Let The Tears Fall Where They May

Photo by charlesdeluvio on Unsplash

I sit atop the exam table, feet dangling, paper crinkling beneath me. The nurse hands me a white envelope containing my post-op report and assures me the doctor will be in soon. As soon as she leaves and closes the door, I waste no time tearing into the envelope like Charlie opening his golden ticket. Although I essentially know what the results will tell me, I want to pour over the words in detail.

The doctor first relayed his findings to me in the recovery room as I emerged from the haze of anesthesia and again during a quick visit to my dimly lit hospital room early the next morning, but I want to drink in every drop of information I can. I don’t want to miss a single detail. After years of unexplained infertility, I finally have a concrete answer. After even more years of cramping, back pain, and digestive issues, I finally have a potential source for all my pain.

At first I read the report in a detached fashion, as if the words were written about someone else. We saw in the cul-de-sac along the right uterosacral region as well as on the left uterosacral region and central cul-de-sac, tissue consistent with endometriosis. This was all excised and sent to pathology. It was noted that the appendix was somewhat dilated and had a mild appendiceal kink of approximately 150 degrees. The left ovary also had a large hemorrhagic cyst filled with fluid.

However, the more I read, the less detached I become. That uterosacral region, that appendix, that ovary—they are mine. Not to mention the countless other places from where the disease was removed. This is my body about which I am reading. My skin where a transverse incisions were made. My abdomen where working ports were placed.

I feel the tears pricking my eyes, threatening to fall with abandon. This is nothing to get emotional about, I chide internally, countless other women have it so much worse and you’re sitting here, on the other side with answers. But I can’t reason the tears away. Reading this report feels like pressing into a bruise I thought was healed. After three IUIs, four hysteroscopies, six embryo transfers, and countless injections, this surgery should just feel like another drop in the bucket of treatments. Why does it feel so tender?

Because I’ve never seen it in writing, I realize. As someone who believes in the power of words, I know the impact reading them can have. It’s why I love this quote from Margo’s Got Money Troubles:

“Maybe she could pull the dagger out of her gut and put it into his. That was what writing was, wasn’t it?”

Reading these words written about myself feels like taking the dagger from my gut and putting into someone else’s. For so long I’ve felt like a mad woman screaming into the void, fighting relentlessly to make others understand my experience. Reading a clinical report, written by an objective party, validating all the issues which have been brewing under the surface—issues which were very real and very visible once someone looked—makes me feel seen.

Finally, someone is acknowledging how I have been suffering not only throughout these last five years of infertility, but over the last twenty years as I’ve dealt with endometriosis’s less insidious but always present symptoms. Symptoms I was passively prescribed birth control for or told were normal as a teenager. Symptoms women are left to deal with for an average of ten years before they are ever diagnosed.

My tears turn hot and angry over the injustice of having to wait so long before we are taken seriously. Over the surprise I felt at my doctor saying, “I believe you”, before I even launched into my diatribe proving my credibility at my initial visit. Over previous medical professionals requiring proof as to why I should be trusted to know myself best. Over the women who truly do have it so much worse than me—worse pain, worse recovery, worse education and help.

I think about how my therapist told me that tears are like snowflakes—each one having a unique molecular makeup, telling the story of a specific emotion. Looking at the tear stains on my jeans, I believe their molecular makeup tells a story of relief, anger, sadness, hope, and exhaustion. Words may fall short when I try to explain what reading this report has stirred up in me, but my tears do not. So I let them fall.

This post is part of a blog hop with Exhale—an online community of women pursuing creativity alongside motherhood, led by the writing team behind Coffee + Crumbs. Click here to view the next post in the series "Tender.”