and I burst into tears in my blood-spattered runners.
That night, I lay in my hotel bed balancing between discomfort and jetlag, trying to will myself to sleep. I committed to heading to the hospital in the morning if things didn’t get better. Although more than I was in pain, I was scared. If it had been a broken arm or influenza, I might not have panicked the way I did but it was my babymaker. A very important part of me. What if something was wrong with it?
I began traveling through my mental cabinet of worse case scenarios, getting more frantic with every hyperbolic idea I unpacked. All I knew was there was pain, and dark blood, and it was coming from my womb. My brain was a spinning bike wheel speeding through the dark. What if it meant I couldn’t have kids? (flashing lights) What if I was miscarrying? (turn signals) Maybe I’d gotten an infection (GIRLS GIRLS GIRLS) or something dark was growing inside me (Exit Only).
This is when my stomach performed a cartwheel and tumbled into my knees. My heart rate bolted like rabbit feet dashing desperately from extended claws. My breath darted in and out of my mouth from a shallow dish and my peripherals went red. I was having a panic attack. Heaving for air, rabid with the notion my womb was sick. I cried so hard the capillaries around my left eye burst. My greatest relief was that Corey had come to Berlin so I didn’t have to be scared alone in an unfamiliar country. He wrapped his arms around me while I descended from the apex of a serious panic episode. But there was something else fueling my anxiety which I’d been trying not to think about.
Not long before the trip, I’d had an early miscarriage. I didn’t realize what was happening at the time, I’d only known that something wasn’t right as I dashed towards my washroom that morning. I went to work and contemplated going to the doctor, but kept talking myself out of it. To go to a hospital or a doctor is a mental admission you’re concerned. I didn’t want to be concerned, I wanted my womb to be fine. Sometimes if you ignore it, it will just go away.
I hadn’t known I was pregnant, I’d only find that out later the following week at my doctor’s office. I didn’t know having a miscarriage would effect my body, no one said there would be side effects, so I focused on moving on — business as usual. I gave myself one Friday night to lie in bed and feel confused about my feelings, then try to forget about them since I couldn’t articulate how I felt.
In hindsight, I’d been sad and confused.
Lying in the hotel bed in Berlin, I revisited the event again. Remembering the weight that had woven through my heart and the itching question as to whether it was a flaw in my internal design. The strange feeling of losing something I wasn’t aware I had until it was already gone. The panic climbed and fell again, feeling the pinch inside, and I drifted into a restless sleep.
The next day, I woke up and the pain was still there along with the fear, so I googled the closest hospital. In my search, I learned that in German a hospital is called a Krankenhaus. Traveler websites confirmed most doctors in Berlin spoke English, so we went downstairs to catch a cab. Sporting puffy swollen eyes with their burst blood vessels, disheveled bun, hoody, and savagely stained sweatpants, I looked about as putrid as I ever had.
I took a photo of the hospital entryway as a keepsake from the trip. I was hoping to spend my last day in Europe visiting a modern art exhibit and doing some shopping, but I was destined to spend the majority of my final day in a waiting room.
The healthcare system in Germany was a lot like Canada’s. I first made my way to the intake and paid 100 euros for my care. The gentleman behind the desk asked what the problem was in curt German fashion, and I motioned to my womb explaining the bleeding and the pain. I mentioned nervously that I only spoke English. He replied in mostly German this was fine, then pointed towards the wooden pews of the waiting room.
At the far end of the waiting room were three large white doors. Names were called over the intercom and then one of the three doors would ceremoniously swing open, revealing vague fluorescent halls. “Alexander” came an hour later and I shuffled through the open door to the right. Inside was a long white hall with doors lining the left side but not a soul in sight. I hadn’t made out the rest of the announcement which must have included where I was supposed to go.
Traveling down the vacant hallway I spotted a nurse, apologized for my lack of German and asked if she knew where I was supposed to be. She shook her head and doddled away. I spun around again and noticed the man who had done my intake following a gurney. I approached him and asked whether he could tell me where I was supposed to go, trying not to stare at the body lying crooked upon the wheeled bed. He also shook his head but muttered ‘C-Wing’. I made my way around the corner towards an illuminated C and entered the only open room.
It was a stark hospital room surrounded by ivory cabinets, each labeled with long German words in a severe typeface. In the room stood a man in blue scrubs with a haircut even more severe than the labels. He seemed irritated and began motoring off while pointing to the door I’d entered. Again, I apologized for not knowing German but he continued in German, looking even more irritated than before. He was pointing at the bed and pointing at me, growing red in the face at my seeming inability to take instruction. I looked back at him blankly and he finally said, “lie down.” I unzipped my hoody and lay it on the floor, then positioned myself on the paper-lined bed as he continued instructing me in a foreign language. “I’m sorry,” I said again, not understanding a word he was saying “I really don’t know German, I only speak English.” He looked at me dead in the eyes, looming over me in the bed.
“I… HATE… English,” he said quite seriously.
I’d remarked on the way to the hospital that I shouldn’t expect much in terms of bedside manner in Germany, trying to lighten my own mood. Corey told me bedside manner wasn’t important, which given the circumstances, was both right and wrong. If you have a fear of entering hospitals, needles or stark fluorescent medical atmospheres, bedside manner does wonders to lessen anxiety. However, if you need to see a doctor, you don’t get to be choosy about the overall level of friendliness. The irritated nurse who hated English was exactly what I’d been imagining a German nurse might be like, even the detail of his precision haircut parted sternly on his head.
“I’m sorry you hate English, but I’m not sure what to do about that,” I said, not knowing what could possibly be the right thing to say in the situation. His austere demeanor and glaring irritation left me to stare up at the flickering ceiling lights trying not to get upset. “I’m bleeding a lot and I have pain in my side, and it’s been going on for over a week.” My pale, puffy face with the pink swollen eyes darted his direction, hoping he’d see the sad state I was in which perhaps might inspire some bedside manner.
“Jesus Christ,” he replied in perfect English and carried on with our time together with slightly more warmth. He stuck sensors over my body and attached their wires to the vital signs monitor with squiggly lines on paper spilling out the other end. He strapped a blue belt around my arm to find a vein and pierced me with a needle, leaving the intravenous catheter uncomfortably jutting from my arm.
The squiggly lines indicated nothing was severely wrong, and he handed me a cup to pee in to see whether I was pregnant. I told him I hoped this wasn’t the case considering all the blood to lighten my mood, but he only looked back at me sharply. In five minutes, he told me, a man would appear in the waiting room to let me know whether I was with child, and an hour following that the results of the blood tests would be back. I collected my sweater and went back to the waiting room. Just as the nurse with the severe haircut had said, a gentleman in hospital green scrubs and a cap entered the waiting room five minutes later and called my name. He scooped the nursing cap from his head, his surgical mask hanging around his neck, and walked towards me. It was all starting to feel like a German episode of E.R. He told me the pregnancy test was negative, smiled, quickly turned on his heels and left.
Corey departed to check out of the hotel while I waited for the next door to open. On the television in the waiting room, they were playing Kitchen Nightmares dubbed in German. A Germanic version of Gordon Ramsey’s aggressive yammering left small pockets of English to slip through. “Bloody hell,” I heard Ramsey say, and I nodded in agreement as I shifted on the wooden bench. “Alexander” was announced again and the center door swung open, however, this time a doctor was standing there to greet me.
With “I hate English” still ringing through my mind, I shyly confessed I didn’t speak German. “That’s fine,” she said and smiled at me, guiding me towards a smaller hospital room. I sat next to her at the computer, where she began punching in my details as I repeated my symptoms and concerns that had brought me to the Krankenhaus. The blood tests had come back clear, but she was going to have me see their gynecologist. I nodded back at her and asked if she knew when that might be, realizing I’d been at the hospital for three hours. She couldn’t tell me for sure. She said ‘maybe an hour, maybe three’. I looked at the catheter in my arm and trudged back to the pews. The vital signs had been fine, my fever was a result of my own stress, I wasn’t pregnant, and my blood was fine. It was entering the early afternoon, and I was still no closer to understanding what exactly was happening.
Tired of waiting, tired from the uneasy sleep and having still received no clear answers as to what my body was up to, I began to pout. I wanted to catch a cab back with the needle still in my arm to collect our luggage and slug them over to the next hotel. The only thing I was dead set on for the trip was the modern art museum, the possibility of that happening was vanishing the longer I sat in the waiting room. Corey had returned and I began brattishly spouting that if I had to wait more than an hour I would walk out. I would just leave with the catheter in my arm and keep it for the plane ride as a souvenir or yank it out. He looked at me and told me I wasn’t going anywhere until I saw the doctor. Had I been on my own, I would have already been on the street, flagging down any moving vehicle.
I really can’t say enough how thankful I am Corey was there.
A couple hours passed, and “Alexander” finally chimed its final time. The white door on the left swung open and a blonde doctor with a clipboard was waiting for me in her pristine lab coat. She guided me to another room, this one with a large gynecologist examination chair complemented by pea soup collared upholstery and large uninviting stirrups. There was a stainless-steel bowl resting on the floor full of unhappy looking vaginal instruments. The doctor was pleasant with perfect English and began asking me about my history and the last time I’d had an exam.
In the summer, I decided I wanted to see a gynecologist. By 32, I’d been saturated by stories of healthy women struggling with fertility and I was starting to wonder about my own. I was happy to seek out the status of my sexual organs. But I received polite rejections from every clinic I reached out to. My sister referred me to her gynecologist. I called them and mentioned a family member was a patient, and still she told me I’d need a doctor to refer me and then maybe they’d find space. Annoyed at the series of dead ends, I stopped trying.
My box was as dependable as the atomic clock most often, and it hardly ever caused me guff except for a few months later during the miscarriage. In Germany, you receive an exam at the hospital on a yearly basis, the doctor told me, and if I was hoping for motherhood it would be good for me to find a doctor back home.
I slipped off my sweatpants behind a small curtain, with my eyes glued to the examination chair. “I’m sorry,” I said again, “I.. I feel like I’m going to bleed everywhere.” I wasn’t sure if you were supposed to have vaginal exams while bleeding profusely. She assured me she was a gynecologist.
I came out from behind the curtain and awkwardly climbed into the chair, looking anywhere but at the doctor or down towards my legs. I tilted my head up and rested my eyes on the rectangular light on the ceiling, as I sunk toward the edge of the chair, open and exposed in Germany. I could hear her latex gloves snapping over her wrists, and something rustling in the metal bowl as she fished for the right tools.
It was uncomfortable but she was very friendly which is a quality I appreciate in someone penetrating me with surgical steel. During the ultrasound, she prodded around while remarking on what she saw on the screen. Taking my eyes away from the ceiling, I craned my head curiously over to look. “Have you never seen your uterus before?” she asked, and when I shook my head ‘no’, she turned the screen to face me. There it was, this trouble making uterus looking detailed in grainy black and white. “It’s so long!” I said, amazed at its monumental length. “It’s not long,” she corrected, and she continued on with the tour.
I told her I was worried about whether I could have a baby, prompting her to push the wand deeper and around. “It’s very active in here,” she said, as my ovaries appeared on the screen, “you have lots of eggs, these ones are ready to jump.” I’d always felt active down there, so that was nice to hear.
The fear attached to the last week was breaking apart. “Everything looks pretty good,” she continued while getting different angles of my uterus (which looked long but apparently wasn’t), marked them with dotted lines and printed them off the machine. “Your uterus is a bit heart-shaped, but it’s not severe. That can sometimes make it hard to get pregnant, but it shouldn’t be a problem. It’s also why you’re bleeding.” There were no fibroids, or growths, demon babies, or blood where it shouldn’t have been. The pain had been a cyst which ruptured on my ovary, but it didn’t look like there were any others.
She removed the tools and rolled her chair up next to me to hand me some green paper towel. The relief I felt from hearing her say that my womb looked fine, albeit with an abnormality, took 2 tonnes of slate from my chest. I could breathe knowing it looked healthy, if only just slightly more romantic than most uteri.
The cyst which ruptured had caused the pain, and the miscarriage had sent my hormones into a hard reset which had thrown my cycle off its wheels, some blood had been trapped by the heart-shape, and I was going to be fine. I inhaled deeply and slowly let it go, slapping doors of my mental cabinets shut one by one.
I scuttled back behind the curtain to pull on my sweatpants and grabbed a copy of my exam to take home with me. Having never seen my womb before, I was glad our first face to face was a romantic and spontaneous meeting in Berlin.
While I missed my chance to see modern art in a creative mecca and had to suffer the consequences of putting shopping off until the very last day, I did go home reassured. The ‘if you ignore it long enough, it might go away’ tactic had backfired. I don’t know why I would be surprised, it’s backfired before. Once, I denied being sick for six weeks, only to find I had a kidney infection and chronic bronchitis. Trying to dodge what was weighing on my mind had only sent me into a tailspin of worry chased by black smoke that followed me throughout my entire fleeting time in Berlin.
If I had reached out earlier, I would have known my body was expected to misbehave following a miscarriage, that my hormones would be a mess. That I could expect to bleed and bid adieu to my atomic clock-like pussy. If I hadn’t been so adamant in trying to erase what happened from my mind, I could have spared myself the wild worrying. It can be hard to face things head on especially when the subject matter is intimate in nature. Especially when you suffer from anxiety. I was scared of what I might hear. Terrified my womb was direly ill or misshapen and that bearing children was no longer in the cards.
But apparently, it’s quite active in there.
After coming back home, I’ve had to continue with follow up care. There’s been multiple blood tests to track my hormones, one of which hurt a lot, doctor’s orders to drink Guinness for iron, and a myriad of vitamins to help my womb’s health since it’s still yet to entirely bounce back to its usual programming. I still carry worry, but far less after having seen my monstrously long uterus and it’s clutch of bouncing eggs.
So if you ever happen to find yourself worried about your body, listen to your mother. Listen to your boyfriend. Listen to your best friend. Listen to all the people telling you to see a doctor. If it hurts, stop smiling. Deal with it rather than wearing your worry like an invisible cloak around Germany, hoping no one will notice.
