Talking to My Uterus

So, I saw my Grampa Gyne today. My gynecologist for the past couple of years, I call him Grampa Gyne because of his gray hair, crackly voice, sharp eyes, little glasses and most of all his patient, gentle manner. Gramps never rushes me.

I came to Grampa Gyne on the recommendation of a nurse practitioner at Planned Parenthood, where I've found I usually get some of the best care in the land, no matter what state I'm in. This woman sensed she was out of her element quickly, and wrote down his name and number. "He's an immunologist with a specialty in gynecology," she said. "He's just the guy for you."

Framed pictures of his four grown children are yellowing on the walls of his office, and one of them is the spitting image of a dear friend from Christian summer camp I lost touch with years ago. Somehow this put me at ease. Unusual for a doctor, Grampa always asks how my career is going (dismal, I'm afraid) and how my pelvis is feeling (part of the cause of the former).

GG is a short, overweight, stumpy kind of man, turning seventy this year. I still can't get over how it is that after his wife passed away just over a year ago, he always seems to be on a date. Not that i suspect foul play. It's just that - he's Grampa Gyne, you know? Having asked about what performances I was up to these days, he brought one to my last choir concert. She looked to be in her late 40's, long, sleek black hair, intelligent, slim, and confident. All I could think was, god, women must be desperate these days.

For the first months of our relationship I was very positive. GG seemed to know just what was up. A true scientist, he had more ideas than the last 700 stumped docs behind him. Under his care my yeast named "Crusai" was slaughtered, which had for 16 years withstood onslaught from about a thousand doses of monistat, fluconazole and other antifungals. This man may be old-fashioned, but he has a microscope and he knows how to use it, I mused happily.

GG plunged just as methodically into the question of why my pelvis hurts all the time. Yes, we know about the bladder disease. But why does my uterus hurt? And yes, as a team we can distinguish that from the ever-nagging bladder pain. And why all these white blood cells, this inflammation, and my general feeling of malaise? "Even a hang nail can make you feel very lethargic." he explained. "There's a whole cascade of chemicals which respond to any infection, which cause a whole resulting cascade. All your body is interested is in that one little thing."

This man was determined. Together (and he made me feel it was a team effort) we tried things no one had ever tried in almost 20 years of pelvic purgatory. Several courses of antibiotics (some of which took me to the edge of puking daily) and a couple courses of steroids later, (what are you doing? Oh, just shooting steroids up my hoo-ha!) we had our results.

He says I have just as many inflammatory cells as before. And my uterus still hurts, thank you, you can stop poking that, which means the source of the inflammation is probably the uterus or thereabouts. And yes, I've had it biopsied. (The doc who did that PROMISED it was more painful than childbirth.) It was negative.

GG explained this kind of chronic endometritis is usually seen in people who have infections from their IUD's. I've never had an IUD. I've never dared.

But I do have chronic inflammation elsewhere. Why, just last week I had an MRI of my wrist and what did the film say to my doctor? Inflammation. Years ago somebody stuck a camera down my gut and looked around there. Results? Inflammation. Somebody else peeked inside my bladder, once, too. What did they find? Inflammation. Knee? Inflammation. Hip? Inflammation. Throat? inflammation. Vocal folds? Inflammation. Ankle? Inflammation. I think that soon I will blow up like a balloon.

But all of these doctors will insist that these results have absolutely nothing to do with each other, the eldest with the most vehemence. Meanwhile, all the natural medicine people are out there crying "Inflammation! Inflammation! Inflammation is the root of all evil! HARK! The heart disease, the diabetes, the muscle strains! Exorcize it now! Eat as much stinky-burpy fish oil as you can possibly consume! Drink liquid silver! See your acupuncturist! Eat raw veggies! Do it NOW!!!"

GG asked me if I FELT like any of the antibiotics had made me feel better. No. Steroids? Maybe a little. He said we could keep trying those and see if we get any results.

Call me crazy, but isn't that the definition of insanity? Keep trying something and expect different results?

...other than that or a hysterectomy, he's out of ammo.

I keep talking to my uterus: "What did I ever do to you? I never beat you, I never said nasty words, I never had any babies to beat you up, or stretch you or stick you with little fingers and arms and legs to disturb you in any way. And you! Bladder! What is is you got a gripe about, eh? Did I cheat you in poker in another life? Hip, knee, ankle, wrist, shoulder. You! UTERUS! WHAT! tell me! WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME?"

Grampa Gyne said maybe it was just feeling ignored.

Fire Escape Garden

There is a song to summer in Park Slope, Brooklyn. There's music everywhere; an old man playing a Japanese 2-stringed violin on the subway platform at Atlantic Avenue, Opera in Central Park, Latin dance beats coming from open car cars along Sackett Steet which rattle the glass sitting next to my bed. Today I'm drawn out the window of my kitchen by the sound of a woodwind quartet practicing. The sounds float upward for four stories, from a yard 48 feet down and exactly three postage stamp lawns to the West.

I love such an excuse to climb out the window and visit my Fire Escape. My haven - A.K.A. "my "deck." It's my little corner of paradise in rent stabilized Brooklyn where I can escape it all. As the ceiling to the bathroom literally implodes from an unabated flood in the building, and we try to blow up tiny inches of space inside the apartment as if they were some kind of balloon by re-organizing and micro-organizing each desktop, each closet, each cubical foot below the bed, the space OUTdoors gains and gains in importance. Thus, so does summer.

I know the fact I have ten- no, look! Eleven - tomatoes ripening on two vines on my little iron playground in the sky has nothing to do with the spate of 90 degree weather we had at the end of May; their performance must be solely because they know they are loved.

In the midafternoons I pull a rug out to soften metal rungs, place a pillow against the brick wall at my back, spread my legs out where my toes can touch the opposite rail and watch my tomatoes grow in the sun. All mine. (And yes I've been reading books on managing chronic illness and I'm learning about what to do after a stressful day.) I count them, I touch them, water them, dig around in their soil to make sure it is just loose enough, and most of all watch them for any nuance of change, however subtle, since yesterday or the day before, in their little fruits. These have to be the best loved tomatoes in New York City.

There are a few days each year, magical days, when trips out to bask in my green, mid-tree view are not accompanied by the low hum of air conditioners all around. It is not too hot, and not too cold. Someone practices singing in a building across the courtyard. A bluejay alights on the edge of my pea plants and pecks, and I fix the damage done by yesterday's hungry squirrels. In contrast to the competition for space, money and success in the whole of the city, two tiny tomatoes rising from even tinier yellow flowers which I planted in the dirt seems a small miracle.

Of course, I'm not supposed to have this. Any sort of obstruction on the fire escape is strictly vorboten by fire code and a million other laws of common sense, I suppose. But I'm careful to keep things arranged against the outer edge, or hanging; there is plenty room for passing foot traffic (which will surely be necessary in my life time, I'm not altogether naive.) And I figure my landlord will get around to officially forbidding my garden as soon as he fixes the doorknob which has fallen off once a week for three years, the fogged up windows, the broken heat registers, the dark, dangling hallway light and the imploded ceiling, which is about the same time hell will freeze over or thereabouts, so I'm not over worried about losing my little fragment of green just yet.

And the naughtiness of my fire escape garden is half of what is so appealing. I sink into it like a sensual dream. Eve probably felt similarly for her apple. So delicious. So tempting, to pick a tomato a little bit early or over-harvest the herbs. So unlike the rest of my world, where the financial realities of being an artist in NYC bite at my ankles with regularity and the noise of traffic and subways insult embarrassingly delicate ears. Where restless legs disturb sleep, only to become a true nightmare when one discovers a thumb-sized cochroach on one's side in the night. The crushing forces of the Big City have sharpened me, like a pencil, and now I am free to draw the outline of my destiny.

I took my first Indian singing class last Wednesday. Friday I watched a skilled chorus perform a piece written by a friend from Chicago. Last night I walked three blocks to hear an African fusion band. A friend played cello. Two weeks ago Reverie chose its annual playwriting competition winners. The winner is a favorite of mine, about a group of Vietnam Vets who reunion in a Northwestern Cabin and wind up talking about today's military engagements. A friend is premiering a short version her new company's manifestation of Orpheo et Euridice last week and next.

The woodwind players down on the ground are not very good - they squeak and squack with the telltale signs of adult beginners. But there is almost a scent to the air which carries such tones, and it gentles the aura of ineptitude to one of a private, happy, and lofty nostalgia. Here in my Escape in the trees, a reminder of all the good reasons I've come to live in this place of unrelenting fire - distinct challenges, unique opportunities and fine artists who make good music.