Fat oily tears swelled around the rims of my eyes, threatening to spill down my cheeks as I read the letter from my doctor. There, in black and white, she was handing me a diagnosis for an agonisingly painful medical condition – and I was delighted.
My entire adult life has been punctuated by menstrual misery. I won’t go into too many graphics, but let’s just say that once a month, every month, I have been tasked with pitting mere mortal tampons, pads and period pants against a relentless tsunami of demonic crimson wraiths flooding straight from the bowels of Hell – or my ‘uterus’ as science would have it known – all while being gripped by an agony akin to having a grave digger’s rusty shovel fighting for supremacy in my abdomen.
For decades characters on screen have shown how we bleeders blithely handle this mildly unpleasant situation with a paracetamol, a cutesy hot water bottle and a ‘naughty’ nibble of chocolate. I, however, am frequently rendered unable to leave the house to fetch such twee supplies, contorted like a deer that was half a second too slow on the motorway, and it’s a lot harder to find instructions to cut out your womb with a spork and a can opener on YouTube than you might think, so I went looking for help.
I saw several GPs and let’s just all agree that we love the NHS but that misogyny in medicine is very real and some doctors are secretly replaced by Satan’s own handmaidens, because, according to these stethoscope-toting succubi my passing out on filthy train platforms and contemplating a water butt for a mooncup was “normal”. I was told it would get better once I’d had children, which, considering I have never wanted children, is harder to swallow than a dry fistful of co-codamol. I was told I ‘should be on the pill anyway’ in spite of the fact it turns me into a suicidal orca. I was told a hysterectomy would leave me incontinent and I would most definitely change my mind about that not wanting kids nonsense you silly, silly woman, and every GP’s favourite, ‘have you tried diet and exercise?’. I was told to go away and just get on with my very natural, very normal misery. And I did.
Until this year. A doctor listened to me. She heard my very tired, well aired story, she saw the lack of hope in my iron-deficient, deadened eyes and, full disclosure, she saw the membership number of my employer’s private health insurance. I was finally referred to a magical fairy godmother (gynaecologist) who waved her magic (ultrasound) wand and POOF, I was transported to a spectral portal (MRI machine) in a far away land (Mile End).
Cut to today and the letter I received from her. It’s a short letter – plain, no more than a few words typed by a busy PA, but it is one of the most beautiful things I have ever beheld; a diagnosis.
“Your recent MRI confirms Adenomyosis“.
There, in five words, is pure unfiltered validation. Thirty five characters liberating me from decades of doubt, making clear that I was not just weak, I was not just making a fuss and it is not normal There was indeed evil afoot and evil had a name: Adenomyosis.
So while my fairy godmother and I make plans to relieve me of my bothersome baby baker and I check whether I can take it home, pop a bell in it and use it as a cat toy, I’m going to count up how many days, weeks and months I lost to treatable torture and wish every doctor who dismissed me that exact period (pun intended) plagued with papercuts on every finger, galloping thrush and a sleeve caught on every damned door handle.
Pretty Feet, Pop Toe 