Lunar Troubles...

My obstretician-mother feels it is wiser to let me continue having my intramural fibroid and to let infertility be an issue later if at all rather than cut it out in the beginning and make the issue a certainty. In truth, she is following my own principle in healing..that is to let nature and the capacity for life take its own course. I am happy in a way because I don't have to jeopardize my examinations over a trivial gynaecological accident ( if people do consider a fibroid to be an accident). I have got over the initial trauma and the phases and am not in denial. I am sublimating. Over the years, I have handled it with carelessness even despite my mother imploring me several times to get an ultrasound done. Anyways I am not talking about my emotional wardrobe of tornadoes but want to pen something that is far more real. The real issue I have always wanted to know...Why do people in general and men in particular have such an issue with the words " Periods" ? And also the fact that I am talking about this in an open forum like Bloggermay sound crazy, but guys, give it a break will you and break away from your primitive minds just for once. Over centuries, from Leah to Cleopatra to Indira Gandhi, women have used this tool and your discomfort to their obvious advantage. And this is an issue with at least 3 billion of the world's inhabitants. So just chill.

I have read in a co-ed Convent. And one where the Sirs outnumbered the Mams. And I remember my principal perpetually sighing that her 'girls' could not be trained in 'girlish charms' like the counterpart all girls Convent where girls learnt to shimmy, bitch about, develop intolerable undescribable sexual inclinations in the poverty of male pheromones, learn Homescience, besides study. In my school we played kho-kha, that involved throwing tin drums at one another, and I do not remember just how many times I have run after my friends trying to pin them down in a brawl ( boys I meant) or cut their ties. I have learnt my girlish charms as all can see it. My mathematics teacher called me Soldier, I was School prefect, called Man-eater as a slang for my Monitor status ( I remember I was always kind as long as the decibels did not exceed. Maybe the innate firebrandedness got in the way). And got a number of steady Convent fan following for my mushroom cut hair, red tape shoes, baggy jeans top and skirts, with the tag of the worst dressed girl ( someone who can wear a rag) from a guy who turned out to be one of my best friends over the time...And I am not boasting of this. There were other girls like me. In abundance. People whose pheromones were all confused which side they belonged.

But when puberty hit there was so much of a distance, like we were untouchables, unable to do the same things, and my perpetual monthly troubles convinced me of my identity only when it hit me. Over the time I remember some or the other unprepared junior who accidentally spotted walk back from a drill class with a spotted skirt, with a red face, as if it was her crime. And I remember half the school looking down in shame. Where is shame involved? Or is it plain awkwardness? Its just routine biology. In humans, it just shows. I used to get angry at this. For a long time until I devised ways to twist and turn the hormonal milieu.

I thought things were bad in my state. But you wouldn't believe with what delicacy women spell their menstrual troubles to dashing young male Bong gynaecologists in Cuttack, and with what disdain they treat most female ones. Like they say there, the Best Gynaecologists are males. Because they treat women with 'tenderness'. What Junk. Or is it?

It even happens now when I talk with patients. For women hitting menopause, climacteric, with thyroid troubles, post menarchal, its but normal to ask about the monthly cycles. And there is always a stiffening from the side, like some cult phrases are being discussed. And I am harassed how some females can never learn to keep themselves clean despite their troubles. Men with sisters, daughters or married women are a bit at ease in comparison. The trouble is with men who have sons, who don't have a sister, who think talking about a gyanecological problem is only to be done among women. You meet a lot like that who don't look you in the eye when you are talking about your problem. That a cause for back pain could be the fibroid you have been harboring, men you adore and respect, who trust you to be true but are so self conscious of perhaps causing an error that they don't talk with you at ease, or talk about it when you are climbing stairs together and are least likely to pose by way of a confrontation. And it surprises you even if it doesn't hurt you. As doctors, its not expected from them. But then, so it is. And its all with good intentions mind you. They are just shy. For inexplicable reasons. Or they just think you are shy and don't want to press the issue. And I thought that instead of uselessly going on about it in a way that would be misinterpreted as being wild, I did the same thing, kept shut. Through my emergencies and ward nights. In pain that only a woman can know. And not once have I worked any less that any male counterpart in my College. I never allowed my trouble to turn into my weakness. And with drugs and a slight understanding of the physiology, which I used to manipulate my own timings, it did not do. Only that I do not have the answer that in this process of self experimentation, over a period spanning more than a decade now, I could have hurt myself. I don't do that any more nowadays. Not since the growing backpain over last 8 months that made me pause and rethink.

During my 2nd MBBS, I was hit upon the word 'Priapism'. I do not keep a dictionary because I believe in textbooks. I ran to my father and mother and asked dad. My mom gave me a one over and looked at dad and told him..' tell her, tell your doctor girl'. And he did. Straightforward and neat. Just the way I discuss my problem today, and my innate fear of having to deal with this issue in more serious manifestations. And he is equally reassuring. And I have seen women talking about worse issues like endometriosis, menorrhagia, dyspareunia openly in my city with professors. For some reason the situation is different here. Its not good that it is. We have numerous women who suffer from problems arising out of these but who keep their mouths shut for the fear of having to communicate it to their parents/husbands. One cannot imagine what proportion of young women with severe anaemia coming to me whisper to me a yes when I ask them if they are having trouble with their cycles. Faces like my school juniors, faces somewhere somehow that could have been mine. All red in the face, like a crime they committed.

I have more or less done to myself what leaking information or submitting to my investigation crazy mother-obstretician would have ultimately led to. Treated myself conservatively in styptics, haematinics and pain killers. Its only a three day nightmare a month. And so with even more gynaecologists and her learned self finally saying this is the best mode of treatment I am only vindicated. Just that she casually mentioned that if we do a myomectomy I should try to conceive within three years ( chances of a myoma recurrence)...( Just look at that woman). I said. 'I am finishing everything and going to Amrica sweetheart' . That was the end of the conversation of her perpetually trying to indicate to me that we have responsibilities besides patients. And her obvious ways of finding solutions for it, in terms of astronomers and scientists and what not..

That was the brief medical tete-e-tete I had with my mother-doctor, and despite my apprehensions, I move on with my priorities. Fortunately for me, I can diagnose a lot of hyperemesis gravidarum cases referred to me from Gynae OPDs and I do prescribe things that work when women are sent back from the dysfunctional gynae emergency we have in PGIMS here. All thanks to the one woman I have always laughed out and not listened to...her first diagnosis about me was correct. All her subsequent ones, ranging from PCOD to Endometriosis and God knows what not...are all wrong. I owe her my sympathy for these women, and I owe her this forthrightness that I can bark orders into their face about wounds or conditions they think they have done a crime to have. And I owe her that the treatment I gave myself digging into her basketfuls of Physician's Samples ( and also the brand names I fortunately remembered that worked with me) works with these young females who just go on covering their faces like dumb cows waiting to be slaughtered. And yes. I am taking care of myself. In case thats what you want to comment. I am smart enough for that.

Haryana needs a change. From up above to down below. Else they will plateau after their real estate money is spent on BMWs and Scorpios who periodically hit the Scrap Bins. And their idea of shame is actually a growing concern because it concerns the only ones they so badly treat and who are the only answer to their perpetuation.

Their Women.

( Not mentioning the peculiar inbreeding practices of the state which some of the most highly held and revered people openly subjugate themselves and their families to and the in-the-face disrespect for Education...that would take volumes to write. And would possibly issue me a fatwa...err, in local dialect a lath...So I wont write about it.)

Finally the shores shift the sands....
A shot of that feverish pitch,
that once underlined,
my madness is not
without the sense.

It knows, when to come
and when to leave alone.
And I am prepared, because I stand
arrogant and proud.
I am ready to dream,
dare and expect.

But only in connotations
of a promise, a positivity, a presence
a perpetua.
Because that defines, that I
have not been and
will not be the one to break away.

And I will dream on,
with absurd phrases, with work,
with broken letters, and fast words,
until I am prepared to wake up one morning,
and see the sunshine
as it really is.

Tomorrow will be mine.
Because, I did no one any wrong.
And I did not make anyone choose
a mistake,
over incomplete phrases and stories.

And I hope, because this strengthens me,
that I will be able to
Start all over again.
Without remorse or regret.
Because things cannot be
simpler than this.

Miserable tales of the XX

I hope God takes away this pain, this terrible pain I have been living with for the past 9 months, and all the fears associated with it. I cannot sit at the computer, cannot read, cannot write and cannot enjoy a book or a walk without having to shift my weight every 5 minutes. And the peculiar tugging sensation as if my perineal body was pulled by a strong rope anchored to it by a steel hook stops me in my tracks the few times it occurs. I will write about it. Not today. I am trying my best to shift about every 5 minutes and write a paper I have long since taken the sole responsibility to write, bypassing my Professor's insistence to contribute, because I kind of felt a personal attachment to the patient and thankfully, he allowed me to. I will finish this paper and write when I go home for three weeks to remove the intramural fibroid I have been harboring in my uterus for perhaps a decade or more, the reason for most of my miseries in life. I own an obligation to myself and this parasitic shameless lump of tissue that has been tugging at my crevices for a year now trying to announce its presence, and when I ignored it, it decided to grow and slow my life down.

It will not succeed. And it will also not take my uterus down.