Friday, November 28, 2008

After a Long Silence

I haven't written in a long time, and truth be told, I have been debating abandoning this blog. Ever since last year's incident, it's felt spoiled, and although the one responsible for all that trouble is now in the process of drinking himself into a coma at one of our state institutions of higher learning, I still feel the taint of his having been here like sand stirred up in a clear pool. I have to write somewhere, though, and I don't feel like ending this.

Life lately has been wretched. It seems a pity to come back here after a two-month absence to say that, but I can't lie. Pain and other problems I've been having lately have led my doctor to start running increasingly invasive tests to find out just how desperate my situation is, and so far, things aren't good. The radiologist told me I had "an interesting uterus", my OB/GYN told me that the fibroids have returned and that one of them is the size of a large lemon (why are these things always frickin' fruit?), and now I am in a holding pattern waiting to have a surgical procedure to find out whether the big scary C word will come into play or not.

After I left the radiology with the results of the ultrasounds, I was sure that I was about to face a hysterectomy. Even though I have been trying to steel myself for that possibility since 2001 when I first found out that I had fibroids, I just could not control the waves of grief. My doctor, who is truly wonderful, talked with me about things, and he said there is not a reason, unless cancer is indicated by the biopsy, to take drastic steps right now. However, in his estimate, I probably only have about two more years left if I want to have a family and then the situation will have deteriorated to a point where more drastic measures will have to be taken.

What am I going to do? Two years might as well be fifteen minutes. There's nobody on the horizon. I don't even know where to look. I feel like I'm just sailing through time at warp speed watching minutes of my life tick away with supernatural speed. Everywhere I look, all my friends have found someone, have children, have what they need. Why is it that I'm still alone?

My doctor talked to me about having a baby on my own. I can't say that I've never thought about it, but after a long time of praying and soul-searching, I don't think that's the right path for me. I will need someone along side me. I want someone along side me, too.

I believe that God has a plan for me. Right now, though, it's so excruciatingly hard to see how any of this is "working for my good" or where it's leading me. I lay in the doctor's office drugged and draped on a table for more than two hours two days ago for a procedure that didn't work. Now, I have to go into the hospital during my Christmas holidays to have outpatient surgery to find out whether or not I have cancer. Merry Christmas, ho-ho-ho. It just doesn't seem to end.

Now my mother is on a mission to get me married off, and she's only thinly veiling it in kidding when she starts talking to me about perfect strangers while desert is being served during a church social. I feel like one of those spinster relatives in a Jane Austen novel who the whole family is just a little bit embarrassed by. More than I have in a long time, I feel the need to pack up suitcases and move away, to a place where I don't speak the language, to a place where nobody knows me or my family, to a place where nobody knows or cares that I am a ticking time bomb.

I am trying just to take it one day at a time. If I do that, maybe I can keep this thin clay vessel from shattering into a million tiny pieces.