One Week

One week. Seven full days. 168 hours, give or take. That's how much longer I'll have my uterus.  Now, I am not one of those women whose identity is all wrapped up in her reproductive organs. I've never understood it when women say the idea of losing their uterus makes them feel as if they'd somehow be less of a woman. In point of fact, my stupid uterus has given me nothing but grief since I was 12 years old. I will not miss the intense and debilitating pain, the long, drawn-out episodes of heavy, uncontrollable bleeding, the endometriosis. I certainly will not miss the tumor that has called my uterus home for the last six months, and which has caused a whole, new set of horrible symptoms. I will not miss menstrual pads, or inevitable accidents, or the business of having to keep spare clothing in a desk drawer at work. I will not miss anemia. I won't miss any of that and, yet, the idea that this entire chunk of my body will be gone in just about a week's time is somehow disconcerting. I think it's because I never got my money's worth. I feel as if I paid my union dues, but never got the benefits of membership. I'm referring, of course, to the fact that I never had kids. It sort of pisses me off. I mean, it makes me sad but, mostly? It pisses me the fuck off. Not that I ever made an effort to have kids, or that I'd be having one, now, if I could - I'm way past the age that I believe people should be having babies, even if they're physically capable of conceiving. Even though I've always loved kids and wanted some, I have never had the urge to incubate a baby, let alone push one out. I'll have to live with this decision, which isn't too difficult: everyone has some regrets in life. It seems to me, though, a collosal failure in human evolution that all of this: the monthly agony of cramps and soreness  and bleeding and bad skin and crazy mood swings...that all of it has yet to become optional. At 47, as I'm about to have all of the plumbing removed, I can't help but look back and think of what a huge waste it's been. Perhaps a baby or two would have made all of that ugliness worth it. As it stands, it all just adds up to a whole chunk of my life revolving around the grief caused by an organ that, at the end of the day, never gave me anything back. In fact, while I know there are women who mourn the loss of their uterus, I'm a little disconcerted by the fact that this option wasn't presented to me ten or twenty years ago.  I'm just going to say it: my uterus sucks. It's done me no favors, and caused me a whole mess of trouble. I don't want it. I never wanted it. I never even got to fill out a questionaire and choose it as an option - it came standard. This is how nature works, I know, but it pisses me off. It pisses me off, too, that my medical team is prepping me for what sounds to me like a long, slow recovery that will involve a fair amount of pain. Hasn't this motherucker caused me enough trouble, already? Even its absence can't help but stick it to me.

Fine. Be that way. Your days are still numbered. You have a week.

Stritch

The 122,564,756 Stritch tributes on my Fb stream last night (I have a lot of gay male fb friends) must have subliminally sunk in. I dreamt that I was having lunch with Elaine, herself, (and some other old broad I didn't recognize) at some swanky, sunny, sidewalk cafe (ladies who lunch and the sloppy lesbians who tag along for a free meal?) In the dream, I dropped my napkin, bent down to pick it up, and farted. I looked up, embarrassed, ready to apologize,  but Stritch didn't miss a beat: she was waving down the waiter and saying, in her gravelly voice, "I'll have what she's having."

I feel Elaine Stritch would wholeheartedly approve of this dream.