Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Elisa Stone. Elisa Star. Love enough. Breathtaking. So bizarre. Elisa Star, Elisa Star.
[00:00:11] She's your friend.
[00:00:18] Hi. That's me. That's me. This is Elisa Star. And these are my thoughts.
[00:00:23] Thank you for listening this. Today we're going to talk about my vagina.
[00:00:32] Okay, so this year my vagina volcanoed. Like there's a part time blood volcano between my legs.
[00:00:42] And it's not just that I'm leaving like a bloody snail trail all over my apartment. It's that the blood volcano was random, frequent, and comes with every period symptom that has ever existed. My undercarriage has been wet all year. Every two weeks I'm bleeding. One month I bled for 30 days. All the days are heavy days. I no longer have gradual symptoms. I have them all the time. Cramps so bad it hurts.
[00:01:08] Crying, trying not to cry all the time, not being able to think straight, constant nausea, the shits. And some of the biggest blood monsters I've ever seen. Like, so many blood monsters. Like I'm dropping eggs like an epileptic baker. I don't even think that my uterus is ripping my eggs before it just drops them straight out of my vagina. And I was managing. I figured out how to just stuff an old pillowcase into my pants and go out and sell my art and bars. I mean, I can't just stay home and bleed on things two weeks, a month, or every day for a month. I still have to eat and feed the cats. But three months ago I just, I couldn't. I was nine days into not being able to leave the house when my mother texted me. And if you've heard my podcast, you know, my parents were up when I was a kid, but I was estranged from them. I went no contact for about 10 years. And then they made reparations, real apologies and acknowledgments of their abuse. And we've patched together a friendship of sorts.
[00:02:12] My mother was an advice nurse for 30 years, so she talks people, or she talked people through medical problems on the phone as her only job really for 30 years. That, that was her thing. And she gets really interested in the medical part.
[00:02:31] So that makes her kind of amazing at talking me through my medical problems. From California, where she lives, I'm in Seattle. She's really sympathetic and she gives advice that I can follow no matter how miserable or disabled I am by whatever's with me. And she texts me randomly, just asking how I was. And I told her and she was like, go to the emergency room now. And she sent me enough money to get groceries and to get to the emergency room.
[00:02:58] Personally, I just thought it was my turn. I'd stayed home on the second day of my period for most of my adult life because that one day, I just fucking can't. That one day, a month I took to just feel shitty and cry and bleed on everything in my room, in my house. And even just that one day always felt like a luxury, something I really didn't admit to myself I was even doing until I'd already done it.
[00:03:23] Because I didn't think I had a right to stay home and soothe my body.
[00:03:27] As a teenager, my cousin's mother, aunt, friends, grandmothers, all had periods that kept him home from work, school, and life. And as an adult, I watched even more women, like, spend weeks that added up to months and years bent over crying, sitting quietly in dark rooms and waiting in ERs to see doctors that didn't believe them or care.
[00:03:52] I just assumed it was my turn.
[00:03:54] It doesn't help that some part of my religious brain like, like, was saying, we women deserve this for tricking Adam into eating that fucking apple. Like, it's crazy how those messages can, can like, pop up out of nowhere. I, I think of my, my brain and my memories as a. As a creepy, creaky old house that I can't really ever leave. But it's big enough that there are rooms go into very often.
[00:04:21] And all over the house, there are all these tapes in tape recorders that are hidden. And I, If I walk into a room, sometimes those, those tapes will go off and I'll have to listen to those messages again. And then I have to, like, figure out not just how the message makes me feel, but whether the message is real or not. Where is it even coming from? Because like, like I said, I think of this as like an old house I've been living in and I will live in for my entire. Like I'm trapped in this house of my memories, right?
[00:04:59] And so there are junk drawers everywhere. So if I walk in and that that tape goes off, I have to find the tape and then I have to figure out how to turn it off, you know, and. And then I also have to make sure that it doesn't come pop back on again. Like, that's how I think of these, like, those messages.
[00:05:22] And I, I had no idea that I thought I deserved pain because I'm a lady on until I was in pain all year. And I, I wonder how many other women accept pain because of, because of that stupid fucking story about Adam and Eve, you know? Pain is a warning light.
[00:05:52] And this fleabag quote I love is, women are born with pain built in. It's our physical destiny, period. Pain, sore boobs, childbirth. You know, we carry it within ourselves throughout our lives. And men don't. They have to seek it out. They invent all these gods and demons and things just so they can feel guilty about things, which is also something that we do do very well on our own.
[00:06:18] And yeah, some of our pain is built in, but pain is still a warning light. And, and. And an unusual amount of it, just like an unusual amount of blood, is telling you that there's something wrong. Before I tell you the rest of the story, I want to tell you that I've got Obamacare, which means that my doctor's appointments, my tests, emergency room visits, everything's free. So while I'm missing work for all this, thanks to Barack Obama, I could find out what's wrong with me and get medicine. And you deserve that too, telling you this growth story, because I want you to know what you can expect, what your options might be, and maybe you can go in armed when you have to address this problem yourself or as a support system for somebody else in your life who's going through perimenopause, which is what this turns out to be.
[00:07:15] So as long as I can get to the hospital, I can afford the hospital. So I walk in. It was Friday night. They hooked me up to all the machines, and I talked to three different doctors. Everybody was kind, everybody believed me. And they told me that what I was going through wasn't normal and that we should figure it out and try to fix it. They took me seriously, because it turns out you can bleed to death from your vagina. Death by vagina is hella possible.
[00:07:45] Being disabled by your vagina is hella possible.
[00:07:49] They took more blood. They. I got a vaginal ultrasound. Ultrasound, which is as uncomfortable as it sounds. Not painful, just uncomfortable.
[00:07:59] And when they. When they tested everything, they came back and they were like, we don't have to do a transfusion, but it's close. You're bleeding so much, you become very anemic.
[00:08:10] They explained they took my pee.
[00:08:13] They let my doctor know I was there so she could schedule a follow up when I was exhausted. When I got home, I was exhausted and I stayed exhausted because it turns out you need your blood. Just like I said, like, you can be disabled by your vagina. Like, I bled so much that I was just like. I've just been fucking tired ever since. It's just been. It's been a year of being extra tired because of this bleeding. And I mean, that's the other thing is that like your, your womb swells. So like, I keep having to like, ice my vagina down just so I can like comfortably wear underwear and pants, you know, like it, there's just so, so many layers to how much this sucks. And like I said, the stage that I'm in is called perimenopause, and it can last from one year to 10 years. It's basically like your uterus is clearing out the last of the eggs in the back of the fridge. But my uterus is going bonkers just shooting all those eggs out as fast and furious as it can. And like, that is also tripping my hormones, so they're going crazy too, which is part of the reason why crying all the time and having sleep problems.
[00:09:32] So my doctor also took some blood and she told me that we try birth control because that chemically is the best way to even out your hormones. And the theory is that if there isn't anything physically wrong with my uterus, then evening out my hormones should stop my bleeding.
[00:09:53] The problem is that I take medication for my bipolar disorder, my manic depression, manic depressive bipolar, and this birth control.
[00:10:08] Well, the first one I tried was estrogen based and it really fucked with my bipolar meds and I got really suicidal.
[00:10:18] We switched to a progesterone based birth control, but I was still bleeding and still depressed and anxious. I don't know if that's just part of, like having to go to doctors and talk about how uncomfortable and miserable and how hard it's been this year. I think some of that just comes with depression also, just generally like exhaustion. Like all I want to do is sleep every day and if I sleep every day, I can.
[00:10:49] But some part of me is worried, like that's what I do when I'm depressive. When my bipolar acts up, I don't, I don't fall into a depression where I just can't function exactly. I just go to sleep. I just hibernate like a fucking bear. It's really hard for me to be awake for more than six hours when I go into a depression.
[00:11:10] And that's what it's felt like for the last three months. And it, it worries me.
[00:11:20] So eventually they raised my progesterone based birth control. They raised the amount that I was given and my bleeding stopped. And that helped a lot. Um, I'm still getting cramping. I'm still getting some symptoms of like period stuff randomly but in general, just like, not, not having to worry about like being down to my last pair of underwear, basically. Like, I've, this year I ran through 25 pairs of underwear. Like I had to throw out a lot of pants. I, you know, like, and just that, like, just that, just like worrying about what I'm bleeding on right now, worrying about whether or not there's enough rags in my underwear so that I can go out, sell my, and nobody will smell my period blood, like from outside, you know, just like that just like, just eats at your brain, you know? Plus, like I said, like your, your uterus swells like, like everything is uncomfortable.
[00:12:43] The shits also keeps, keeps you at home.
[00:12:47] And the period shits I always thought were because your uterus is contracting. It's not, it's because there's a chemical that is being sent to your bowel when you've got your period symptoms. Um, so yeah, all having all of that stopped in the last month has given me a lot of brain space. Has, has helped me kind of like recover enough to make some plans.
[00:13:18] But I'm still so fucking tired.
[00:13:21] I still don't have enough blood. I still don't have enough iron or magnesium in my body. I'm taking vitamin supplements, like 2000% of what my, my daily iron supplement or something.
[00:13:36] And I mean, exhaustion is a symptom of perimenopause. So some other weird symptoms of perimenopause that I found out about is you only sleep for four hours at a time because your body temperature just changes and. Yeah, so I'll wake up every four hours. I'm usually awake for an hour or two. And then I try to go back to sleep. I try to get eight total, but I can't do them all at once anymore.
[00:14:09] So like I said, night sweats.
[00:14:13] The weirdest part about night sweats is that my temperature will drop just before I go to sleep and then I'll wake up because I'm so hot. I, I, I, I want to rip everything, all of everything touching me off of me.
[00:14:29] Okay, so this is another weird one. Tinnitus, hearing loss, or an itchiness inside of your ears. Right.
[00:14:38] All of which I had four or five years ago. I went to see an ear specialist. He never mentioned that this was a sign of menopause.
[00:14:45] He was just delighted that he couldn't help me. So basically what happens is your ear wax dries up because, you know, like a lot of you is drying up. That's part of being older. And because your ear watch, earwax is dried up. A lot of the protection your eardrums have is gone. So you can get more ear infections. You can also, like I said, like, tinnitus is there and that your. Your earwax kind of kept your ears from being itchy from, from like your, like if. If maybe you have dry skin inside there. Like just keeping it oiled up kept it from being itchy. But apparently now you no longer have the protection of earwax.
[00:15:33] Joint slash muscle pain. I've always had that, so I don't know if I just didn't. I haven't registered it. I haven't registered it increasing or decreasing. I mean, the problem for me is that I have fibro, which means. Which is basically defined by, like, everything kind of hurts all the time, right? And because I've been managing that for about 10 years, sometimes there is like, what I kind of call a cascade of pain, which is where enough things hurt in my body that it does, like, it just doesn't matter. I just. I've hit a wall of pain and I can't function anymore. So all of this vagina volcanoing has created a cascade of pain this, this year that made me really sensitive to all kinds, like, emotional pain, physical pain, everything. I've just, I've been in hardcore, like, just. What do you call it? Crab mode is what I call it because I'm a cancer crab up whenever things get scary.
[00:16:39] Okay? So joint slash muscle pain, brain fog, heart palpitations. I have noticed this year that I've gotten more of those itchy skin and. Or random electric shock sensations along your body. That's something that happens in menopause, too.
[00:17:02] I will say that it doesn't feel to me like electric shock one. It's not all the way down your body. It's your extremities. And it's because, like, your arms and legs just aren't getting as much circulation as you get older. So I don't feel it as electric shock so much as I feel it like a bug, like, landing on me is kind of like how I've experienced that.
[00:17:27] Okay. Burning mouth syndrome. I did not look up because it just sounds terrifying and I don't want to know. Gum disease. Your gums peeled back. That's part of getting older too. And then urinary tract infection, slash bladder leaks. I've. I've talked to this. I've Talked to like seven or eight doctors about this. Basically any woman over 40 is going to cough pee.
[00:17:49] If you think about it, the bladder and the uterus they sit next to each other and the uterus is scraping like two, one or two weeks out of the month. It's just scraping and destroying parts of its own tissue. And so if you, I mean, like, the bladder is kind of like moving along with that. The bladder is used to that motion and it's just, it's not going to be as good at holding liquid after 30 years of living next to that scraper.
[00:18:24] So we can expect our bladders to continue to work for another 30 more.
[00:18:31] That first 30 years is all you get. So you might leak. You might, like I said, cough pee, laugh pee. You also might just start. You might be holding it in as, like your pee in as long as you have been, you know, at 15, 25 and 35. But anytime from 35 to 45, you can start perimenopause. And it's not like your body sends you a note and lets you know that you can't hold your bladder in anymore, right?
[00:19:03] So at some point you start holding it in too long and, and it can result in a uti because like I said, you just don't know your limits. You don't know that your limits have changed yet. Or, like I said, a cough pee.
[00:19:21] So, you know, as far as that goes, like, I.
[00:19:28] Most women I know, it doesn't matter how old they are, and it also doesn't necessarily mean, like, whether they've had kids or not, they cough pee. So that's just part of our biology. It wasn't made great, right?
[00:19:44] You gotta just give in and accept that you'll probably just shower more in your later years.
[00:19:50] And as far as the night sweats go, when I was talking to, I talked to my mother about it and she said, she's, she's like, I'm 70 and I still get them. She's like, I've had those for 30 years. So it seems to me that the timeline of ladyship is that you bleed for about 30 years and then you sweat for another 30 or 40 years and you also pee yourself a little bit for those last 30 or 40 years. That's just, you know, and the thing is, is, like, it wasn't like, I mean, when you were bleeding, like, there probably was a little cough pee in there too sometimes, you know, because, because you're also. You've got the period shit, you know, like, that gets messy. So, yeah, our systems are made for, for a lot of showers. And I was like, what do you do if you still get night sweats? To Sherry, my mother, and she was like, I change the sheets a lot, you know, like, a lot of showers, a lot of new sheets. She's like, sometimes I keep a fan by the bed. When it's worse, she's like, it does get easier as you get older and you get used to it, so you start coping better. But that's what it is.
[00:21:08] You just get used to it. I've never met a doctor who was like, oh, yeah, you can fix that with blah, blah, blah, blah. It doesn't matter what Kegels you do. It doesn't matter how you live your life. You have used these organs and they wear out.
[00:21:26] So all of these perimenopause symptoms suck. And I think I told you, perimenopause can go on from one year to 10 years, and nobody knows how long it's going to be for you.
[00:21:37] Also, a lot of these symptoms sneak up on people in their 30s, their late 30s. So I think I've actually been in perimenopause for a while. I just assumed that they were pain symptoms and not perimenopause symptoms because I've never heard of it before I started volcanoing.
[00:22:01] So because I've been so exhausted, like, I've needed more help than just coffee. And between the brain fog and the mood swings and the random joint and muscle pain, I've just been overwhelmed by feeling shitty. I wasn't sure I was going to make this episode, and I probably wouldn't have if Magic Mind hadn't kept checking in on me to make sure I was okay and asking me if they could sponsor another episode of mine. And if you can see me, I have one of their adorable little green energy bottles right here.
[00:22:41] One shot keeps your brain going for eight hours. It's Matcha. Usually I hate the taste of tea, but this test just, like, tastes like smoothie. That's really awesome. It's also got ashwagandha, turmeric, lion's mane, and cordyceps mushrooms. They're not the fun kind of mushrooms. I mean, they kind of are, but they reduce swelling instead of making you trip out. And inflammation is the source of most pain.
[00:23:07] So in addition to reducing swelling, these mushrooms and spices also boost your brain. It reduces the joint swelling and brain fog that menopause has brought to me, all of which is helping me feel better and giving me a little space to navigate my new body.
[00:23:25] And it's a good reminder to me that my brain works better when my pain is lower.
[00:23:29] Magic Mind puts this, like, all this cool shit in this tiny little shot of energy and Made these shots tasty. I have a ton of food allergies but that didn't matter because Magic Minds gluten free, dairy free, no sugar nut free, vegan keto and paleo friendly and it includes vitamin C, B and D.
[00:23:54] As you can see, I'm twisting the bottle off right now. It's so exciting.
[00:24:04] Yummy.
[00:24:07] The discount they're offering you, my listeners, is off the hook.
[00:24:11] So if you go to magicmind.com and you get 48 off your first subscription or a 20 off a one time purchase, use the link magicmind.com thought of the day 20 that's Matt Magic Mind M A G I C m I n d.com T-O-U g h t o f t h e d a y20 and that gets you 48 off your next order. For knowing me and Magic Mind, use the discount code. Thought of the day 22. 0 I'm really glad they asked to sponsor this episode. It feels really good to have a group of people who believe in me and want to hear more of my ideas.
[00:25:04] And like I said, like I, I, I wasn't sure I was going to make another episode. I've, I've just been so consumed by all this. Right. So again, if you need more brain power or caffeine that doesn't cause inflammation, go to magicmind.com Thought of the Day 20 use Thought of the Day 2.0 to get that 20% off that first like one time purchase or 48% off that subscription. And the longer you use it, the more consistently you feel better. That's how you reduce pain in general, is you work on it every day until instead of your baseline being 7, your baseline is 6 and then 5 and then 4. So the longer you use Magic Mind, the lower you can maintain your pain or your brain fog or whatever you need Magic Mind to help you get through.
[00:26:09] It all adds up.
[00:26:12] Okay, so I was so excited about the gyno appointment to talk to them about my vagina volcano. I got there a day early. I'm never early. I mean I'm almost never on time either. I'm always just late. I just couldn't wait to solve the problem in my vagina. And here is right after the appointment, me to help you enjoy what, what I thought about that.
[00:26:45] But they were like, yeah, we just make like two little incisions and basically cut your box away from your ovaries and then we just pull it out through your vatch. Right? And I was like, all right, that sounds amazing.
[00:27:00] But I was still Making jokes, talking myself through it, trying to figure out what I wanted. And you know, the med resident, she was amazing. She let me cook. She just let me just think it through, make my jokes, tell my stories, get relaxed. Her supervisor came in and that woman did not like me at all.
[00:27:20] She did not think I was funny.
[00:27:25] I've already talked to the resident and we've already gone over it. I'm going to try progesterone based birth control for the next couple of months. They're. And then they're going to do a hysterectomy. And I was like. She was like, how do you feel about that? And I was like, well, I, I've always wanted someone to take my box out. I've always want, I wanted them to tie my tubes when I was 20, 22, but nobody would do it.
[00:27:49] I'm not using it for anything. I don't, it's unnecessary, you know?
[00:27:55] So like basically the only thing it can grow now that it can't grow babies is cancer. Right? So. And she was like, well, yeah, that's true, actually. I was like, thanks. Okay. Yeah. All right, well then, yeah, no, I'm good. Just get rid of it. Get rid of it. It's gross. It's gross. That's just gonna cause problems. I don't have a history of uterine cancer in my family, but why do I need it?
[00:28:23] It's already bummed me out for most, you know, like the bleeding thing is, it might have been like clockwork, but it wasn't like the, it's not pleasant.
[00:28:32] It's so, but, but this shit, this last year. Oh no, that is, I, I, that is a ride I cannot handle. So I was like, yeah, get it out, get it out.
[00:28:49] So the residents talked to me and we've come up with a plan. And she wants to bring her supervisor in. And the supervisor lady is the lady who does not like me. She walks in and she's, she's wearing a pencil skirt. I just, maybe it showed on my face, you know, And I'm, I'm wearing one of my pretty dresses. It looks like, it looks like mermaid, you know, plus paint spewed all over it, right? And I, I look like a 5 year old. I'm 45 year old woman dressed like a 5 year old and she's wearing a pencil skirt. And her, her makeup's impeccable. And I don't know, it, it just seemed like maybe we were different kinds of. She's one, a very neat person. She has several degrees. She oversees people I'm not. I. We're different, I think is what I identified, which they came with the room. But then I was like. I was like, yeah, you know? She's like, well, maybe you won't even want a hysterectomy if the birth control works. And I was like, no, I get it out. It's gross. Get. Take my box out. I would love that. That would be amazing. What. What's it good for? It's just, like. Is just good for cancer. I mean, most of the women I know who are happy had a histo, so. And she's like, well, not most women don't have hysterectomies. I was like, they don't. I was like, but the happy ones do. She's like, no, most women don't have hysterectomies.
[00:30:19] A lot of most women keep their uteruses.
[00:30:27] And I was just like.
[00:30:31] For a second, I was like, wait, are you judging me because I don't want to have it anymore? Like, you seem. You seem upset at the casual way of discarding my uterus, but everybody else has been so normal about it.
[00:30:49] My doctor thinks it's hilarious that whenever we do a pap smear, I call it checking for rats.
[00:30:57] She. She calls it checking for rats too now.
[00:31:02] Like, usually people think I'm funny. I don't know. I'm sorry. She did not think I was funny. She really wanted to make sure that I knew that I'm the weirdo for not wanting my box anymore.
[00:31:18] So.
[00:31:21] Yeah. And then she was like, do you have any more questions for us? And I was like, no. She's like, do you have any questions for me? I was like, no. The resident lady already, you know, like, she was very confident. Like, she answered all my questions, and she let me cook, and she was kind, and she didn't make me feel weird, which also, I think kind of made supervisor lady a little bit annoyed. She's like, why am I even here? And why are you acting like I'm irrelevant? And I don't know, but she did not think it was funny at all. Then I was like, take it out, take it out, take it out. Also, I love that they could just snip, snip, snip, snip, and then it just drops out. Oh, my God, you guys, science is fucking awesome sometimes. Okay? To be fair to the supervisor lady, I did show up very stoned to this 8:45am appointment, because again, with the fact that it's fucking terrifying.
[00:32:24] And also, I show up stoned everywhere that is. It's kind of my thing.
[00:32:33] My regular doctor has tried to get me to stop showing up stoned everywhere for years. It just doesn't. So is pretty much everyone who's ever met me. Actually, it's not. It's not very possible to separate me from the marijuanas.
[00:32:49] One, and then two.
[00:32:52] In fairness, she did tell me that most women keep their uteruses and let that sink in a little bit. But she also said, but women who have problems don't regret having their uteruses taken out. And I mean, maybe that's it. Maybe it's just that every single woman I know who's ever had problems, who's ever had intense pain or cysts, my mother had some terrible ovarian cysts.
[00:33:27] And she. She wasn't relieved of pain until they took it out and they left an ovary in there because she's white.
[00:33:37] It.
[00:33:38] White women, they tend to keep us from getting the surgery that we need, like the reproductive surgery that takes boxes out or removes ovaries or any of that shit. And then women of color, they tend to push towards that, towards sterilization tech techniques. So. So white women and black women have different medical fights that they have to go through with doctors, which is something I didn't realize until I was in my early 20s and I was talking to my boyfriend about it and we were comparing our mother stories and.
[00:34:23] And then I. I started to. To get to know other black women who had the same. Thing is, doctors are fine cutting them up and taking away their reproductive choices quickly, whereas I. Every time I tried to bring it up in the last 20 years, someone has brought up my invisible husband and asked what he thinks. Someone has told me that I'll change my mind later. I've never changed my mind again. I'm 45. I've never used it. I've always wanted it out. Now I can finally have my way. That would be wonderful. I would love to get it removed.
[00:34:57] This woman did not seem to understand this concept at all. She was.
[00:35:05] She was not pleased with how happy I was about the fact that she was going to take it out. But, you know, hopefully she'll do the surgery anyway. She'll be good at it, you know, or whoever in that office does the surgery in three months. So in the meantime, we're trying the birth control to see if it controls my bleeding. And it's a second different kind of birth control than the birth control I had this last month that was estrogen based. This is progesterone based. And the Estrogen based stuff really fucked with my bipolar med. So I was hitting the depths of despair pretty hard.
[00:35:53] So it, yeah, it was scary for a little bit, guys. So this is a part of our lives that is undocumented and unknown. And which is also why I was like, all the women who are happy do not have their uteruses left. And this woman who is a gynecologist was like, that's not true. And I was like, I mean, you have the stats and we have no information out here, you know, and like I said, she did, she did reiterate that women who have problems, if, if you are in pain, it's. You're. You're either in perimenopause or it could be something that has to be removed. Right? Even, even perimenopause might mean you have to have like a box, the. Your. Your uterus removed or, or something else, cysts, something. So either way, it's not normal to be in a ton of pain.
[00:37:01] It's not normal to, to.
[00:37:08] For your period to fuck your whole life up like this.
[00:37:12] And you can bleed to death if your periods are going haywire. So check on your friends, check on your sisters.
[00:37:20] I sat on my couch for a day and a half after that appointment. Not crying, not feeling triumphant, just sort of like frozen and morose. I clung to conipin and moved so much that they started to run away from me.
[00:37:32] I didn't know what I felt or why I couldn't move. I don't want to shove a person out of my body and then spend years with it. I don't want to make or own or care for a baby. But the oldness of getting my box yoinked is startling. I mean, I've wanted to be infertile since I can remember. I tried several times in my twenties. Every time the doctor told me my future husband wouldn't want that or that I would change my mind.
[00:38:03] All that kind of condescending bullshit.
[00:38:06] And I mean, now that the operation is necessary, it's one of my live streams finally calling Coming True. And I couldn't understand why I was just so weirdly freaked out.
[00:38:18] I called Midge, my best friend since junior high.
[00:38:23] She was like, without that box, your worth goes down in our. In our society. You're worried about becoming a dried up old crown.
[00:38:31] I think if you listen to this podcast, you know, on my leg I have a tattoo that has the word spinster life over like a, like a sunset on water, right? Like I, like I thought I had committed to being a Dried up old crone. But I realized that she was right and I was sad.
[00:38:52] And I mean, other women's were other women's. Other women worry about their body's aging, and I'm lucky enough that my genes have protected me from face wrinkles. My neck is working on it, but it hasn't turned into a river of skin just yet. People say I look about 10 years younger than I am. It doesn't help that I dress like I'm five, talk like I'm 12. But not having a box anymore isn't part of looking old. It's.
[00:39:22] It's a definitive life marker. It's like getting my period at age 11.
[00:39:27] It offer ushers me into the next phase of my life, unceremoniously or ceremoniously, actually, because I have like three whole months to fucking think about it. Whereas none of my other major life changes have ever given me this much notice.
[00:39:42] Sure, it lessens my worth to a lot of men, but I'm not sure that I would have ever been worthwhile to those men in reality. Anyway, between my love of this art life, my bipolar, manic depression, my struggling ability to take care of myself for most of my life, I've never had room for a baby. Plus all the physical damage my body has taken from me. Ten car accidents, two broken legs, one broken arm, fibromyalgia, plus the bipolar, and enough emotional trauma for 30 years worth of therapy.
[00:40:19] I've always been patched in the middle of patching myself up. There wasn't any room to try and patch anybody else up. And I did know that at 22 years old, which is the first time I wanted my tubes tied.
[00:40:35] I'm trying to figure out if there's anything else I need to do at this stage of my life before I move to the next one.
[00:40:45] I've never used my box for anything other than bleeding, so it seems like that's the only thing that'll change. It's always kind of been a. Like my womb has always been theoretical to me. I've never been pregnant. I've never had an abortion, miscarriage, or baby.
[00:40:59] I mean, the most drastic thing that might change is strangers will stop trying to convince me that I should want to have a baby or should have a baby.
[00:41:10] And that's usually just guys hitting on you, asking if you're a mama.
[00:41:14] Which, ew, right, I like.
[00:41:22] I would have made that hysterectomy appointment asap, but first they needed to scrape some of my cells off my uterus to test them to see If I have uterine cancer, they're taking the uterus out anyway. Whether they find cancer or not won't change that. However, if they do find cancer cells in this biopsy, they'll want someone who specializes in uterine cancer to do the surgery so they can eyeball everything and make sure they don't miss anything.
[00:41:47] So I made the appointment for the scrape and the medical assistant said, would you like a male or female doctor? And I was like, oh, female, please. I like men in theory, but I don't believe them when they talk.
[00:42:01] She just nodded and smiled and scheduled it.
[00:42:05] I always try to say sexist shit about men in a hospital if I can, just to even the score.
[00:42:11] So then two days ago, I got the uterine biopsy.
[00:42:16] When I walked in.
[00:42:19] I know it's my fault.
[00:42:22] I let the students practice on me.
[00:42:25] I know, I know, I know.
[00:42:28] Just to let you know, don't do that for a biopsy.
[00:42:33] That's a terrible idea.
[00:42:37] So before the appointment, like, there was. There was the student who was going to work on me. There was the over, like, seeing doctor who was there. They were both female. Before the appointment, they both wanted to make sure I hadn't had any Tylenol. They didn't offer me anything. They were like, we can totally numb your cervix. We'll do a little bit of numbing. Um, but if, if it's tricky to get what we need, sample wise, we might need to grab your cervix with our gloved hands and scrape it to make sure we get all the cells. I nodded, just chattering happily away the way I usually do. They were like, okay, just so you know, afterwards you might feel some cramping. I was like, okay.
[00:43:25] So I got in the position, right? And then the pain came.
[00:43:31] They did have to grab my cervix with their gloved hands and hold it still while they scraped at it. I didn't expect to start sobbing like that just came, like, just from inside of me. And then. And then in the middle of a sob, like, my vision started going black at the edges.
[00:43:50] Breathe. The doctors were shouting at me. I couldn't because I, you know, kind of, since the last appointment with them, I hadn't really restarted my breathing. I just. I just been holding my breath nervously and just like, wondering why I felt weird. Move your feet. The doctor shouted again.
[00:44:09] That, that worked. I moved my feet and then my body was like, well, we need oxygen for that shit. And the room came back into focus and I realized that I was still sobbing and then a lot of my pain training came in. I went to the pain clinic 10 years ago when I. When I'd broken my legs, and I started doing those.
[00:44:33] This hurts. Deep breathing. Right. That I just kind of like. It's like a switch in my brain that I can just turn on when I'm like, oh, that's. We're experiencing that kind of pain right now. We're just gonna need to do that. Okay.
[00:44:49] It's not. It's not like the giving birth Lamaze breathing. It's where I just sort of let myself moan on the out. Breath a little bit.
[00:45:03] And you're trying to do at least three beats on the in and three beats on the out and get them even. I don't count. I just. I just let myself be aware of how miserable I am and hope it all evens out.
[00:45:20] It felt like somebody was peeling me from the inside out with a tiny, insufficient knife. Because someone was. And then after that was over, they told me they hadn't scraped enough out of me, and they wanted to make sure that I didn't have to come back and do it all over again. So they wanted to know if they can go in for round two. I knew it would hurt. I was in so much pain, my body turned hot, and I was worried I was going to puke all over them. But I let them go back in anyway.
[00:45:47] I had to drink three glasses of water before I could stand up. And even then, my legs were shaking.
[00:45:55] As I put my clothes back on, I felt like I'd been raped. I.
[00:46:00] In that way that medical procedures sometimes make you feel violated.
[00:46:04] You know, my insides are intimate, and someone rummaging around inside them, medically, is terrifying. But also, they reached inside me and peeled my cervix with a paring knife.
[00:46:18] When I sat up, there was a liter, a clear leader, you know, like medical jar. There's like two inches of blood and tissue that they'd sucked out of me floating in there, which also probably didn't help me when I wanted to throw up.
[00:46:39] The doctors apologized over and over again throughout the procedure. And they were kind, they were encouraging. They were like, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry that we have to do this right? But in retrospect, all they did was make sure that I hadn't taken any Tylenol, I assumed because it would thin my blood. But, I mean, how fucked up was. I was the worst pain I've ever felt in my life, and they just needed me awakened. Did they need me awake and aware or is it just a habit to let women be in pain? And I'd assumed, like, most of my appointments, I'd be able to go home afterwards and then work, but my vagina hurts. I was leaking the iodine they'd used to clean my cervix out. The cramping had started. I was still shaking from the procedure.
[00:47:24] I just wanted to lay on a cat and cry.
[00:47:28] And for the next four or five days, I could still feel like knives on my vagina. And my doll does not touch the cramps. Sitting hurts. Standing hurts more.
[00:47:37] And that was the first time I was like, oh, fuck, this is gonna hurt, and this is gonna take time to heal from, and I'm gonna need help.
[00:47:45] And afterwards, I was talking it over with Midge, and she reminded me, gynecology was invented by a man who tortured slaves. You need to advocate for yourself. I've had two children.
[00:47:56] They could have numbed your whole cervix. Oh, if you can watch. If you're watching me right now, this is a moose tail that you are seeing right here.
[00:48:06] She's like a friend. She's like a friend of mine. Had that same thing that you had, and she demanded a Xanax beforehand. They treated her like a drug addict, but they gave it to her, and she needed that in order to get through it.
[00:48:22] And it's just the idea of those doctors saying, this will hurt, and we want to offer you some medication so you can be calm through the procedure.
[00:48:31] Like, just made me imagine feeling so relaxed, you know? And I was immediately furious that neither doctors had offered that to me. I googled uterine biopsy for the first time. I never do that beforehand because then I chicken out. But not only did Google say that doctors sometimes offer pain medication before and after the procedure, Google also said that the biopsy recovery time is a fucking week. Something neither doctor mentions.
[00:49:02] So I wrote this message in my chart.
[00:49:08] It said the title was, I want to talk about pain management.
[00:49:13] The message says, the doctors who performed my biopsy wanted to make sure I didn't take Tylenol before the biopsy. They said I should have some afterwards. They told me that they couldn't totally numb my cervix. They gave me one shot of numbing something. This did it as little as promised. Then they grabbed my cervix and peeled parts of it off. I stopped breathing, held, and started to black out from the pain. I need more pain management than that. There are hundreds of drugs that are for pain and even more drugs that are for being terrified. Because someone is scraping the inside of you. I could have been given a Xanax or even a Motrin. Gynecology was invented in 1840 by a man experimenting on slaves, women he rented to medically torture. He didn't think they deserved pain meds. I expect all the doctors who read this message will try to do better to address the pain they know is coming. I need to see a pain plan for my histop, please.
[00:50:12] And then I attached that Google search that I did, just a basic Google, like, this is what you do. This is what happens in a uterine biopsy. And where it said pain management before and afterwards is recommended.
[00:50:31] I sent that to Midge, who was like, that's a little aggressive.
[00:50:34] That might make you look pain seeking. Like that might make you look like a drug seeker.
[00:50:41] And. And I think that's when my brain exploded a little bit.
[00:50:46] I was like, I didn't advocate enough for myself in the moment. And then I'd been feeling knives in my vagina for a week and cramps, which by the way, like, like the cramps happen in a totally different location than the knives, right? Like, you know, your vagina is much lower than your uterus. They're two different places. So the vagina, like, I don't know why I could still feel the knives in the vagina part, but the cramps, oh, nothing to touch that pain.
[00:51:21] So, yeah, I've been suffering. And then I over advocated later in my chart. And it's a typical women's health problem. I have to demand the help I need or else I won't get it. But if I do it too aggressively, they'll call me a problem and refuse to help me. Either way, I'm going to feel like I'm going to be in so much pain. Either way it's going to be my fault.
[00:51:42] I got so overwhelmed in that moment.
[00:51:46] I've never called my mother crying. Sometimes I'll just allow myself to cry in front of her. But our relationship hasn't really been sturdy enough for her to offer me comfort. That would be comforting, but my shitty, shitty uterus has brought us together. So I just let myself call her. At this point. I fucked it all up. I'm gonna fuck it all up. I sobbed when she answered the phone, which is probably a normal reaction to feeling like knives have been stuck up my vagina for a week. She was surprised that they didn't even offer me a Motrin afterwards or suggest like a pain regimen.
[00:52:22] She was really supportive. She told me she had the same she had the same reaction as Midge, though. She was like, you already sent that to your doctors. I'm sure it's fine.
[00:52:39] Which, you know, and she's very, very reassuring. After we'd established that it was too late, and it's probably not too late, I could probably pull that mountain, that I probably could have pulled that note from my chart. But you know what it. And fuck them.
[00:52:52] Like, every time you as a woman are denied pain pills for something that you shouldn't have, like, make them write it in your chart. Always make them write it in your chart. Always document what's happening.
[00:53:06] You know, if somebody's. If somebody declines to test you for something, be like, great, I need you to write down why you decided not to test me for that. Because I need to know, and I need us to be able to go back to today later on and find out why you chose to not give me that medical care.
[00:53:27] So I'd already started selling a little bit.
[00:53:38] I'd felt like shit, but I still pushed myself out of the house. And the grabbed me by the cervix story went on one of my selling rotations, and I got two really kind offers for help. An old friend told me he's about to buy a house and there's a spare room for anyone who needs it. Jason kept saying very, very meaningfully to me, just, like, winking at me, but, like, badly winking at me, which is very kind. I do not want to move in with him. I especially do not want to move in with him right after I've had surgery. But it made me feel like I'm not gonna be homeless. At the very worst, I can live in Jason's mansion, which I know doesn't sound bad. Living in a mansion sounds nice. Unless you, like me, have been. Have been living by yourself in a 650 square foot apartment, which is a pal. It's a very dirty palace, but it is my palace of solitude. And I enjoy living in a palace. I love Jason. I love his wife, Jillian. I love all of the other artists that he's probably going to house there. I think it's going to be a really fun commune to join, but I'm not ready.
[00:54:57] And then there's another friend of mine who's an ER nurse.
[00:55:01] When I told her about it, she said, okay, I keep a room in my house to watch over people who have had surgery like yours. So if you need someone to pick you up from the hospital right afterwards and watch you for 24 to 48 hours to make sure that everything is okay, to make sure that you don't have an infection, to take care of you, to help you get in and out of the bath, you know, she's like, I have a room just for that and a bed just for that work. It's.
[00:55:32] I, I was very touched. I think I'm going to take her up on it because, I mean, not only is she a nurse, she's trans. So between those two things, she's seen everything, right?
[00:55:48] So, you know, and she was like. And that, that was what she said. She was like, you know, I am trans. So. So it's. It's not a big deal. And a nurse, so it's not a big deal to me to help you in and out of a shower or something. And I was like, yeah, that sounds amazing. You know, someone who specializes in fucking wound care to watch over me. Jesus.
[00:56:09] And also, like, like I said, like, I, I don't know how much bladder control I'm gonna have. I don't know if I'm gonna be bleeding for that first week. I haven't done any of that research because it's just fucking terrifying.
[00:56:24] But it'll be nice to be in someone else's bed where I don't have to change fucking sheets.
[00:56:30] So the more I think about it, the more I'm like, oh, my God, that sounds wonderful. My, my mother offered to come help and I'm gonna let her. So did my friend Kay.
[00:56:41] And I think I have two other friends who might come. But that really intense first two days, I think Tris is going to be my savior for those. And I think that that would be amazing. So I was like, I've been calling this gender affirming care. And she looked at me and she was like, it's all gender affirming care. She was so kind. She's always so kind.
[00:57:14] The moment that the room started to go black and the doctor shouted breathe at me, kept, like, haunting me.
[00:57:23] And I've been holding my breath ever since I decided to get my uterus yanked right, Only bothering to inhale weed or sleep. And I know when I was younger, I was all fight, fight, fight whenever something scary happened. But now I'm all, freeze, freeze, freeze. At first, I think I was just overwhelmed.
[00:57:45] Selling out all the symptoms for doctors was terrifying. And having them say that they qualified me for major surgery was astounding. I'm used to my pain just being ignored.
[00:57:55] It's nice that I wasn't being a soft, whiny testicle about it. I was worried. I just Wasn't brave enough to handle it, but apparently I've been having a body emergency for a year, which is part of why I wanted to talk about it on this podcast. Because we vagina owners expect pain.
[00:58:13] We.
[00:58:15] We go through a lot of shit with our vaginas all the time, but we. You can bleed to death from your fucking vagina. And I need you to know that. And I need you to know that so that you can watch out for anybody in your life who has one.
[00:58:30] They can go bad. Mine was like clockwork for 30 years before this. Every month on the 27th, I didn't even know what day it is. I didn't need to, because I always knew it was the 27th because my period had just started like that. But.
[00:58:48] But it. Like I said, this year, all the eggs just dropping out of my body, realizing that I'd been feeling, like, shift for that long and it wasn't something a doctor would just expect me to grit my teeth and get through, kind of made me fall apart, which is usually what I do when the emergency is over. The problem is the emergency isn't over. It's in January. Like, I'm chemically all patched up now. The birth control is holding and working. I'm still depressed and anxious, but it's going to get me through until the surgery.
[00:59:22] And then after the surgery, you have to take a month off in order to have the real emergency. And I've never planned a surgery. All my surgeries were, surprise, your bro, your leg is broken.
[00:59:33] I've. And I've never had very much savings. I've never planned to take a month off anytime I couldn't work for a month. It was also a surprise your body doesn't work anymore. Like the two years I couldn't wipe my ass after I got repetitive stress syndrome in my arms because I hand painted the first 50,000 Sparky cards.
[00:59:50] Even then, I fully. I expected my disability to lead to my homelessness or jail. I always sort of assume that's where I'd end up pretty. Pretty much every time something scary happens.
[01:00:03] So I. I've been letting myself live in that freeze for a while and just moving room to room, just burying my head in each cat's coat. And this year, my neediness has really started to annoy the out of my cats. I thought they were six. They're actually eight. Clonapin and Moose are eight years old. They don't cuddle much with each other or me. They perch.
[01:00:29] I mean, I kind of get up and get down and like move around too much and I'm loud. And I get it. I get that I can be startling, especially for a cat. But last month I realized I just need more cuddles than they were comfortable providing. So I had to take drastic measures.
[01:00:51] I got a kitten. Gonzo is four months old, well five now. And he demands an hour a day of cuddles, snuggles, kisses while he loudly purrs and talks. So this last month, I watched Klonopin and Moose get used to the idea of him and Claw. And Gonzo has been getting used to us. He was a feral kitten found by a cat lady.
[01:01:17] Moose has been indifferent the whole time. Moose, Moose is like, he walks up to Gonzo, he smells him, kind of thinks about it and wanders away.
[01:01:28] Klonopin wanted to murder him and he wanted to murder me. And he just, he just wanted murder. He, he couldn't believe that I was in a closed room with another cat.
[01:01:41] You know, those are two problems right there with cats. Like, you don't close a door and don't bring another cat in here. He howled every night for the first two weeks. And every time he saw Gonzo, he would growl, hiss, and chase him. He beat the closed door every night for hours while he howled so badly that he was limping a little bit, his paws were a little swollen.
[01:02:04] He kept taking swipes at Gonzo, But Clonapit is £20 and he lays down to eat his food.
[01:02:12] Gonzo is four pounds, all muscle, and he spent the first three months of his life outside, like just dodging and weaving, right? So every time Klonopin went for him, Gonzo just sort of sidestep out of the way. And Klonopin would get more hurt trying to murder Gonzo than Gonzo ever did.
[01:02:33] That was hilarious, honestly. And just a little bit of cat drama just makes me so happy. I just like watching it. And with their dynamic a little bit, I. The competition between the baby cat and the big cats also makes me a hot commodity. When I get up, Gonzo demands his pets for his first 30 minute session. And the whole apartment fills with Gonzo's loud ass purse, right?
[01:03:01] And Conapin can hear me petting Gonzo. And he's sitting there like, nobody loves me. This sucks. And so he's, he's like feeling competitive, feeling jealous. So like I'm, you know, I get up, I moved to Klonopin or most whoever I see first after Gonzo. And I give them a good half hour, two, and everybody gets the same amount of time. And everybody gets the same, I love you so much. You're the best thing that's ever happened to me. Thank you very much for being my best friend talk that I give them every day. Right.
[01:03:38] And they're so excited to snuggle with me. I. I am. I'm the hottest thing ever. It's pretty great.
[01:03:49] Also, while I was sleeping in our room alone with Konzo, Moose and Klonopin started sleeping next to each other and snuggling each other more. They also started fighting a little more. But the snuggling made me happy. And the fighting is what it is. You know, cats fight. People fight when they live together. That's just fine.
[01:04:11] I. I'm always telling them no claws. And so far, they haven't gotten too beat up.
[01:04:20] They're. Somebody got Klonopin on the head, so I had to honey him a little bit. That's what I usually do because I like medicine that is also food.
[01:04:34] Honey is not poisonous to cats if you do really small quantities.
[01:04:39] It's an antibacterial. It's an anti inflammatory. It can seal wounds, you know, so basically I put it on the fur. They scratch it to try and get it off, right? Which, if the wound has already started abscessing, opens it back up again, but keeps it covered with the honey so that dirt won't get in.
[01:05:03] And yeah, like I said, antibacterial, anti inflammatory. So just keep reapplying the honey until the swelling goes down, the heat goes down, the wound no longer looks woundy. Right.
[01:05:23] Moose has always had a lot more energy than Konapin. He just runs back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, all over the zoomies, all over the apartment. Con up. And I usually just watch him. But now that Gonzo's here, now Gonzo chases moose, Moose chases Gonzo. Sometimes they're just racing together.
[01:05:43] When they catch each other, one of them might give each other, like, the other one a swat, but their claws are sheathed. Neither cat flinches. And then they start racing again.
[01:05:55] Special case stopped howling and lunging and hissing. And now he even snuggles, like, not next to the baby kitten, but all, like, in the same area as Gonzo.
[01:06:08] They pal around a little bit. In the morning, they watch the birds together. And I. I just.
[01:06:18] I've also caught Moose actually snuggling with Gonzo.
[01:06:23] So watch. And then the three of them kind of like hover around me and stalk me the way cats do in a frightening way when you have a group of them.
[01:06:33] So Watching them become a unit has made me feel better because I wanted more snuggles. I thought getting another younger cat might mean that both cat cats had a new friend. And I got more snuggles. And it has. I'm still not homeless. I've been able to feed all the cats for the last month, which sounded insane to me. I was like, three pets. That seems like a lot.
[01:06:54] I've. The litter boxes have stayed clean, so we haven't had any. Any messes. Right? All the cats pee in the right places. Nobody's guarding food.
[01:07:06] So I made another plan. I thought, okay, I made one plan, and it worked. The Gonzo plan was good. So I made a gofundme for my rent for the month and a half I'll need to recover. And then today I thought, okay, let's just picture what if things go right? And I found myself relaxing a little bit, imagining something good is an action. And it took effort, but. Oh, can you hear that? I'm pretty sure that is Gonzo. Just like playing with one of his toys. I started fantasizing about the next few months going really well. People buying cars from me. I just, I. I started a cameo. So if you want me to, I can just, like, say up things to your friends and family for you people listening to my podcast more and more, getting more in touch with the people who love my work, maybe getting a few graphic design gigs that would carry me over and. And my gofundme goal reach so I know that my rent is going to be okay.
[01:08:07] So once I started imagining things being okay, I. I started breathing again. And going from snuggly cat to snuggly cat all day, every day has made me feel like whatever happens, I'll be well loved and completely covered in cat hair. So the GoFundMe is attached in the description. If you can help, that'd be amazing. Whether you can help or not, please share my story if it helps you and your friends understand this part of life better.
[01:08:34] We Gen Xers are the first ones talking openly about this, so I think we have a duty to share our experiences with other women so we can all brainstorm on how to survive. I hope you and your body are okay, and I hope that my broken uterus can help all of us.
[01:08:50] He's still playing, isn't he?
[01:08:54] Gonzo, thank you very much for listening to this whole story. And thanks to Magic Mind, this episode wouldn't have happened if they hadn't supported and encouraged me to keep writing. You can go to magic mind.com thought of the day 20 to get your 20 off a one time purchase and 48 off a subscription with the discount code Thought of the day 20 Again magicmind.com Thought of the day 2020 Thought of the day 20 thanks for listening you guys. I really appreciate you and I hope all of our vaginas are gonna be okay.
[01:09:43] Elisa Star Elisa star Love a mouth Breathtaking, so bizarre Elisa Star Elise a star Trying to get you to laugh at your scars Elisa Star Elisa star Tells you what's up wherever you are Elise a star Elise a star she is a booby is.
