My Scars
The reality that I'm official sterilized slammed into my head this evening. It is the first time I have cried over this since the surgery. But even so, I don't feel that I've hit bottom yet. I know there are more realizations about this that I'll endure. There will be many more plummets down into the abyss until I get to that point. Then I can start the ascent out of the hole.
This sort of depression feels like the beginning of a descent down a slippery slope. You feel confident of your footing at first and then there are small mishaps. You slide more than you thought you would. But you're okay. You walk a bit further and slide a bit more. The bottom isn't quite in sight, but you know that you'll eventually meet it. It's inevitable. But reaching bottom also means the end of fighting the pull of gravity. There's nowhere to go but up once you've hit bottom. I wonder when I'll be there?
When I had my ectopic the doctor performed a laparotomy in order to do the repairs. It left me with a rather large and obvious scar. I saw it every day when I stepped out of the shower. It's a memory that won't quit. The doctor used large metal staples instead of sutures and she was in such a hurry that she didn't bother to do a neat job. The scar was red, thick, and slightly raised. And because it cut right through the middle of my pubes it's been impossible to make the area look at all normal. That was what it was like to have an ectopic in the early 1980's at a Kaiser Hospital. I was all of 15 years old when this happened. Much too young to be having sex, and extraordinarily young to be suffering an ectopic miscarriage.
I had to explain that scar to each and every lover for the last 26 years. Usually I say nothing until the other person asks. I've been asked if I had children. One lover thought that I was lying about not being a mother. Imbecile. It has always been embarrassing when they ask when it happened and I have to fess up to being 15 when it happened.
They'll repeat, "Fifteen?" and I can see the cogs turning in their heads. Stretching their memories to calculate how old they were when they were first sexual. One or two asked me, "So did you get pregnant the first time you had sex?" and when I said, "No", their minds start turning again...wondering, "...just how old WAS she when she first did it?"
The boy that knocked me up was 5 years older than me. I met him when I was a freshman. He was a senior. But he was a year older than the other seniors as he'd been held back in kindergarden. He could have been arrested for statutory rape and I honestly wish he had been. I wished I had my dad or a big brother to take him out for what he did. But I didn't. After the ectopic and an abortion that I had the following year, I tried to leave him. He threatened to harm me if I left him. It wasn't until I was 17 or 18 that I was finally able to get rid of him. I wished so bad that I could have erased that scar. It was a perpetual reminder of him.
From what I can tell of this new suture, Dr. G seems to have cut out my old scar entirely. The old one was 3" wide. I estimate she must have removed a 1" thick ellipse, approximately 5" long. There aren't any visible sutures on the outside, only steristrips hold my abdomen together from what I can tell. Actually I'm sure there are plenty of dissolvable sutures on the inside just none on the outside.
At least I'll never ever have to explain that scar again, or what I was doing at the young age of 15.
I can finally lay that story to rest. It's a bad memory for me and I am so happy that the visible scars of it are now just a very distant memory. And maybe even that will disappear with time.
This sort of depression feels like the beginning of a descent down a slippery slope. You feel confident of your footing at first and then there are small mishaps. You slide more than you thought you would. But you're okay. You walk a bit further and slide a bit more. The bottom isn't quite in sight, but you know that you'll eventually meet it. It's inevitable. But reaching bottom also means the end of fighting the pull of gravity. There's nowhere to go but up once you've hit bottom. I wonder when I'll be there?
When I had my ectopic the doctor performed a laparotomy in order to do the repairs. It left me with a rather large and obvious scar. I saw it every day when I stepped out of the shower. It's a memory that won't quit. The doctor used large metal staples instead of sutures and she was in such a hurry that she didn't bother to do a neat job. The scar was red, thick, and slightly raised. And because it cut right through the middle of my pubes it's been impossible to make the area look at all normal. That was what it was like to have an ectopic in the early 1980's at a Kaiser Hospital. I was all of 15 years old when this happened. Much too young to be having sex, and extraordinarily young to be suffering an ectopic miscarriage.
I had to explain that scar to each and every lover for the last 26 years. Usually I say nothing until the other person asks. I've been asked if I had children. One lover thought that I was lying about not being a mother. Imbecile. It has always been embarrassing when they ask when it happened and I have to fess up to being 15 when it happened.
They'll repeat, "Fifteen?" and I can see the cogs turning in their heads. Stretching their memories to calculate how old they were when they were first sexual. One or two asked me, "So did you get pregnant the first time you had sex?" and when I said, "No", their minds start turning again...wondering, "...just how old WAS she when she first did it?"
The boy that knocked me up was 5 years older than me. I met him when I was a freshman. He was a senior. But he was a year older than the other seniors as he'd been held back in kindergarden. He could have been arrested for statutory rape and I honestly wish he had been. I wished I had my dad or a big brother to take him out for what he did. But I didn't. After the ectopic and an abortion that I had the following year, I tried to leave him. He threatened to harm me if I left him. It wasn't until I was 17 or 18 that I was finally able to get rid of him. I wished so bad that I could have erased that scar. It was a perpetual reminder of him.
From what I can tell of this new suture, Dr. G seems to have cut out my old scar entirely. The old one was 3" wide. I estimate she must have removed a 1" thick ellipse, approximately 5" long. There aren't any visible sutures on the outside, only steristrips hold my abdomen together from what I can tell. Actually I'm sure there are plenty of dissolvable sutures on the inside just none on the outside.
At least I'll never ever have to explain that scar again, or what I was doing at the young age of 15.
I can finally lay that story to rest. It's a bad memory for me and I am so happy that the visible scars of it are now just a very distant memory. And maybe even that will disappear with time.
Labels: Surgery
posted by linda at 1:02 AM
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