Well, the cat's out of the bag now...I told my mom (after first saying Alan Shepard's prayer), so I can go public now.

I "became a woman" early and always had problems with my menses. They weren't regular and when I did have them, "excruciating pain" doesn't begin to describe it. I was literally in bed for two days with a heating pad slapped firmly on my belly, taking codeine and Tylenol, which didn't help, and throwing up, which occasionally did.

In November 1973, though, my senior year of high school, there was a new wrinkle. Just as the cramps started to abate, a new pain took possession of me for about a week. This was an intense pain unlike anything I'd ever known. It was so bad the doctor was giving me the strongest pain medication he thought safe for me and it wasn't helping. To help me sleep at night, my mom had to get in bed with me and rock me to sleep.

My gynecologist, who had also delivered me, was puzzled. Of course the first thing he checked for was appendicitis, but I had none of the symptoms. X-rays showed nothing--but then I was too doubled over with pain to have a decent one. As the pain faded, he discussed it with my parents and myself: if it didn't happen again, we'd blame it on some aberration. If it turned up again, in those days of no sonograms or CAT scans, he'd have to do exploratory surgery.

It showed up again in February, as savage as before, so in April 1974 I had abdominal surgery. It turned out to be two benign ovarian cysts, one so heavily wound around a Fallopian tube that it was removed. While he was in there, the doctor looked for signs of endometriosis, which might explain the cramps. No sign was found.

It all turned out okay. I missed all but the final two weeks of my senior year, graduated with honors. But he did remind me of one thing: they might recur.

The last year or so, I've had the dickens of a time losing weight. When James got diagnosed with diabetes last year, we both basically went on a diabetic diet. In a year he'd lost 30 pounds. I, on the other hand, actually have gained weight, and the fat seemed to be getting firmer. James has quite a firm fat pad himself, so I didn't think anything about it. It was the old saw about married couples, after all: after a time they start to resemble each other.

And I certainly didn't have any pain, not like last time. Gah, had I had that I would have run screaming to the nearest Kaiser Permanente office shrieking "It's back!"

Except it is back. The nice sonogram and the nice CAT scan say I am the proud owner of a bouncing baby cyst. A rather hefty baby cyst. No wonder I'd noticed that I was starting not only to look pregnant, but feel pregnant.

So it's scheduled for extraction on April 7.

Darn. Multiple days in the hospital, a big incision, and I don't even get a baby out of it...

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 12:51:00 AM

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