What the Hell Happened to my Body, Part II
2015. I was referred to Dr. J after I finished third year. I wanted rectal surgery. I needed rectal surgery.
Women of a certain age aren’t supposed to have rectal surgery. Or at least, women of a certain age are told this.
It was part of the reason why my rectum was never removed in my initial surgery years earlier. Pelvic surgery in women carries a high risk of infertility.
Implicitly, a woman’s ability to reproduce is more important than her quality of life. Stay emaciated. Stay in pain. Anything to fulfill that predetermined biological destiny.
I said I didn’t want kids. They told me I’d regret it.
It was a rude awakening to who built the system, who benefits from it and what role women should play in it. If a woman must know her place, then I will never know it.
I could not be convinced. In my mind, Dr. J was my ticket out of my bodily hell.
The mind isn’t always reliable.
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Dr. J was nice enough. I signed the consent forms, disclosed any preexisting conditions and waited. I had a limited window — July or August, but it really should be July. I had one year of undergrad left. The goal was to be able to go back and finish.
I took the summer off work in wait. I thought about life after graduation. How my magazine dreams were destined to be pipe dreams. How I, with a comfortable savings account, still couldn’t afford to try. Not when there are hundreds of dollars in meds and ostomy supplies to pay for.
I ended up applying to law school. I could be a good enough lawyer, I thought. Besides, this would all be over by then.
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I was supposed to have the surgery in July. I followed the rules — no food or drink after midnight, take off your nail polish, remove any piercings. I waited in a hospital gown in a faded and dirty waiting room. The roar of the air conditioning drowned out the sound of The View on the television.
After four hours, I was sent home. It wasn’t going to happen today.
Maybe next month.
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Rectal removal surgery is affectionately known as “Barbie Butt Surgery” in some circles. After all, when your rectum is taken out they have to sew up the hole. Putting a cutesy-sounding name on it makes it only slightly more tolerable.
Once I had the surgery, I was sent home two days later with an FAQ booklet and a prescription for Tylenol 3. Like being tossed into the ocean and having to find your way back to shore with a wet map.
The information in the booklet was out of date (“always choose low-fat or fat-free foods”), and nearly every sentence ended with “call your surgeon or family doctor.”
At my follow-up with Dr. J, he was blunt about it. I was infected. He didn’t tell me why exactly, so my mind filled in the blanks (Was it because I sat on a donut pillow? Did I not eat enough fat-free foods?).
The short answer: Barbie Butts are notoriously difficult to heal.
The stitches had to come out. The hole had to be packed with medicated gauze every single day until it closed on its own.
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I don’t surrender control of my body easily.
In high school I was prescribed home injections of methotrexate for my Crohn’s. Every Friday I would screw the needle-tip onto the syringe, draw the piss-yellow liquid from the bottle, flick out the air bubbles, and stab the needle into my upper thigh. The whole thing was a painfully tedious and slow process. My mum was sure she could do it faster. I wouldn’t let her.
A year later, I was on an overnight feeding tube. I was ashamed at the idea. I didn’t want to be seen with it on during the day. So instead, I took it out each morning and threaded it back down my nose and into my stomach each night. I refused help each time, even if it took me five tries to get the tube placed right.
That’s how stubborn I am when it comes to matters of the body. Having to submit to home care stung especially hard.
I have to pause here and say that I don’t hate nurses. But having one come into your home while you lie stripped from the waist-down on your bed so they can wash you down there and poke inside you is humiliating.
Going back to school and having to tell your new roommate not to be alarmed if she sees a nurse come into the apartment is only slightly less humiliating.
Carrying a seat cushion across campus because it hurts too much to sit normally is low on the humiliation scale, but still not ideal.
Back at school my life had been exactly as it had been the year before, with one noted exception. Oversleep, rush out the door, choke down an instant coffee, cry in the gender-neutral bathroom because this wasn’t how you thought your year would go, sit through class, go home and wait for a nurse to come to the door and marvel at how a young thing like you needs home care.
Repeat.
