Ticking Clocks.

Hi friends.

Yesterday I had an appointment with my new OBGYN and my new endocrinologist, one appointment right after the other. I met with my OBGYN first, Dr. W. She’s a very down-to-earth doctor, who does her best to be totally honest and say things in the nicest way she can think of. I do appreciate her honesty, but telling me I’m obese three or four times in five minutes is a little rough for a brand new patient. Anyway, she and I took most of the hour-long appointment to discuss family history and preventative care along with the best timeframe to start trying for children. I told her that my menstrual cycles are all over the place, and upon describing them to her, she told me it was because I wasn’t ovulating regularly. One of my older sisters has the same issue where she doesn’t ovulate, either. Dr. Warfa explained that, because of this issue, it’s going to take some real effort to conceive children, and that if I wait until my late 30s, I will most likely miss the timeframe altogether.

It was like Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Telltale Heart.” But instead of hearing a heart beat, the “Baby Time” clock started shouting at me. Usually, it’s tick, tick, tick. I can ignore that for the most part. Sometimes it gets louder, like when I see baby animals being adorable, or I meet a friend’s baby, or I babysit. Or even if I walk through the baby aisles at department stores. At this moment, I couldn’t even try to hear Dr. W around it. TICK, TICK, TICK!!!

I undress and get up on the table for my exam. She gives my chest an exam and stopped on the left side. “Feel this. Is this normal for you?” I felt it, and it wasn’t something I had felt before. I compared it to the other side, and there was a distinct difference. I realized that my monthly self-exams are always done standing up and in the shower, and this was something that could only be felt when I was laying down on my back. But it was definitely there. I stopped breathing for a moment. Everything slowed down, like it does in an accident, or like in an intensely terrifying moment. Close your eyes for a couple seconds and recall that feeling, and you’ll know how I felt. I was immediately tense.

“Oh my god. Oh my god. This isn’t happening. I’m too young. This is just a bad dream, right?”

Immediately I started regretting recent decisions and conversations. I started regretting not putting my energies into real things, instead of drama and floofy stuff. The doctor simply said, “Well, we’ll need to schedule an ultrasound for that.” Like it wasn’t a big deal. But I was emotionally imploding on the inside. I took every measure to keep it together and probably just appeared suddenly silent. She knows my fears of breast cancer. My mom and her mom are both survivors. She respected my silence and finished quickly and quietly. She told me how to go about setting up the appointment and sent me off to my next appointment with the endocrinologist.

TICK, TICK, TICK.

I walked down there in a haze. I wasn’t sure how to handle this, but it was like being two inches from a giant billboard; I couldn’t see, hear, or experience anything else. I checked in, and the girl who helped me was pregnant and loving it. I saw in my head the future photos of myself and my husband with our future children being precisely sliced to show just us. I pushed that image as far from myself as I could. I was handed paperwork that had me check a bunch of boxes of things that I was experiencing right then, and one of the boxes was for “breast lump.” There. It had a name. The “something” was given a name. It’s a breast lump. I have a breast lump.

Oh god, oh god, oh god.

The blood was pounding in my ears as I tried to smile and be friendly to the receptionist, who had no idea I was on the verge of a panic attack. I didn’t even get a chance to finish my paperwork when the nurse came to get me and off I went into another exam room. I was left along long enough to complete it and start to come to terms with the fact that I, at twenty seven years of age, have a breast lump, when my doctor comes in. She, too, is pregnant. Something about her calms me, and I am able to pretend to be normal for a while with her. We discuss my thyroid issues and what that can mean. She tells me she wants me to do a test called a “nuclear uptake” test, where I swallow a pill with radioactive iodine in it one day and get an ultrasound on my thyroid the next. She told me this will allow her to properly diagnose me with either basic hyperthyroidism or Graves’ Disease (an autoimmune disease) depending on how much of my thyroid picks up the radioactive iodine.

Dr. B does the exam and concludes that my thyroid is pretty swollen and I do have all the classic symptoms of hyperthyroidism. She directs me to a website, thyroid.org, and prints off a couple brochures for me. She tells me I’ll have to go to Regions in St. Paul to get this test done. I am keeping my panic at bay. I want to feel better so badly. It’ll be worth it, I tell myself.

TICK, TICK, TICK.

I make the walk back up to OBGYN department on the fourth floor to schedule an ultrasound, and they tell me I have to do that through Regions as well. So my assignment for both appointments is to schedule a follow-up through Regions Hospital.

The ticking had quieted a little in Dr. B's office but was louder and more obnoxious on the way home. Probably because it isn't just about babies anymore. That's the clock of life, ticking...ticking...ticking away the moments. I felt like Charlie in "All Dogs Go To Heaven," where he's in that cloud-room of clocks representing other dogs' lives.

(Except I wasn't rejoicing, I was recoiling in terror.)

I went home and I kept my composure all the way. Even when I was alone in the bathroom at the clinic, I refused to let myself break down. I lost it, though, when I had to tell T that we found a lump. He hugged me so tightly that I thought he was going to dislocate my shoulder. It was one of those moments where he was fiercely protective of me. He asked me what he could do, I said I wasn’t sure yet. He told me he was with me on this no matter what happens, and I love him so much more for that. I spent the next few hours at work trying to pretend like nothing was wrong, while at the same time grappling with my own tiny, short exsistence. I couldn’t stop thinking about how this could mean my death. Of how I could die without ever having children, or owning a home, or achieving any of those big dreams I still have.

I talked to my Mom and she insisted that the lump is probably a cyst, and it’s most likely nothing to worry about. But I do! I do worry.

Over the last two weeks, I have discovered the following items about my health:

1.       My ability to absorb sugar via the use of insulin is severely impaired.

2.       My family practitioner doesn’t know if it’s because my fat cells are being stubborn or if it’s because my pancreas just won’t produce enough insulin.

3.       I ABSOLUTELY CANNOT get pregnant right now (as told to me by my family practitioner).

4.       I CANNOT wait until my late thirties to get pregnant.

5.       It will probably take several tries to actually get me pregnant. By several, I mean months, maybe even years.

6.       With all of my medications (and potential surgeries in the future) along with taking radioactive iodine possibly for a long time, I REALLY shouldn’t get pregnant right now.

7.       I have A LOT of work to do to get my blood sugar levels down to a “normal” range. I’ve been testing four times a day for the last week and I haven’t seen one number in that range.

8.       I have A LOT of physical body fat to lose before I can even START trying to get pregnant.

OH MY GOSH THIS IS SO MUCH WORK EVEN JUST TRYING TO PLAN THIS ALL OUT.

It’s exhausting just trying to remember to test four times a day and take all of these medications and give myself the insulin shot exactly at the same time every night and to try to find a spot that has a few less nerve endings and that I haven’t used in the last couple days…

The stress of having these problems is causing enough trouble all by itself.

TICK, TICK, TICK.

I really want people to know what’s going on with me, but I don’t like to burden other people with issues that I have, especially when others are dealing with worse problems than mine.

About halfway through my workday, I decided that life was too short to spend my day scared of this thing. I planned some fun things to do instead of the workout I was planning on doing (don’t worry, I still got my workout in) and planned a fun, relaxing evening with just me and Lucy, since T doesn’t get home until after nine, sometimes close to ten. I was lying in bed and dozing when he came home, and he had this protective-worried face on. I told him I was okay, and he said, “I got you something…”

It took a little prompting, but I remembered (eventually) that July 17, 2009 was the day he proposed to me. It had come and almost gone without me giving it a single thought because I was so wrapped up in my issues. I told him I was sorry and he didn’t seem upset at all. He simply...understood. Then he brought me out into the living room and this is what I saw:

Nothing quite reaffirms a connection between two people like the threat of death. I was taken aback by the sheer number of flowers and how beautiful they were. It was so special. I thanked him as much as I could muster and we enjoyed milkshakes together while watching The Simpsons. And it was really nice.

So there you have it, friends. It would seem I got all of the life-threatening diseases out of all of the Pearson kids. I find it extremely frustrating, stressful, and it feels like more than I can handle. I have faith that I won’t be given more than I can actually handle, but it does feel like God takes pleasure in giving me so much that I can just barely handle it.

I would like things to be easy. Just for a little while. That would be so nice. I would love to be able to take the time to plant a garden, or buy a house, or redecorate my kitchen, or have a baby, or go on vacations all the time, or go out regularly to Twins games, or buy a new car because I can, or throw a BBQ whenever I feel like it, or buy a new bathroom rug because the one we have now doesn’t even come CLOSE to matching the shower curtain, stuff like that. I want all of these things, but I just…can’t. I just can’t have them. It feels really unfair. Like, a lot. I try to overcome my jealousy of my friends and family but sometimes I can’t even look at a picture of a friend’s child without that awful green claw reaching up from somewhere deep inside and scratching at the back of my throat.

So yeah. Going through some stuff right now. But trying to keep my head up anyway. Who knows how much longer I have on this planet? Might as well try to enjoy it, right?

TICK, TICK, TICK.