Nature and Nurture: Mothership Down

My son, age 12, noticed it first. He pointed with his fork as I placed a plate of stirfry on the table in front of him.

"Mom. Your stomach is pooching out."

I glanced down at my midriff, at belly bulging between jeans and sweater. I shrugged my shoulders, didn't make any effort to suck in the evidence.

"Yeah. Well, I've been eating too much I guess. I should cut down a little."

I scraped half of my dinner into the dog's dish and vowed to suffer two hundred tummy crunches a day. That night I stood stark naked on my bathroom scale. The needle didn't hover at my usual weight - it gently swayed into position twenty pounds past prime, past the turn of the year, past the rich butter holidays, past my dad's death, past several months of financial duress. Twenty damn pounds.

My youngest son, age 10, noticed it second. He rested beside me on a woven blanket. Our heels rested in the cool water of the local river. I glanced at him and smiled. He shaded his eyes with his hand, returned my gaze as a sturdy pidgeon waddled close to our picnic.

"Mom. You look fat."

I raised my head, didn't expect to see an arc of solid abdomen.

Damn. I thought my diet was working. I thought all these daily walks and bowls of raw greens were doing the trick. Guess I gotta work harder. Maybe turning forty-one made me old, made my metabolism slow.

I vowed to eat even less, to join the Jazzercise class in the Catholic Church basement. The pidgeon paused as she approached our blanket. She seemed to stare at my belly, too, as if she carried a message, a warning.

I noticed it third, noticed it two weeks later, noticed pain, noticed fatigue. I pressed my palms into my flesh, felt something foreign, something that refused to yield. Pain radiated down my right leg, made my calf spasm. I called the doctor.

"Birdie, you have an ovarian cyst. It's large. We're going to need to schedule surgery as soon as possible. It's pressing against your spine and it looks like it's enveloped your right ovary. We may need to remove that as well."

Many women experience ovarian cysts. The most common type is called a function cyst. These form during the normal menstrual cycle. A woman's ovaries grow tiny cysts that hold the eggs. When an egg is mature, the sac breaks open to release an egg, so it can float through the fallopian tube in hopes that it will find waiting sperm. The sac left behind dissolves. Sometimes the sac doesn't break open - the egg is trapped, and fluid builds inside, causing the sac to expand. The sac may bleed or twist the ovary and cause pain. These cysts usually go away on their own after a few weeks. Our bodies know how to right our ship, know how to melt trouble.

The cyst in my body wasn't functional, wasn't a simple filled sac of angry egg. It was a dermoid cyst, grown from the cells in the ovary that make hair, teeth, and bone. They are often filled with a greasy, thick fluid and may contain hair, cartilage and even well-formed teeth. Sweat glands, thyroid tissue and muscle fibers may also be found. Old textbooks showed dermoids as a tiny "humunculous," or human being within the ovary. The doctor made a note on my chart.

"The ultrasound indicates that it's around the size of a Texas grapefruit. Now I'm going to run some blood work to check for cancer markers. The probability is that your cyst is benign, but we can't assume."

I didn't like her calling it "my" cyst, didn't like her calling it "Texas." It's not mine, not cute, I thought. It's an interloper, alien. It didn't come to my door invited. I want it gone.

Two days later a woman in a baby blue mask stuck my arm with a needle, counted backwards. I didn't dream as they performed laparotomy, as they made two small incisions in my stomach and removed the mass along with my right ovary. I didn't dream, moved from color to black to grasping for words, for meaning, as strange shadows flitted above me, told me I did fine, told me the cyst was gone and everything looked clean and neat and good. I felt a blast of warm air, felt fingers pull my gown over my stomach, my groin, my thighs, felt a rush of kind welcome home words from an ancient nurse.

When I was a young girl and decided I didn't believe in anything, my Gramma told me about the Holy Ghost, about the sweeping motion He made through our bodies, through the thickest iron mountains, through time and trees, through anger and apathy.

"It don't matter where you are, Birdie. The Holy Ghost finds you when you need Him. He will hold you in His hand, breathe life into your dead lungs. You may not believe me now, but some day you will know this. You will feel the Holy Ghost and know that He is real."

I woke from enforced sleep with Gramma's words revolving in my mind. I didn't feel the Holy Ghost, but sent a tiny burst of thanks in case He kept me from death, from cancer.

"Birdie, we need to send this to pathology, but you asked to see it."

The nurse held a silver metal surgical bowl in front of my face. I waved her back, didn't have my glasses, couldn't see it unless it stood still, stood at least three feet from my body. It looked like raw meat, like chicken removed from the bone, a handful of flesh with curves, flaps, pieces and bits of vein. I didn't see teeth, but a shock of gray hair cascaded down one side of it. I felt the vomit reflex well inside my gut, my throat, but my innards were empty.

She laughed, and her eyes wrinkled like sky blue prunes.

"It IS gross, but this looks textbook normal to me. You can go home in the morning, but tonight we need to watch your vitals and make sure you're doing okay. Try to get some sleep. It'll take you a few weeks, but you'll feel yourself soon."

I figured I would feel like myself in a few days, maybe a week, on the outside a few weeks like the nurse mentioned. I closed my eyes, didn't know just how wrong I was.

To Be Continued with Part Two posted Wednesday and Part Three posted Friday!

Birdie Jaworski, Health Correspondent:

Birdie's column, Nature and Nurture, will be published every Monday Evening beginning Monday, March 26th to Gather Essentials: Health. This week, Birdie will post the story of her ovarian cyst surgery and subsequent complications in three parts, part two to be posted Wednesday, part three to be posted Friday, due to the sheer length of her ordeal and story.

Nature and Nurture tells the stories of Birdie's attempts to raise her two boys, 12 and 9, in a healthy, loving environment without going crazy herself!

Birdie blogs at La Pajaro and Beauty Dish. She writes a weekly human interest column for the Las Vegas Times.

You can find all of Birdie's Nature and Nurture articles at www.gather.com/naturenurture

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