A Valentine’s Day Story
How I found love having my ovaries removed (not really)
Valentine’s Day in the Waiting Area of a busy surgical center in Beverly Hills, medical personnel hurry through, one guy takes a bite of a cookie, another a sip of coffee. They all carry backpacks like they’re headed to Chem 101. This is their workplace and it’s just another day.
While routine for them, it’s not at all routine for me. I’m having a uterine polyp removed along with an ovarian cyst. A few weeks ago on a Zoom with the surgeon, who I’ll call Dr. W., I was informed — both ovaries and fallopian tubes as well. That was news to me, and immediately disliking her said, “Hold on. Is that necessary?”
I call Dr. C., my gynecologist, for consultation.
Take the ovaries and tubes? Why?
She didn’t have a definitive answer, explaining it like this: ovarian cancer is difficult to detect and often originates in the fallopian tubes, the argument for their elective removal.
Weigh that against the negative effects of no longer having ovaries more specifically the hormones they produce which “at your age” is minimal. Dr. C. even mentioned studies show that for women who’ve had their ovaries removed their lifespans were decreased by one to two years.
She said it so cavalierly, too. I asked what she’d do in this situation, and she said she’d probably do it.
On paper the decision may seem easy, but what I think Dr. C. and Dr. W. didn’t fully understand was what this means to me. As a middle-aged woman feeling invisible and disposable to begin with, I wasn’t sure I wanted to lose the parts that in some way define my essence, my female essence.
It wasn’t about having children.
I was well beyond that. It was more existential. Who would I be? What would become of me? And what about those last few drops of hormones? Those one-to-two-year life-extending hormones. That dollop of mental cognition. A dropper-full of libido. I’m not ready to sacrifice any of that.
I’ve always been a late bloomer and often thought this next chapter could be the best of my life. Why cut it short if I didn’t have to?
My anxiety ratchets up. I text a friend, but she doesn’t answer right away. I return to the forms I’m completing, including a confusing Sudoku-like puzzle used to determine my Opioid risk factor. I’m a medium, it turns out. While I wait, I throw a retirement party in my head for my ovaries, having decided to let them go.
“Constance Dolph.”
Nobody calls me that, but I get up, smile with my eyes, and follow this guy through the double doors. (Masks still required.) This is D., the Pre-Op Nurse. I soon learn there are many different people performing many different functions.
He leads me past a row of gurneys until we arrive at mine. There’s the gown, tie it in the back, the compression socks, sock socks, and then at some point he’s going to put doohickeys on my calves that pump blood up my legs during surgery. To avoid clots. Had I known about all this layering I wouldn’t have shaved my legs the day before.
D. had a distinctive mole under one eye. You should get that looked at, BTW. He reads through my chart, asks what I’m here for. “To have my essence sucked out through my belly button.” “On any medications?” “No.” “Allergies?” “None that I’m aware of.” He says others will ask me these same questions so don’t be offended.
Surgery Prep
He takes my blood pressure, which is high, understandably. He pats my arm (does he?) and with a wink (not really) says we’ll take it again. I do some deep breathing while he jiggles some knobs like I’m in for a smog check and for an extra twenty D. can make it happen. On the second try I pass.
The only thing hanging between me and the other patients is a blue curtain. A COUGH…HACK…WRETCH fills the room and D. and I share a look. I know it’s immature to smirk at bodily noises, especially if the person’s sick, but I can’t help it, appreciative of the moment of connection with D.
I hear various nurses, etc., rotating through with the patient to my left, repeatedly asking her the same questions D. asked me. I lean over to D., “it feels like a factory, an assembly line in here.”
He thinks a minute, “I’ve never heard it put like that.” He wraps my calves in the plastic thing-a-ma-bobs, pulls up the guardrail to my gurney, drawing the curtain closed as he leaves.
All I can think about is how badly I have to pee, but I’m locked (it feels) to this gurney, with restraints (it seems) on my legs.
Just then, Dr. W. approaches. We’ve never met in person, Zoom being the new norm. “Hi.” “Hi.” Surgeons get a bad rap for being scalpel happy, and it crossed my mind, joking with a friend that taking it all now saves her a trip later.
I’m struck by her kind eyes and childlike hands as she flips through the pages of my folder. She asks me a few questions, and I mention my bladder situation. She summons a nurse, the Lead-the-Lady-to-the-Lavatory Nurse, who does just that.
Dr. W. is still there when I return, which I thought was sweet, but it’s only to explain she has one procedure ahead of me, then I’m next.
I meet M., the Anesthesiologist.
He reminded me of a Ken doll. He asked me a few questions, the “what’s-my-birthdate-what-am-I-here-for” refrain, then attached adhesive monitors to my torso. It’d go much faster if he could separate his vinyl fingers.
Throughout the morning I told each new pair of eyes that I was anxious, and everyone responded with “understandable.” But with M., it was a little more than that.
General anesthesia, going under, being “put to sleep,” is perhaps the scariest thing about surgery. At least it is to me, being so close to death and all. Personally, I think his script could be better, but dealing with my existential dread is not part of his job.
A few minutes alone, I’m thinking where is D.? At some point I overhear him telling someone something about his kid or kids, which surprised me because I thought he was gay, which is a complete stereotype of a. male nurses and b. gay people (not) having kids. And embarrassing given that I’m gay and should know better.
But my time is coming.
And not my unconscious bias reckoning, but my surgery. Something clicks, an imperceptible beat, a wavelength I’m not on but suddenly at the center of. M. injects sedation in my IV. He rolls my gurney into the open area, full throttle, engine thrust, I’m whirring toward my fate.my
At the foot of my gurney is M2, the Surgical Nurse. She came by earlier, asked me a few questions, but didn’t stick around. I’m not entirely sure of her duties, but she is covered in tats, super hot, and I am here for it. I don’t know if I’m projecting a queer camaraderie, tattoos hardly an indicator (again with the stereotypes) but whatever’s going on, it feels good (probably the Valium).
I lose track of M2, and the last thing I remember is the silicone mask placed over my nose and mouth and M1 telling me to breathe normally, just breathe normal, just breathe…
The day before surgery I bought myself an ice cream cone. It’s not something I’d normally eat but after buying magazines for post-op boredom passed a shop. It was like what you’d do for a dog who is about to be put to sleep. Give him a treat. It’s his last day.
I wandered by a clothing store thinking I might buy a matching sweatsuit. “Wear comfortable clothes” the pre-op docs stated. The young women along Melrose look cute in their coordinated hoodies and sweatpants. I’d look like a gym teacher. I didn’t go in.
Getting Up Post Op
As I come to, I meet W., the Post-Op Nurse, with seriously the worst job of all. She’s got to get patients up and out as quickly as possible (an oversimplification I’m sure).
At some point, W. explains there was a complication, my appendix was stuck to my right ovary, so it had to come out too. Uh, okay. (Dr. W. was probably there as well, but foggy I gave the lines to Nurse W.)
And they nicked my vagina with something or other, and here let’s get you up. Let’s not. Thankfully, W. let me lie down once more even though it was clearly closing time, the room almost empty, lights shut off, (Music Cue) as the Zamboni-like floor cleaner passed by (not really).
I get it. It was Valentine’s Day after all.
M1 was off to dinner with his Barbie girlfriend, with her long-straight-but-slightly-layered blond hair, more interested in her phone than the date.
M2 is going for drinks with her equally hot boyfriend or girlfriend. Better yet, she’s going out with friends to a club in Silverlake, the kind of club on a side street with no name. They’ll do shots, maybe hook up.
Dr. W. is on the sofa with her brainiac boyfriend, their sock feet entwined as they read medical journals and drink natural wine.
And D., he’s home with his partner of indeterminate gender, and kids who made a special card with non-toxic finger paint. Yes, I’m making up their stories, but I could have been on the set of a TV medical drama all day. No one was over forty.
The rest of my Valentine’s Day was spent in an anesthesia haze as my friend C. drove me home and got me situated. I cradled my “emesis bag” wishing I would throw up but hoping I wouldn’t. I didn’t. C. lifted the Vogue off my bed and after flipping through declared he didn’t know who any of these people were.
I didn’t say anything, scoffed at his old man comment, unwilling to admit that I didn’t either. And what’s with the QR codes? What are we supposed to do with those? I’m unconscious for an hour and upon awakening, learn that cartoon oversized red rubber boots are a thing.
Two days later, the Post-Op Weirdo Appendectomy appointment.
I wash my hair, worry my roots show. This group is not my primary gyno group, that’s Dr. C., so I’ve never been to this office before.
The Nurse Practitioner, M3, enters. She types on a keyboard, asks me a few questions, looks at my incisions. Rather than a bandage, M3 is surprised to find a heart monitor adhesive under my left breast. I’m thinking, “M1, come on, buddy.”
Just then, my pathology report appears on the computer screen. I’m relieved to see BENIGN typed on numerous lines. And the nicked vagina wasn’t a nicked vagina at all. It had something to do with a clamp attached to my cervix requiring a suture upon its removal. “You’re a bleeder,” M3 cheerfully said.
Dr. W. makes a surprise appearance.
Our greeting feels bigger than it should. Yes, I put a lot of faith in her, this woman with small hands who I wouldn’t recognize if she were in front of me in line at Starbucks. But there’s an unexplainable familiarity, warmth.
“You look great,” she says. She asks a few questions, talks me through it all again, the decimated ovary meshed with the appendix stuck to the colon, basically a hot mess.
“What will I be like, I mean, without the ovaries?
Will I change, grow a mustache?” “You probably already have,” she says, though I don’t think a mustache is what she means. The gist is if I were going to change it would have happened already, slowly over time. And my greatest fear, who will I be? Well…me.
I notice she wears an engagement ring. I’ve never seen it before and wonder if her boyfriend proposed the night of Valentine’s Day.
For a blood test, a Young Nurse, YN1, leads me to another room where I sit just outside the door. “You’re next,” she assures me. Dr. W. chats with others in the hallway. This is their workplace and it’s just another day.
There are mostly women present, except one guy having his blood drawn, and I wonder what that’s about. Fertility issues maybe. As I wait, I sense Dr. W. watching me. She’s alone now, her colleagues have vanished. Lingering presence, meaningful glances. Ugh, so cliche.
That’s a different story.
If anything, this one is about a caring physician keeping a watchful eye on her grateful patient. The infertile guy rolls down his sleeve, leaves.
I move toward the plastic chair and never see Dr. W. again.
Connie Dolph is a longtime TV nerd, as a careerist, and viewer. Words too, as a writer and reader. Film, as a maker and goer. Avid drinker of almond milk lattes. Follow me to see how my uterus does all by itself.
