A Kick-Ass Fairy: A Memoir (20 page)

Chapter 18

July 1998–April 1999

B
y the summer of 1998, at age 41, I could tell that my hormones were starting to act up. I had a constant feeling of bladder irritation that manifested itself as frequent trips to the bathroom, especially at night. I was beginning to have huge mood swings again, accompanied by insomnia. I knew there was something chemically wrong. I went to see a doctor in San Francisco who was recommended by a friend. He was a “climacteric endocrinologist,” someone who was supposed to specialize in menopause.

I thought his specialty name said it all, climacteric—a year in which important changes in health and fortune are thought to occur, a critical period. Ancient philosophers, such as Plato and Cicero, believed that the climacteric occurred in a person’s life every seven years starting with the seventh year of life then 14, 21, 28 … 42. The age 63 was especially associated with death. These years corresponded to the ages of man—7 was the age of reason; 21, adulthood; etc. To me, though, the word climacteric sounded like climate, as in weather—pressure, temperature, precipitation, sunshine, cloudiness, and especially winds, storms, tornadoes, cyclones, any and all extremes. My life was all about climate, now it was climacteric, requiring that kind of specialist.

The doctor took a history of my symptoms and ordered laboratory tests that confirmed I was “very perimenopausal.” He recommended an herbal supplement of plant estrogens, which he had coincidently co-developed, to attempt to mitigate the symptoms.

That August, I also attended a women’s seminar on menopause hosted by a local hospital. The speaker was a female gynecologist, Dr. A., who specialized in menopause and spoke on the roles of many hormones, including estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone and the thyroid’s function during the pre-, peri- and post-menopausal periods. She included slides in her lecture that highlighted the cycles of the different hormones during each of the pre-, peri- and post- periods and the chemistry of the hormonal precursors, hormonal conversion, hormone receptors, and the effects of these hormones in the body. Finally, she walked the audience through the various scenarios and spoke about the supplements she would recommend to mitigate symptoms.

After attending the talk, I decided that I needed to educate myself more on this topic and began to read the current books on the subject of female hormones, hormone replacement therapy—especially after a diagnosis of breast cancer—as well as books on menopause.

I was continuing to have Pap smears about every three months with an occasional cervical biopsy thrown in for good measure. A pelvic ultrasound done in early September revealed that my ovaries were now cystic and the “nonrecurring” fibroid was back. I started considering a hysterectomy in order to be done with the whole thing, but decided to wait and see for the time being.

September 8, 1998

Today was the first day of school. For me, the beginning of a new year always seems to start in September, which is ironic since it is also the beginning of fall, the decline, the initiation into the death cycle.

Kim started her senior year. I’m not sure how I feel about her starting college next year. I love her and will miss her. Even though the last few years have been trying, I don’t feel ready to let her go. Yet I know I must.

Brad started third grade. He doesn’t seem to like growing up. Does he have a Peter Pan complex already? He is getting so big.

This school year I am going to try to slow down and focus on what I enjoy in the home and on dance and music. Tonight is my first tap dancing class. I stopped taking phytoestrogen yesterday, the one that was prescribed by the climacteric guy. In six weeks I’ve gained weight, feel fat, and am not sleeping or feeling better. I’m going to wait and see what Dr. A. has to say.

September 28

Schedules are starting to get crazy. The tap class has been quite a hoot. I start ballet next Monday. I went back to the gym—dance aerobics—trying to get back in shape. I feel old and my body has gone to hell in the last six months with all this hormone upheaval. Dr. K., the ob-gyn finally called me today and put me on an estrogen-testosterone combination, Estratest HS, a half tablet every day.

Hopefully, the mystery of my misery will be solved. I am hoping to see an improvement in my energy, my sense of well-being, my libido, my mood, my irritability, etc., etc. All this is to come from one half of a pill! Things are now pretty calm with Doug. It is amazing when we go out and spend the time—we have fun and get along fairly well. We went dancing this weekend and out for dinner.

I’m pretty busy with Brad’s activities as a field trip mom, religion class assistant, den mother, and working in the classroom. Kim found out yesterday that she got the part in the show Little Shop of Horrors produced by a local musical theatre company. We are all so excited. However, it appears she has broken up with her boyfriend (good!). Yet she is grieving.

It really feels like fall. I love fall. It rained this weekend. I still miss the East Coast colors.

October 18

We started planning the college fairs and trips with Kim. She thinks she would like to go to college for some sort of performing arts. Brad started guitar lessons and is playing club soccer. He is also taking a class at the Lawrence Hall of Science in Berkeley once a week. I’m now also involved in coaching Brad and some of his classmates for Destination Imagination, which is a worldwide competition later this year.

I don’t know how people with four children do it. I feel like a logistics planner with a master schedule. Who has time to make dinner or rest? How did I ever work? Doug escapes to fish in the lakes and reservoirs of Northern California every chance he gets. I guess my R&R is a bikini wax. I don’t know why I’m whining when I sign my own self up for these things.

November 11

Last Saturday I found another lump. Upon further checking, I found a second one, one on each side. Needless to say, I have the well-honed vacillation between hysteria and “It’s nothing” syndrome.

First thing Monday, I called my surgeon and scheduled an appointment. The best I could get was Nov. 17, eight days later. No such thing as frequent shopper benefits with this crowd!

The bigger lump, the one on my left side, is near my sternum between two ribs. It seems to roll a little, so I thought, well, maybe it is a gland or fat. But when I went to see my plastic surgeon on Monday afternoon, he told me that you don’t typically get lymph nodes in that spot. He seemed gravely concerned, and that really frightened me. I was seeing him to discuss the final procedure of my reconstruction, the nipple construction and the tattooing of both sides. Now, we are on hold to see first what we are dealing with.

We are into Kim’s college application process. She is anxious, hostile, and nasty—stress in a teen. She is rehearsing for her show Little Shop of Horrors scheduled to open Nov. 21. Brad varies between whining and hostility. Why are my children this way? Is this how I communicate? Do I resent having them? Do I not meet their needs? This behavior, I can tell you, is a real pain in the batoongies.

Today was Veteran’s Day, so my lovely darlings were home from school. As den leader, I took Brad and 7 other boys (with 3 other moms to help) to the local paper to see how a newspaper is made. It was an interesting tour. Then we went to Burger King (I’m on liquids today). All this fun only for my son to say, “So, I don’t see what the big deal is. It was boring.”

I gave up my career for this?

I am managing to hang together for one reason—Gene, my new obsession. Gene is a ’50s era fashion/glamour doll. A few months earlier I was in town to buy someone a gift at a gift shop and my love affair with a doll began. As I was browsing, my head snapped to the right, and there in the lighted shelves stood Gene—not just one but many Gene dolls, all of them different.

In her backstory, “Kathryn Gene Marshall” was born in 1923 in Cos Cob, Connecticut. At 17 she became a model for the Chambers Model Agency. As in every Hollywood fairy tale, she was discovered and quickly became a star of stage and screen. Her career spanned the decades of the 1940s and 1950s.

A version of the doll came with an outfit for every screen role, premier, glamorous party—and of course attire for every aspect of her personal life.

Some dolls came with different hair styles to go with their costumes; there were different colors and different unique costumes. All the dolls and costumes were limited editions. Each came with a booklet containing a detailed description of the attire down to the fabric and style along with the backstory of the outfit and Marshall’s role when she wore it.

The clothing was magnificent, the fabrics glorious, the accessories detailed down to the size of a bead. I began collecting. It was hard not to want everything. I signed up for presales, requested the lowest numbers in the limited edition certifications. I snuck them home, delighted and feeling wicked at the same time.

Slowly Gene started showing up around my house dressed in different outfits. She was in the living room, the bedroom, the foyer, the dining room. As the months went by, each room acquired multiple Genes, and I started to arrange them in scenes by theme—the Mexican Hacienda, Wild West, Classical Quartet Concert—complete with props and backdrops. Each month every scene would change, as would their outfits, sometimes related to the holidays that month. It could take days to make the monthly change, hunting, gathering, designing, creating this world of fantasy.

This doll invasion did not escape my husband. “What the hell are you doing?” he asked.

“I don’t know. Playing?”

The remainder of the year included, along with the normal holiday festivities, the scare of a triple-elevated cancer antigen, another abnormal Pap smear, the findings of a new fibroid, and an infected supraclavicular incision caused by the dissolvable sutures that had not dissolved after a recent hasty surgery to remove the lumps I had found. The lumps had turned out to be “normal” lymph nodes. To say that I was getting sick and tired of all of this would be an understatement. I was running low on hope. The future loomed bleak—time-bomb ovaries, problematic cervix, lumps growing here, there, and everywhere. I was getting more and more ready to get out that machete to clear out the underbrush to protect the forest.

The new year started off with us hosting a small New Year’s Eve party—an appetizer and dessert buffet, dancing, and of course music, including that of the artist Prince to herald in 1999. Kim had follow-up voice auditions for the colleges she applied for. Not only did Kim pick the top six colleges with a musical theater major, including New York University, Oberlin, University of Michigan, and Indiana, but also she refused to apply to any schools that were not considered “most selective.” She needed to compete on grades, test scores, essays, and the audition as well. It was certainly an interesting process, similar to the reality show American Idol today—except that you don’t receive any feedback until you are accepted or rejected.

In January I had a follow-up appointment with my gynecologist. After having been evaluated for genetic risk but still procrastinating on having the actual test, and having two grandmothers with ovarian cancer, my own funky fibroids, cystic ovaries, and weird Pap tests, I decided that the best thing to improve my chances of survival was to have it all removed. I rationalized that if I had a hysterectomy, I wouldn’t feel like the specter of death was looming over me all the time. I just wanted to get this whole cancer trip behind me and start to live again. Drastic times called for drastic measures.

One morning, I made three phone calls. I scheduled surgery for a total hysterectomy including ovary removal for early March just as I would have made an appointment for a major service for the car, the expensive but unavoidable one. Then I called my parents to ask them to come to California to help with the kids. When they said yes, I phoned the airline and bought their tickets.

February 5, 1999

Well, I’m back in counseling. I guess that makes it the fifth start for individual (second for marriage), and that doesn’t include the Wellness Community. What’s interesting is that the therapy is not about cancer, grief, or work. All that does come up—but not as much as our relationship. Maybe the marriage is the scapegoat. I’m sticking with it this time to get to the bottom of this situation once and for all. I hope to have major growth—for a change.

My parents told me today they don’t want to get in the middle of anything. They don’t want to come next month for the surgery if we’re fighting; it stresses them out. I told them I guarantee nothing. I told my mother I will not be discussing this with her nor do I want her advice. She will have to trust that I am intelligent and have good judgment and that I know what is best for me. Besides my mother’s historic reasons for staying in this marriage were verbally abusive too, focusing on my flaws. Maybe that explains why I’ve put up with it for too long! Mom says:

“You’re too sensitive.”

“You blow everything out of proportion.”

“You always need something to complain about.”

“You’re never happy.”

“You’re making a mountain out of a molehill.”

And the best one yet: “What are you complaining about? He’s a professional, makes a good living, you do nice things, he doesn’t sleep around, he doesn’t drink or beat you—you should be happy.”

Should I? Of course, I’m the failure because I’m not.

February 10

I feel a little hope. I found a note with a list of the things Doug is going to do to improve the situation:

1. Read one book (self-help) every 45 days

2. I will be kinder and gentler and stay in tune to my wife

3. Spend 2–3 hours per week doing an activity that gives my wife pleasure

February 22

Things seem a little calmer right now. But I’m still depressed. My upcoming surgery is depressing. I feel sure it’s the right thing to do, but I don’t like it. I’m tired, very tired, and weary. Most of all I dread the recovery and the fact that it means that I’ll feel lousy physically, emotionally weary, and still have to juggle. I almost wish I could stay in the hospital for a couple of weeks, not have to deal with the whining, yelling, and the lack of engagement, interruptions.