| | I was lying on my back, naked from the waist down, legs spread, as I heard these words come from an old Indian man navigating a lubricated probe in the most intimate corner of my body. In the dark room, we both watched the shapes and shadows of my reproductive organs on the sonogram machine, shifting around one alien and ominously vast ball.
I stared at the doctor staring at my ovaries for about 15 seconds, looking at his face in the light of the sonogram monitor for some twitch of an indication of what that meant, whether I was going to die, and how much it was going to hurt.
“It’s benign, but you’ll have to get it surgically removed,” he said finally, never taking his eyes off of the screen.
He rotated the probe around inside of me to get a better view of the menacing black shape nestled in the sticky parts of my body that I had never wanted to see projected on a screen. After taking a few screenshots, he told me he would be in touch with my OB/GYN at NYU, and that I should probably have the surgery when I go home for winter break.
So this is what I know.
It’s a dermoid cyst, a cyst that is not so rare as it is bizarre. A dermoid cyst is a type of teratoma, which is a tumor that, roughly translated from Greek, means “monstrous tumor” – for good reason. Made up of germ cells that can, for whatever reason, develop into a whole variety of different types of tissues, dermoid cysts are often filled with hair, nails, bone, and teeth. I’ve read that in extremely rare cases, teratomas have been known to grow more complex structures, such as hands or eyes.
“These types of cysts are filled with protein, and so they are quite heavy,” the doctor told me. Heavy, indeed. Its weight seems to bear down on me more now that I am conscious of its existence, this sleeping monster hiding in the quiet crevices of my body. The frightening aspect of having something like this is that it’s so disturbingly human-like, growing human body structures in a pocket that isn’t supposed to be part of me at all. You can’t help but think it’s like some kind of fucked-up baby.
It’s five inches in diameter. By itself, it’s virtually harmless, but if it twists or ruptures and the content spills out inside of me—which is likely to happen without surgery given the size—then I am in trouble. Five inches! An enormous five inches. In idle moments, I find myself now forming what I think is a five inch diameter circle with my fingers, envisioning that shape in my lower torso. Based on its size, it seems likely that they might have to remove my entire right ovary. Medically, this isn’t a tiny problem. But it’s not a mammoth problem either. It's just a five inch problem.
“I have a five inch problem,” I told Chris a couple days ago.
“I also have a five inch problem,” he retorted. I cannot decide whose is more tragic.
In any case, I wish I could ask my body to tell me what other little secrets it keeps from me. I feel like my body and I should be close enough that we can tell each other these things. But my body is acting like a rebellious teenager, sneaking off to hide dangerous secrets so that I have no choice but worry about what else I don’t know. A color-changing birth mark, a compulsive disorder – these are things that reveal themselves by their very nature. But a five inch ball in my uterus is stealthy, lurking in my unawareness, waiting for the right moment to attack.
My speculations are endless. I mostly wonder what kind of tissues my cyst decided to grow. Is there bone in my ovary? Will the hair be wispy, like the hair on my arms, or fuzzy, like the hair on my ears, or messy, like the hair on my head? Will my cyst flash me a toothy grin? What if it grows more than hair, bones, or teeth? What if it grows its own ovaries, and then grows its own dermoid cyst? What if it comes out to be prettier than me? What if, once it’s removed, it’s better than me in every way and everybody wants to be friends with it, and won’t want to be friends with me anymore? Should I keep it in a jar as a pet? And, most importantly: Will my stomach be flatter once it’s removed? Here I was, thinking that I just had to work out. Thank God that’s not the case.
Nevertheless, though the last thing I want to be is an annoying self-pitying crybaby, it is difficult to avoid thinking about it. When I contemplate the lofty goals and whopping ambitions of my future, I don’t think for one second about dealing with issues of my body. It’s kind of like a reality check, a small pop-up reminder that says, “Remember, you are in fact limited by your physicality in the world!” Of course, an ovarian cyst is by no means a gravely serious issue, but it does at least a little to throw off my perception of my existence.
There is some good that comes out of this, however. After my sonogram, I took the subway back downtown to the Union Square station, where some vendors have set up Christmas shopping tents. Emerging from the station into the biting New York wind, I was faced directly with a display of beautiful but overpriced hats and mittens.
“Fuck it,” I said to myself. “I have a cyst. A five inch cyst that probably has hair and teeth.” So for far too much money, I bought a hat that looks like a panda. And that evening, I didn’t do my homework. I said, “Fuck it. I have a cyst. A five inch cyst that probably has hair and teeth,” and went my way to Pomme Frites and ate greasy fries for dinner. I fully intend on indulging myself on my every whim because, well, I have a cyst. A cyst that probably has hair and teeth. I think I gained about 397 Badass Points for it.
And that, perhaps, makes this whole ordeal worth it. |
| | Posted 12/3/2007 10:09 PM - 140 Views - 14 eProps - 7 comments
- recommend
  - recs0
- share
- email
 - sent0
|
