TMI: The Less than Incredible Journey, or a Return Trip to My Ovaries

You probably thought you were safe. A few weeks had gone by, and I had never once mentioned the words "transvaginal" or "ovary" on this blog. You probably thought I would never again invite you take a trip inside my lady business. 

WELL, YOU WERE WRONG. 

And you were wrong because I had a followup ultrasound a few weeks ago, and I want you to share in my misery. So sit back, relax, and take a deeply, deeply unsexy trip between my legs. 

I was a little slow in making my second ultrasound appointment appointment, both because I wasn't eager to relive the minutes I spent as a human joystick, and because my menstrual cycle didn't want to cooperate. Of course, all this misery started when that cycle decided to behave like a spoiled reality show star (i.e., it does what I wants!), so that was hardly a surprise. Eventually things settled down and I went in. The procedure was the same; the technician different, but still Eastern European. After it was all over, I was told that it would probably take 3-5 business days for my doctor to receive the results.

So, I was surprised when my doctor's office called me just two days later to schedule an appointment. "Uh, doesn't she want to wait for the ultrasound results?" I asked the administrative assistant. "Oh, we have them. That's why I'm calling. Can you come in tomorrow?" she replied "The doctor wants to discuss the results with you." This was... not the most comforting way to have a medical appointment made for you. I feigned indifference to my colleagues, but I was mentally preparing for whatever terrible news was surely headed my way. My most coherent plans were, first, not to cry in the doctor's office; and, secondly, to keep this from my work and my parents for as long as humanly possible.

Of course, the actual news was not so grim. "Don't worry!" was pretty much the first thing my doctor said. She probably realized that some assurance was required; I must have seemed ready to watch Terms of Endearment while taking notes. "The large cyst is gone. But they noticed several other cysts..." as she started to read from the notes the... sonographer? scientician? had sent her. The scientician's conclusion? I had "bulky ovaries" consistent with polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS). EVEN MY OVARIES CAN'T LIVE UP TO SOCIETY'S IMPOSSIBLE BEAUTY STANDARDS.

RIP Cysquo, we hardly knew ye; and for that I am very glad indeed. To have PCOS, though, you need to have more than chunky ovaries. You also need to show at least one of the two related symptoms. My answers to these questions were less conclusive than the ultrasound: Excessive hair growth? ("I'm Ukrainian and Scottish, so it's hard to tell.") Irregular periods? ("Not before the birth control.") So, no official diagnosis yet. But... I feel like if it's an inconvenience, I'm sure to have it. Even with PCOS though, I'm still healthy. Dubiously fertile, but healthy. It's a state whose worth I should have appreciated; whose fragility I also finally understand.

Image: PCOS from Wikimedia Commons. 

Howl! A Musical, Starring Marvin

Various men have caused me trouble in my life, from unrequited crushes to condescending blowhards at parties, and yet my most consistent source of trouble is the male I call Marvin.

He's small, he's ginger, and he's a cat.

It's been about a year since I moved in with Dan, which means it's been about a year of regular howling from Marvin and equally consistent crying episodes from me. I tried the hormone spray, the hormone collar, and the hormone diffuser. I let him go outside, briefly, before forcing him back inside before a truck could turn him into an orange pancake, because his favourite outdoor pursuit was sunbathing on the road. Finally, there was the calming cat food and an endless parade of ever more expensive cat toys until I just turned to medication.

The first dosage level worked for a whole month.

But after the 3:30 am wakeup screeches resumed, I decided things had to change. I told my old roommate (she's responsible for my ownership of the cat, through a tale that's telenovela-complicated) that I was going to surrender him. She said she was sure that her cousin would take him in a week. The day before he was supposed to leave, the cousin backed out. Then, Marvin's previous owner was supposed to call me so he could go on a one-week trial with her. She never did. Finally, my friend's cousin expressed some interest, before cancelling the day she was supposed to visit him. I haven't heard from her since, and I have now resigned myself to the fact that we'll never be separated. I'll be dead in the cold, hard ground, while Marvin naps on my grave in the afternoon sun.

I still have the surrender forms I printed off the Toronto Humane Society website, and I fill parts out during idle moments at work. But I probably won't send them in. Though he still spends most of the day making sounds that are like the wail of a banshee crossed with the blare of a car alarm, he sleeps through the night. That's enough. And it only took one simple trick.

I doubled his medication dosage.

Pillow Blog: Thoughts I Had While Watching Avengers 2: The Age of Ultron

In the tradition of the Sei Shonagon's Pillow Book, here's a Pillow Blog: an observational list on some subject or another. In this case, the thoughts I had while watching The Age of Ultron. Mild spoilers follow.

• "Remember when they used to hand the 3D glasses to you when they ripped your ticket? That was nice. It was almost as if you mattered, instead of having to root around in some battered cardboard boxes like a GARBAGE ANIMAL."
• "That freeze frame with all of the team members in action? Dumb. So very dumb."
• "Were movies always this loud?"
• "The next time Tony Stark makes a quip, I hope another character just walks up to him, swiftly kicks him in the nuts, and then walk away WITHOUT SAYING A WORD."
• "Hey, it's Linda Cardellini! Girl, you're everywhere this year!!"
• "This scene between Black Widow and the Hulk would be a lot more touching if the dialogue hadn't just implied that she was a monster because she was infertile. Guess the more birth control pills I take, the closer I tap dance over to the dark side."
• "I'm really concerned about all of these people in this African city that Iron Man and the Hulk are tearing apart, but I guess we can count on Tony to throw some money at the problem. Why did they ever give this guy a super suit? His most useful superpower is just great gobs of cash."
• "I'm sleepy. I want a nap."
• "Hawkeye is totally Giles and the Scarlet Witch is definitely a Buffy/Willow hybrid in this moment."
• "I hope I die like that, making a glib quip about my violent and impending death."
• "Won't the thousands of people displaced when Ultron turned their Eastern European city into a flying saucer need to be housed somewhere? Maybe one of the Avengers could superheroically monitor the water quality at the refugee camp??"
• "Ugh, I hope Vision saving Scarlet Witch doesn't mean we'll get a retread of their nutty love story from the comics in film form. Magic robot babies, and so on."
• "Can I still make the last train? No."

My Month-us Horribilis on the Bicycle

In happier times...

This winter felt like an endless concrete wasteland, with the exception of any time spent on the TTC, and then it was briefly a stinking jungle of sweat and GoreTex. So, you can imagine how happy I was to get my bike back a month or so ago. Bike freedom! The wind in my hair! Personal space! Being insulted by random drivers! Alright, the last one isn't so pleasant, but still. On the balance, cycling is better than transiting, and don't let a streetcar-themed hat or subway-printed tote bag fool you.

And then the universe decided to pop a squat on my happiness. First of all, I was horribly out of shape after a winter where my most active hobby was eating my feelings. My first ride was uphill, which quickly became a walk uphill. After a week of wondering if I was the slowest cyclist in Toronto (non-folding bike edition) I decided it needed a spring tuneup. 

But everyone else had decided the same thing, and so the bike spent a week in the shop. After I retrieved it, I had a glorious day and a half with my love. Everything was running perfectly, and the choir at the local Anglican church even burst into song as I pedalled by on my way to a friend's party via the Russell Hill bike path. I told Dan that, between the bicycle and the choral music, it was just like the opening of an Inspector Morse episode, and I half expected to turn up dead. 

Instead, on Monday, I had to solve The Mystery of Why the HELL Do I Have TWO Flat Tires? Because I live in Toronto, and I cycle, and the Sun and Star love publishing articles about the Menace II Society this makes me, my sense of persecution is overdeveloped. I called sabotage. Dan was less dramatic. His idea was that the shop just overfilled the tires.

We wheeled it to the local shop (a different one). There, three nice, young, and probably stoned men got really excited by my situation. "Double flaaaaaaaats" they drawled to each other. "Double fllaaaaats!" Twenty minutes later they were both fixed, the culprit identified as a piece of glass. From then on, I vowed never to call this shop "That Shifty Place", as I had done before, but "The Place that Looks Shifty, But Isn't."

A week later, I was texting my friend that I was late, but on my way, and should be there soon. "All hail the power of the bicycle!" I wrote, before I jumped on the bicycle and... nothing much happened. My chain was off, as another cyclist helpfully yelled out as he pedalled by. The chain guard, so helpful most days, wasn't being all that conducive to a roadside fix, which didn't stop me from trying. Instead, I gave up, walked it and my greasy hands to the closest bike shop (this would be yet another one) and threw myself on their mercy.

The heroes fixed it for free. "I'm not a hero," the guy insisted, "just a guy who works in a shop." Nope, he was a hero to me, and anyone else so inept with mechanics that they should probably just buy a car that's under warranty, and give up this cycling thing entirely. Oh well. There's always May.