One of the funniest questions I have ever been asked, dressed in a tiny hospital gown as the nurses induced me for labor, having just had a stranger’s fingers in my vagina for the second time that hour, went something like this, “Where would you say you fall on the modesty scale?”
I have been thinking this week about shame, about a story I am ashamed to tell. And I’ve decided to tell it precisely because I’m uncomfortable. Because shame is one of those heavy, sharp rocks I’m just not interested in hauling uphill any longer. So, I’m going to tell you about my surgery. It involves many of my least favorite words. Polyps. Mass. Rectum. Reconstruction. OK, actually I’m a fan of reconstruction, but the rest of those words blow.
I am 28, and have been sick for three years. I’ve had a number of procedures, and each has discovered bleeding and ulcerations and unhappy organs. I’m vegan, scrawny, and have not had a drink of alcohol in more than a year. They discover the mass during a colonoscopy. Three weeks later, I wake, still groggy from the anesthesia, and call out when I hear motion beside me. “I know I’ve asked before,” I say, my voice breaking, “but I can’t remember what you answered. Did they have to go in from the front, or did they go in from the back?” This is important if your rectum is being reconstructed, because a frontal surgery means a visible scar, and a higher chance of infection, and a much longer recovery.
A nurse leans over me, so that I can see her, and rests her hand on my shoulder, and says, kindly, “It’s OK. They went in from the back. And it went well. And you’re OK.”
I’m not, of course. I won’t be for a long time. Although the doctors promised a 6-week recovery, I am not strong enough to sit longer than an hour for nearly two months. It will be longer still before I can take the dogs for short walks. Alone, so no one will see me crying. I think my body is a traitor. The mass was pre-cancerous, and I was lucky that they found it, but my body is a traitor. And I hate all of you for your health. For your strength. For the prodigal way you lounge, and drink wine, and travel. What if this is my life? I miss yogurt. I miss bike rides. I miss European bakeries. I miss vigor. My youth. What the fuck happened to my youth?
I feel poisoned. I wish I believed in god so that I could curse him. I am so angry.
I bleed from places no one should ever bleed. And every other week, for months, I will return to my doctor’s office, and be placed in a machine that inverts me, and have my elasticity checked. My elasticity.
I don’t fall on the modesty scale. I don’t. Our bodies are frail and imperfect and miraculous. My broken one would have a child 11 months after the darkest, most frightening time I have ever known. My child. The one I carried despite every prognosis. The one who clung to me, nursed, and slept, and nurtured. The antidote. The blessing.
Thanks for making me cry, you beautiful machine… Truly, thank you.
I have never said this to another person: You slay me.
Thank you both. (Beautiful machine! Love it.)
I’ve never thought about modesty and shame being connected. This made me wonder if maybe they are, if maybe there isn’t something twisted about modesty itself.
I think of the body as an intensely private thing, but it’s not at all, is it?
Thank you for this.
Modesty is a hard hard concept for me, and partly that’s because it’s inextricably linked with puritanical tradition, and partly it’s because I had to redefine my attitude toward the sacred when it came to my body. And the conclusion I developed is the one I gave Jane: Oh, how we unravel and gleam.
I felt like I could’ve written so much of what you wrote here. Maybe not with the same eloquence(that’s a word, right?) but nevertheless I have felt so much of what you felt. My body betrayed me, and doctors were clueless(as you wrote in your post “Health” I think it was called) and although I was a “healthy vegetarian” I wasn’t healthy at all. Finally, after several surgeries and then going through IVF(not to mention I had a PHOBIA, not fear, but full-on PHOBIA of needles -I stopped counting at my 158th needle….4 in the stomach and 1 in the back for MONTHS) I got pregnant and now have a son. The body works in mysterious ways. Sometimes that mystery can be debilitating physically and/or mentally, and sometimes that mystery can bring on a miracle, and that miracle is my son. Thank you for sharing, and for letting your modesty fly out the window.
Thanks, Nikki. I love our resilience. The way having children heals us in unexpected ways.
The thing I was worried most about, when mentally prepping myself to go into labor, was strangers with their fingers in my vagina. I am not kidding! I didn’t worry about being naked (I didn’t want to be naked – too much body shame from growing up Catholic), I didn’t worry about strangers in my room (I had a birth plan expressly forbidding interns in the room with me), I didn’t worry about the strength of my body or how long it would take or whether or not there would be interventions. I worried about strangers sticking their fingers in my vagina.
Thank you for sharing. It’s so hard to share the thing we are most afraid of sharing – the thing that we are afraid that if people know, they won’t love us anymore. I still love you.
I love you too, Anna!