Honest To Betsy

Part VII - Happily Ever After The End Part, or LUCKY

This post is participating in the Body Image Carnival being hosted by Melodie at Breastfeeding Moms Unite! and MamanADroit who will be posting articles on themes pertaining to body image all week! Make sure you check out their blogs everyday between April 12-18 for links to other participants' posts as well as product reviews, a giveaway, and some links to research, information and resources pertaining to body image.

Part VI - The Hysterectomy

2010-04-01T13:37:00.000-07:00

When I was first diagnosed with dysplasia (abnormal cells on my cervix) I of course googled it every which way and sideways. I wanted to know:
1) the best case scenario (it would go away on its own or possibly be a false positive)

2) the most likely scenario (it would be easily treatable and probably never come back but if it did it would be easily treatable)

and, of course:

3) the worst case scenario (it would turn out to be the early stages of cancer and require a hysterectomy to make sure there was no place for it to begin another silent and potentially deadly invasion.)

"A hysterectomy!", thought I. "Do they still do those?"

In my mind hysterectomies were synonymous with female hysteria. They had something to do with ancient Greek medical quackery pinpointing the womb as the source of all disease. They were also all twisted up in my imagination with manic Victorian doctors who practiced pelvic massage, leeching, and vivisection to remedy things such as humours, taints and lunacy.

Cleary I've taken one too many women's studies classes. Or perhaps several too few.

"Oh, the horror! The horror!" Thought I. "What an awful thing for any woman to have to endure. Why -- those women must feel positively castrated. They must feel like husks of women. To lose your womb -- GUH! I just couldn't bear it. How could it be borne?"

I pictured myself lying in a hospital bed, hollowed out, clumsily re-sewn, and weeping. My hair would be brittle and the flowers at my bedside would be drooping as I assuredly began a steep and irrevocable decent into madness.

Then I re-assured myself that that wasn't going to happen to me. I eat a minimum of five servings of fruit and vegetables per day. I workout. I do yoga. I walk the dog. I take care of myself, dammit.

But then I supposed if it did happen to me... well then I would bear it much like I've borne any of the other variously sized balls of crap that life has flung at me thus far -- I'd pick myself up, I'd dust myself off, and I'd put one foot in front of the other and I'd get on with it.

Well now. It was cancer and it did happen to me.

My doctor, a specialist in gynecological oncology, advised me to have a hysterectomy three months after the birth of my last child. My husband and I discussed his recommendation with two other doctors and they both heartily advised the same thing.

If you're done having children, they insisted, you have absolutely nothing to lose by having your uterus removed. Cancer is unpredictable -- deal with it as soon as you can. Not getting the surgery would be like Russian roulette -- don't take chances with your life, they urged. This will cure you. You are lucky.

There was just no realistic way around it. I mean, I know you can buy magnetic bracelets that will reverse the polarity of cancer and also cure arthritis, Alzheimer's, allergies and erectile dysfunction but... I have kids to raise! It is very important that I live.

And so, "We'll do absolutely anything to save my beautiful wife," my husband told my doctor.

I cried about it an awful lot.

I couldn't say the word "hysterectomy" without tearing up. I'm an emotional person anyway but this whole ordeal occurred over two post-natal recoveries and one pregnancy. So let's tack the word "very" onto "emotional," shall we?

I know my doctors' reassurances that a uterus doesn't do anything but gestate children and cause menstrual pain were well-meaning. But I'm not so much a literal thinker. I'm not only a published poet, an artist, and a total flake, but, as you've surely gathered by now, I am a WOMAN. I very much dwell in the milieu of symbolism, implication, nuance, and nostalgia. If I can't throw away my children's baby shoes (which, technically, do nothing but protect an infant's feet from the elements) how could I toss out MY WOMB?

Here's what happened:

Three months after my baby was born I went for another colposcopy. My cervix was normal. My doctor, the gynecological oncologist, then kinda dumped me without much of an explanation. I think my troubles were too routine for him. He said he'd be happy to do the surgery for me but his waitlist was too long. He wouldn't recommend waiting for him, he'd recommend finding someone else to do it as soon as possible. So I went to my family doctor to get referred to another gyn for the procedure. We met with that other gyn and then took some extra time to make sure sure we didn't need to preserve my fertility by trying some other procedure (a cone biopsy) that wasn't really recommended for me and would probably need to be followed up by a hysterectomy anyway so that I could have a fourth child.

It never occurred to me before this whole schmozzle to have four children (Dear Lord!) and so it was basically just procrastination. We knew for sure we were simply stalling when I saw an ad for a photography studio and turned to my husband to say, totally off the cuff, "You know, maybe we should book a session with a professional photographer and get a nice, big cheesy family portrait done, now that we're all here."

Now that we're all here.

You know? Sometimes you just know.

But with three very young children I was terrified of being bedridden and unable to care for them. The recovery period for a hysterectomy is 6-8 weeks. That's how much time it is recommended that you take off work. But how can a full-time mom take two months off "work"? It's just not do-able. Not in the least.

And then there was a 3-4 day hospital stay to deal with.

The doctor assured me I wouldn't have to wean my little nurslings but I would need a lot of help as I must not lift anything over 10 pounds for a full six weeks -- so no grocery bags, no laundry baskets, and no lifting children.

No lifting my baby! And no lifting my other baby!

You can get someone to hand you your baby and then you can sit with her in your lap, my doctor explained. You just can't lift her up by yourself. And definitely don't lift your 19 month old, he said, no way.

Other than family, we decided not to tell anyone. I felt an intense need for privacy. I just wanted to get through it without needing to reassure everyone that I was fine. I didn't want to have to put on a good show and a brave face. I didn't want to be talked about and I didn't want to be pitied. I'm like that.

Calling my mom and explaining what was wrong and what I needed was difficult.

She promised to help as much as I needed her to.

My mother-in-law made sure to express her dissapointment that I wasn't going to bear her more grandsons. But she said she'd help out in any way we needed her to. She was, she always is, kind to me.

My greatest anxiety by far was handing off care of my kids. I knew the special task force of Grandma, Grandma, Grandpa and Daddy would be fine -- better than fine. We'd been bottle-training my breastfed baby since she was super-wee and there was milk in the freezer for her. She sleeps well through the night. The older kids had overnighters at their Grandma's before and considered them to be super-fun special mini-holidays. We tucked them in at Grandma's place the night before the surgery.

My parents drove up from out of town to take care of my baby in our home so that my husband could spend the big day at my bedside. Everyone would be well cared for. But I couldn't help imagining my baby daughter crying and crying and crying for me, her blue eyes frantic, and there'd be nothing I could do about it from the hospital, and no one would be able to calm her down because she just wanted her mommy.

The big day came.

I cried and cried to put my baby in my mom's arms and to leave my home. I cried a little more on the way to the hospital and then started up again when I disrobed behind a little curtain and stood naked before my husband. I cried on the way to the holding room as the dude wheeled me through the corridors. I cried when my doctor asked me how I was. I cried when I said goodbye to my husband. And I cried as I looked around the operating room bidding a silent farewell to my uterus.

It was a good uterus.

I woke up explaining to one of the voices in the recovery room that airport security would X-ray her loaf of bread before she took it on the airplane.

"They will X-ray my bread," said the voice kindly.

The next thing I recall is a crowd of people instructing me to wriggle my body off the super-fly wheely-bed and onto a hospital cot. It hurt. Just lying there wasn't so bad but moving was awful. I'm pretty sure I swore at at least one of those people. I was so glad when they finally stopped fumbling with things and taking my blood pressure and showing me the flowers on my bedside table and left me to fall back asleep.

Then I wished my husband was there and when I opened my eyes he was.

That was two weeks ago today.

Getting out of bed for the first time was quite scary and painful. So was going pee. But a nurse helped me. She got all the tubes and such out of me and off of me and I got dressed in my own pajamas. The next time I got out of bed was much easier. And the next time was even easier. They measured all my pee output in a "hat." I was pretty much a champion in that department.

24-hours after my surgery (my doctor told me to pump and dump for 24 hours until the anaesthetic was out of my system) my parents brought my baby to me all decked out in some white, super-soft, frou frou outfit with kitten ears on it. When they brought her into my room she looked very cheerful and when she recognized my face she positively beamed.

She was fine. She'd spent the last 24-hours being cuddled and cooed at by her daddy and her grandparents and she was just fine. After her meal (me) she fell asleep in my arms.

I got out of the hospital early for good behaviour. And by good behaviour I mean farting. The doctors were very interested in my farts. Getting your bowels moving after abdominal surgery is, apparently, the hard part. They recommended getting up and moving around as much as possible. Managing my milk supply involved sterilizing my pump components in a microwave at one end of a long hallway and freezing the milk at a nursing station at the other end. All that walking was just what the doctors ordered and I farted within 48 hours and got to go home after just two sleeps.

It certainly is an interesting personal exercise to let your husband and parents take care of your children while you lay about watching DVDs, reading, and blogging.

I didn't realize how much my husband made me laugh until every time he did I'd suffer such intense pain.

And something wonderful happened to my father while I was in the hospital. He is 75-years old and has had five children and eight grandchildren. But he has never in his life rocked a baby to sleep or bottle-fed a baby because that is, clearly, women's work. Well he has now. And he can't believe he waited so long.

My recovery has been, thus far anyway, what you would call "speedy." I'm definitely (knock-on-wood) doing what is medically known as "bouncing back." I've been getting so remarkably much stronger every day. It barely even hurts to sneeze now. I've washed that hospital smell out of my hair and scrubbed the iodine stains off my belly.

And there has been no weeping. There has been no decent into madness.

I'm not saying my journey is over. I've got some healing to do yet. But I've slayed the Jabberwock and I've defeated the Red Queen and now I am back home.

I just feel so very very much on the other side of this thing and so very glad to be here.

image courtesy victorianweb.org

http://www.victorianweb.org/art/illustration/tenniel/lookingglass/2.4.html

Down the Rabbit Hole: An HPV Story

by Betsy B. Honest

Part VII - Happily Ever After The End Part, or LUCKY

Part V - The Happy Part

2010-03-29T11:08:00.000-07:00

I just blurted it out when he opened the front door for me, our baby dangling off his arm.

"I have cervical cancer but I'm going to be okay."

Then we laid down on the living room floor in front of the big sunny picture window with our baby and made him giggle. And I explained the details of my diagnosis while we tickled his widdle chubby belly.

This was hard, we decided, but not disastrous. It was a bump. An entirely surmountable bump. Together - we would surmount this bump. And it wouldn't change much. We wouldn't let it.

We made a plan to try for number three after I returned to work in about a year or so. It meant spacing our kids more closely together than we would otherwise but it would be okay. In the meantime we'd research the snotcrap out of our options. We'd see some other doctors for a second and a third opinion and we'd make sure that my gyn wasn't some sort of hysterectomy-happy Victorian-style mad doctor who spent his evenings creeping through foggy cobblestone alleys with a scalpel glinting beneath his overcoat.

We'd deal with this privately. There was nobody, really, we needed to even tell at this point.

When our little daughter woke up from her afternoon nap she came and joined us on the floor. We made a pile. A happy pile.

It's pretty normal -- clichéd, really -- for something like a medical scare to bring your life into sharper focus. You look out over that terrible precipice and think about all you have to lose. And you're reminded of what's really important. And you feel such intense gratitude that you don't have to let go of those things.

Since baby number 2 had come along I'd been running three times a week. I was, actually, in the best shape ever. Every week and month since his birth I felt stronger and faster. I didn't have to let this whole thing become my identity. I wasn't cervical cancer. I had cervical cancer. Past tense. That damn virus had been in me for who knows how long and my fantastic body had kept it from harming my reproductive life. Yay, body!

I felt so fit. And so loved. And so lucky.

So when my libido came knocking on the door I was all like, "Hello, Stranger! You must be here for my New Lease on Life!"

Now. The trouble with Lactational Amenorreah as a method of birth control is that it basically only works if you don't really want to have sex. If you're totally run-down and exhausted by small children who are constantly at ya but every now and again you give it the old college try basically because you feel sorry for your husband since he's starting to get a wan look and has begun to give himself prison tats, you probably won't get pregnant. If, however, you are overwhelmed by lust and can't get enough of it and suddenly your three-year old is allowed to watch as much TV as she wants whenever the baby naps, it's because you are ovulating. And you will so get pregnant.

It's like my ovaries heard the doctor.

It's like that little bell they ring before the bobsleds are supposed to rip down the ice chute went off and they were all, "AGH! ACK! Shoot one down the pipes, girls! Go Team Canada!"

And that's the gist of how I got diagnosed with cancer and pregnant in the same month.

It was a shock.

Followed by another shock.

It was awful timing.

I was tandem nursing my first two children --ohmigod-- and pregnant with my third.

How could I go back to work again, after my mat leave, pregnant again?

It is so far and away above and beyond the most financially irresponsible thing we have ever done. Like, way worse than that trip to the Mayan Riviera we took with the buy-out money the company my husband used to work for gave him when they laid him off.

Eeeeeeeeeesh.

That fateful day when my doctor said "I think you should get pregnant tomorrow" and I basically did was just over a year ago.

And now baby number three is here.

Our finances are a mess.

My libido has long since folded up the blankets neatly on the guest bed and left through the side door.

With three little ones, every little thing we do is an enormously taxing exercise in logistics and Zen.

But she is a cupcake with chocolate frosting and pink sprinkles on top. She is a pot of gold. Whenever I catch her eye she grins so wide my internal organs turn into marshmallows and spontaneously toast just so. She is a giggle laughing at a chuckle. She is so delightful.

I'm sure if this whole ordeal didn't shake us down we would have had number three at a perfectly reasonable time in our lives. Like when at least one of us was gainfully employed. And we'd love that other, much more reasonable baby very much. Just as much as we love our baby Josephine.

But that isn't how it is with your babies, is it?

They arrive and you meet them and you say, "Oh, you're exactly the one I wanted. You're perfect. I'm so glad it's you and not some other baby."

It's like she really needed to be born. And she seems so very glad to be here. She's the cherry on top of our happy pile.

Down the Rabbit Hole: An HPV Story

by Betsy B. Honest

Part VII - Happily Ever After The End Part, or LUCKY

Part IV - It Ain't Over Yet: The Diagnosis

2010-03-26T09:12:00.000-07:00

So I was playing with my kids when I got the next phone call. A nurse said the doctor who performed my LEEP wanted to see me in his office.

"That sounds like really bad news," I said.

"Not necessarily. He just wants to review some treatment options," she told me.

For some strange reason I made the appointment a whole three weeks from then. Whatever it was, I didn't want to get on with it. I didn't want to hear it.

He asked me for about my medical history. Then he asked me how many kids I had.

"I have two," I said.

"How many kids do you want to have?"

"Three," I said, surprising myself by how confidently I answered.

"Well I think you should have that third kid tomorrow," he said. "I want you to have a hysterectomy."

"No," I said.

"Yes," he said, nodding.

"I don't want that," I said.

"I know you don't, Kiddo, but you have cervical cancer."

"You won't die of this," he assured me. "You'll die of something completely unrelated when you're much, much older. This is treatable. We've caught it early. You're lucky. You can still have that third baby. But we will have to remove your uterus."

Then I cried a bit.

"A uterus," he said, "is just a bag in which to hold babies while you are gestating. That's all it is. That's all it does."

He was talking about my womb. He was talking about something at the very center of me. He was talking about my sexual organ.

Then he drew me a few pictures. One explained what CIN III carcinoma-in-situ means. It means that some rogue cells on the top layer of my cervix started spreading into the deeper tissues. But they didn't make it across a certain barrier yet. He drew the barrier with his ball point pen. If those dots were allowed to make it past that line the cancer would proceed to spread into my lymphatic system and throughout my body.

"But we're not going to let that happen," he said.

Then he drew a picture of a uterus and some ovaries and explained how you can take the uterus and the cervix and leave the ovaries behind. They're a separate system.

"You'll still have PMS. You'll still go through menopause. But you won't have periods."

Then he asked me if I had any questions. I did.

"What will be where my uterus was? Just, like, empty space? Just, like, a hole?"

"Everyone asks that," he said. "You've got hundreds of feet of gut that will be happy to fill up that space for you. Next question."

"I can't have a baby right now," I told him. "I just had a baby. He's six months old. How long...?"

"I'm not going to tell you when to have a baby. You'll have to decide that on your own. But do it as soon as you can. Do it in the next three years."

The confusing part to me was whether I had cancer or whether I did have cancer before they removed the cells, before the LEEP.

"This is very difficult to explain to people who aren't familiar with cancer," he told me.

The cancerous cells were gone. They had been removed from my body before I ever knew they were there. I didn't feel them. The flesh they were growing on had been taken away and sent to a lab to be biopsied. Then healthy flesh grew back there. The lab looked at that piece of excised tissue and ascertained that the dysplasia had advanced to the stage of cancer.

The trouble is that once your DNA figures out how to make those cancer cells, once that human papillomavirus attaches itself to your DNA and starts calling some of the shots, once it knows how to grow squamous cells on your cervix, it might succeed at doing the same thing again. It will certainly try. That's what it does.

Then the doctor sent me home to tell my husband.

"Go straight home," he said. "And make another appointment and bring him along with you. We can talk about this as much as you need. You're really lucky though. I know you don't think so right now, but you will. This morning I had to tell a 13 year old girl that she had invasive cervical cancer and that she will die. Yours is non-invasive. It's in-situ. That means it will stay put for a while and we can take care of it for you."

He looked very tired and very sad.

I'd brought my dog Gus along for moral support. He was waiting for me in the car. When I got there he licked all the tears off my face and then fell back asleep.

Then I drove home to tell my husband.

Down the Rabbit Hole: An HPV Story

by Betsy B. Honest

Part VII - Happily Ever After The End Part, or LUCKY

Part III - The LEEP

2010-03-25T19:54:00.000-07:00

I guess I'm kind of a pussy about my vagina.

I mean, if there was in infection in my inner ear and a doctor had to look into my eustacean tube with some flashlight thingy I don't see myself getting all weepy about it on the examination table.

But there's something very special to me about my vagina and stuff. Which is that it is my vagina and stuff.

Leading up to my LEEP, which is a day surgery, all I did in every doctor's office was blubber. But by LEEP day I kind of had my head wrapped around the whole HPV thing. I'd done a lot of research and had some conversations with friends that made me realize dysplasia (abnormal cells on your cervix) is really common and really treatable. And I was just glad that it was something they'd be able to take care of with their thingies and stuff. Yay modern medicine! I say this without irony -- if not treated dysplasia can turn into cervical cancer which is a huge killer of women in the developing world.

Also, my baby was six months old at this point which meant I was worlds saner than when he was three months old. They say it shouldn't take more than a couple of weeks for your weepy-go-nutsy hormones to pass after childbirth but for me it definitely takes longer. Much longer.

A LEEP is a loop electrosurgical excision procedure. They are for removing abnormal cells found on your cervix. A doctor uses a super-electrified loop of wire to burn a kind of cone-shaped chunk out of it. I had a pamphlet that explained it all to me. The pamphlet urged that while it wouldn't hurt a bit (because of the anesthetic) I should take the rest of the day off work.

No problemo. We packed up the wee ones and headed to the hospital where my daughter was promised ice cream and chocolate milk if she'd wait nicely with daddy in the cafeteria while mommy got a big needle.

I was already familiar with how to put on the gown and get through the medical history and yadda yadda yadda.

And it was fine. The smell of burning flesh was definitely disconcerting but other than the poke of the anaesthetic needle, I felt nothing. If you're reading this now because you've googled LEEP and are about to have one done I'd like to caution you that they put the anaesthetic needle directly into your cervix. I know, right? It's kind of obvious if you think about it, but who would think about it? Heebeejeebeejibe.

Afterwards the doctor made me promise not to have sex for two weeks and I was, like, "No problem."

Then he added, "and no other physical activity whatsoever."

I knew our sex life wasn't what it used to be when my mouth dropped open in horror and I spluttered, "You mean NO HOCKEY?"

"No. Definately no hockey."

"For TWO WEEKS?"

"Yes."

"And no running?"

"No running."

"But I can go cross-country skiing, right?"

"No." It was then that the doctor and the nurse exchanged a "well this one is kooky" look.

"Really? But it's so gentle...."

"Really. You don't want your wound to tear. You don't want to rip and hemorrage. I want you to just do nothing for two weeks."

"So no housework, right?"

"You can do light housework, sure."

On the drive home I explained to my husband about the no sex and the no housework of any sort for two weeks. And as we headed down the freeway the aenesthetic wore off. And as it wore off it kind of struck me how the doctor had removed a fairly large piece of my flesh. And it started to hurt. And it kind of hurt for the next week or so. Mostly just when I stood up or sat down. But it was allright. I was allright.

It was just before Christmas and I was a little heartbroken to miss the sporty parties I'd been planning to go to with my stroller running group and with my hockey team. But I just made do with the regular kind where you eat too much baked brie and too many truffles while watching everyone else get blotto around you and your nursing baby.
I didn't really tell anybody about "my gynelogical procedure." Except one friend. It didn't go well. I kind of casually mentioned it over a plate of antipasto. And I was going to say it wasn't a big deal but my voice kind of cracked while I tried explaining that it was no big deal. And then I was embarassed and she had no idea what to say and her toddler tripped on his own feet so she leapt up to comfort him while I wiped a quick tear away and had some antipasto.

And that's the thing. If it was toe surgery or nose surgery or something in my eye or my ear, I would have told more people. It would be a pretty good ice breaker at a party. And I wouldn't get all leaky and cracky talking about it.

But I'm kind of a pussy about my vagina and stuff.

Down the Rabbit Hole: An HPV Story

by Betsy B. Honest

Part VII - Happily Ever After The End Part, or LUCKY

Part II - The Colposocopy

2010-03-24T12:30:00.000-07:00

A colposcopy is when a gynecologist looks at your cervix with a telescope that shines light where the sun doesn't shine. The image is projected onto a flat screen TV. Beer and pretzels are not served. Upon seeing my cervix's television debut the phrase "one-eyed snot monster from outer-space" became indelibly etched upon my psyche.

A bad pap smear led me to a colposcopy.

The procedure began with checking into the hospital. Then I traded my clothes for a hospital gown. Then I was weighed and asked a series of questions about my periods, my reproductive history, and my current method of birth control. When I answered "lactational amenorreah" as my method (my baby was about 3 months old then) the nurse told me I could use whatever fancy words I wanted but it was just "having your head in the sand."

Well then.

She ordered a pregnancy test which took a long time to come back from the lab. I was left in a tiny room to watch a terrifying video about a procedure I wasn't actually scheduled to have. The video was all about how everybody is scared by a brush with cancer but there's no reason to freak out -- you can probably still have babies!

Ack! I have cancer? Ack! They are going to take a melon-baller to my cervix? Ack! I might not be able to have another baby? Ack! Ack! Ack!

The longer I sat in that tiny room with all the laminated posters of female anatomy in cross-section, the more anxious I became. By the time I was led onto the examination table and scooched into the stirrups, I couldn't stop crying.

A nice nurse reassured me that it was fine to cry.

"You're not used to all this," she said. "Crying is good for us. It relaxes us."

The doctor swabbed my cervix with a vinegar solution that helped him see whatever he was looking for. He told me to look at a picture of some fish taped to the ceiling above my head while he took a little nip of flesh out of my cervix with a little tool. It felt a little crampy and quickly stopped hurting.

Then he told me that if I wanted to "curl up into a little ball now," I could.

I did, in fact, want to curl up into a little ball. So I did.

When I sat up he sat down beside me and gave me a very sincere hug. Then he took out a pad of paper and drew me a little picture of my cervix and what he saw there. There were three little lesions - too small to see without magnification.

"It's called dysplasia. It's what we're screening for when we do pap smears. It may or may not be cancer. It probably isn't. It's very treatable. We will take good care of you. We're going to schedule for a LEEP procedure to get rid of this for you. Somebody will call you to explain the treatment and tell you where you need to go and when."

Then I was sent home with a commemorative sanitary napkin, hospital garment bag and bracelet.

I cried all the way home.

"Did it hurt?" my husband asked?

"Nope."

"Why are you crying mommy?" my daughter asked.

"I'm not sure honey."

I really wasn't sure.

I was unsure.

But I couldn't shake the feeling that I had begun to fall down down down a rabbit hole.

Down the Rabbit Hole: An HPV Story

by Betsy B. Honest

Part VII - Happily Ever After The End Part, or LUCKY

An HPV Story

2010-03-23T22:10:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time there was a mommy who sat in a sunny nursery on a quiet morning rocking a newborn baby who was almost asleep. The phone beside her rang and she answered it without disturbing her nursing baby. It was the birthing center at which the baby was born. Her midwife had given her a pap smear at her 6 week follow-up visit and the pap was flagged by the lab as abnormal. The results had been faxed to her family doctor and the mommy was supposed to go see him so that he could explain it all to her.

"Don't worry about it though," the receptionist on the phone said, "it's probably nothing. We get abnormal pap results all the time and they're usually nothing. They make mistakes with these things all the time."

The mommy decided not to worry. She wasn't a worrier. And when she looked down at the plump, rosy, nursing baby in her arms the whole notion of there being anything at all wrong with her womanly parts seemed outrageous.

When she went to see her family doctor he explained that she had an HPV infection. He said that there are hundreds of types of HPV infections and most are harmless but some cause cancer so they had to check it out. He was going to refer her to a specialist.

"Don't worry about it though," he reassured her, "it's extremely unlikely that anything is wrong with you. There's less than a one in one hundred chance that it's anything like cancer. It's probably nothing and can be cleared up easily."

And that, dear Readers, is how a long and painful medical saga began that I am about to chronicle here.

This is Part I: An HPV Story.

I know, right? Fun for you!

Well, dammit, one year and a half after this phone call I've finally made it to the other side of this ordeal and I want to talk about it. I want to share my story with other women and girls who will say, "me too."

I cried a lot at that first visit to my family doctor.
He was mystified by my tears.

"Why, HPV is terribly common," he assured me, "and nothing at all to be upset about."

I wanted to explain to him that there just couldn't possibly be anything wrong with me because the tiniest, most precious thing on Earth utterly depends on me. He, my newborn, is at home right now where his eyes are slowly turning from baby blue to brown. He is my chubby wubbers. And ohmigod. I also have a daughter. She can say things like "Parasaurolophus" even though she's only two. She says it wrong though, she says, "ParasaurolophAlus," and gets really belligerent when corrected.

And she needs me too.

It's hard on a wee girl to become a big sister, you know? I can't tell you how impossibly small she looks when she sits on our big toilet and holds herself up with her skinny arms rigid on either side of the yawning hole in that big toilet seat, swinging her little girl legs beneath her.

And my husband!

He tells me I'm beautiful at least five times a day.

And he means it!

He'd be shattered. Shattered if....

I'm just in a such a raw, post-natal haze of hormones and I am NEEDED so much and this makes me feel so very VULNERABLE.

I'm a nice mommy who lives in the suburbs.

Nothing at all can happen to me.

I mean, it MUST NOT.

But all I managed to sob in explanation for my tears was, "I'm lactating."

"That won't matter," the doctor reassured me. "That doesn't matter at all!"

That doctor, our family doctor, referred me to a specialist for a colposcopy. In the meantime he suggested I learn more about HPV. And he cautioned me not to worry about where the infection came from because there was just no telling.

"And no, you won't give it to your daughter even if you take a bath together," he laughed, rolling his eyes, as if this was just what I was thinking. It wasn't.

"It can only be transmitted sexually," he insisted.

Heavens to Betsy!

Sexually? Transmitted? As in sexually transmitted?

That can't happen to me! I've been in a monogamous relationship for well over a decade. My husband is not what you would call "a playah." He is what you would call "doting."

And did I mention that I'm a nice mommy who lives in the suburbs?

I have a newborn baby fereffingchrissakes! We don't even get to have sex!

It was easy to find out more about HPV.

But not really easy to process the whole HPV thing.

I found lots of sources that say that HPV infections are extremely common -- more than half of sexually active people (as in people who have had sex, like, ever) have one type of HPV infection or another at some point in their lives. And they are usually harmless. They are harmless or dire -- one or the other.

They are especially problematic for young women just starting to have sex. They are more likely to strike young women with multiple sexual partners.

It didn't fit. I'm not a teenager sleeping around with college boys. I'm 35. I'm married.

I also found lots of sources that say an HPV infection can be dormant for months and even years. Those sources like to say "dormant for up to two years" a lot.

But I've yet to find any that say it can be dormant for decades.

But my husband and I will celebrate our 10th wedding anniversary this summer.

So... if I only have had sex with my husband in the past decade in which we've been married... and it can take up to two years to infect you... then I must have got it from him within the past two years... which would explain all the clean paps I've had over the past decade, but if he's only had sex with me in the past decade in which we've been married...where in the crap-o-sphere did it come from?

The more I googled "HPV infections and dormancy" the more totally paranoid I became that my true love who -- let's face facts -- does seem a little too good to be true (what with sharing the housework and making lots of money and being an awesome father and an incredible cook who makes any stupid recipe I point out in any stupid gourmet magazine anytime I want and who built me a greenhouse and who loves ME even though I have about a billion and one faults -- ridiculously long and awkward sentence constructions with far too many conjunctions being just the tip of the iceberg) must be having sneaky sex with hookers when he "takes the dog for a walk" or on his "lunchbreaks" at work or... well, we really don't spend a lot of time apart, so when he would do this is a bit of a mystery.

I told a friend who knows us both about this "my wonderful husband is actually a philandering pervert theory" and she said, "Oh Honey, I don't know whether to smack you or roll around on the floor laughing. Him? Sleeping with hookers? No. That is preposterous. Stop it right now."

And I asked the specialist I saw, why now? I've been married for 10 years... and I burst into tears. And he said, "Aw, Kiddo. Doctors know absolutely nothing about the dormancy of HPV. So just totally forget about it. All it means is that you had sex with at least one person who has had sex with at least one other person. That's all it means." Then he raised his very stately black eyebrows in a way that said that his job was saving girls and women who were affected by an uncaring and random disease and that he didn't have an iota of time for any judgmental crap about it. He told me that he treated a 75 year old woman whose husband had been dead for over 30 years and who suddenly got a bad pap so that I absolutely shouldn't freak out.

So I let all that go. I had to. It's preposterous.

But there's no escaping that it came from someone who got it from someone else. That's the way it works.

I got this from a lover.

I probably got it way back when my sex life was more...let's go with...bohemian. Back when I was hot stuff. Back when nobody ever heard of sex giving you cancer. Back when I was legally an adult but totally a child.
I'm not angry with that past self -- that improv theatre performing, army-boot wearing, cigarette smoking, Bachelor of Arts-getting hottie who used words like "patriarchy" and "ennui." I definitely forgive that girl.

But that HPV diagnosis did shake me down.

Ouch.

And then I went for my colposcopy...

Down the Rabbit Hole: An HPV Story

by Betsy B. Honest