Hey, remember when I used to write about other things besides sunbonnets? This week Nerve is running an excerpt from my Love Is A Four-Letter Word essay and you can read it here. 100% Laura-free content hot and fresh.
Also, if you must know, the other day I went to the lady-doctor (yes, I’m being euphemistic; I strongly support euphemasia under certain circumstances, particularly anything involving the old whatchamahoo), and I was sitting and waiting in a little room right across from the Pill Closet. You know, the place where they keep all the free samples of birth control, so your doctor can give you three or four packs to help offset the stupidly extravagant cost of your prescription. (Sometimes it almost makes me want to birth something huge and expensive just to spite my health insurance. Hey, Blue Cross, I’m all pregnant with conjoined octuplet baby pandas! Cover this, jackasses! )
Anyway, I was eyeing the Pill Closet and staring sort of longingly at the boxes of my pills, my brand, and wondering if there was a security camera anywhere. And then, as if on cue, this woman comes down the hall carrying a giant tote bag. A bag printed with the logo of my pills, and it was filled with even more boxes of pills. She was one of those perky cute twenty-something pharmaceutical reps, and as I watched, she went up to the Pill Closet and started stocking the shelf. With my pills! She was Birth Control Santa! I started talking to her.
“Do your friends always try to hit you up for pills?” I asked her. I was trying to sound sympathetic but was also secretly hoping that she was perhaps a spontanenous, free-spirited kind of pharmaceutical rep, the kind who tosses boxes of Loestrin to strangers like candy in a parade.
“Oh my God, it’s like my friends think I’m an OB-GYN,” she said. “They’re always telling me this stuff that’s wrong with them. And I’m like, ‘uh, I do not know what to do, okay?'”
“But then you just give them the pills, right?” I asked.
Actually I didn’t ask her that. I just nodded and tried to be an understanding listener, for all the good it did me.
The reason I was at the doctor in the first place was to get my annual ultrasound, which is one of the things I have to do now that my family history includes ovarian cancer. Plus it seems my insides are an exciting treasure trove of small fibroids and benign cysts and pink hearts, yellow moons, orange stars, all of which are harmless as long as you keep an eye on them. Usually the doctors just look at the ovaries, but this time they wanted to see some of my other stuff on ultrasound, which apparently is a more complicated affair.
So as they were trying to explain what they had to do, the ultrasound tech said, “Basically, the uterus is like a cheese sandwich.” Did you know that?! Most of the time it just lies there in flat layers! It’s only round when there’s a baby inside it, like ham in a calzone, or else when your doctor does something goofy that allows it to be seen on ultrasound. It turns out I had to have the goofy thing done, and it wasn’t fun at all, but it didn’t take long and I didn’t even really mind all that much because I was still amazed and stuck on the uterus is like a cheese sandwich. Anyway, the whole upshot is that now I have a clean bill of lady-health, and we all know what kind of sandwich the uterus is like.
In other news, Chris and I are going a date to see this movie tomorrow at the Siskel. Because he and I have a deal in which he’ll go with me to see Laura Ingalls Wilder pageants, and I’ll go with him to see terrifying documentaries about Norwegian black metal. And if that’s not a Love Is… cartoon right there, I don’t know what is.
Excellent essay, Wendy, and how you weave it altogether into one potentially apocalyptic day. Not to dwell in all things Laura, but here is a funny related story. A college friend and I were obsessed with THE DAY AFTER and nabbed the dorm lounge for viewing it (I think in winter 1981 if memory serves as I was a freshman). We completely freaked at the possibility, the threats to nation via the heartland, the clothesline flapping before the holocaust, Jason Robard’s gravely freaky voice not helping to assure us in the least, and John Lithgow’s voice calling on the radio, “Is anybody there, anybody at ALL!?” Years later I saw it again but it didn’t have the same weight. Movies had gotten so darned laden with special effects and end-of-the-world craziness that its initial jarring reaction had gone into complacency. Even after 9-11. I suppose, in retrospect it was all part of the Reagan era Cold War Nuclear threat.
But I still treasure a then blank journal that friend inscribed to me, who also was in my Creative Writing class. It says something about being writers years later, that is, if “we all don’t die in a ‘LITTLE HOLOCAUST on the PRAIRIE’ or something!”
And I forgot to add that your BLOG posting today has me laughing my ass off here as I have a dreaded annual appointment in August and I think I can face it now with a new kind of perspective on “the old watchamahoo”…and fibroids.
Great essay. Can’t wait to read the whole book.
My church youth group had a special weeknight gathering in order to watch The Day After! Anyone who LAUGHED got in BIG TROUBLE. I remember being very sad for John Lithgow and all the other people in Lawrence, Kansas.
I just got the books today, btw!!!!!!!
That movie/documentary trailer terrified me! Eek!
Euphemasia!
Nothing like a good “Lady Doctor” blog, to make me never want to have sex again. A cheese sandwich, huh. Well, that crosses off two items on my to-do list for this weekend: 1) eat a cheese sandwich, 2) and ever have sex again.
Thanks, Wendy! And my girlfriend thanks you too (not sure if she was being sarcastic…hmmmm).
I think I’m being VERY understated in my account of the doctor’s visit! I’m not describing anything beyond what you’d see in those diagrams in 6th grade health class. The INVISIBLE stuff. Get your cheese sandwich out of the gutter!
omg, i can’t decide if this is slightly stomach turning or hilarious. if my dr. ever told me the “…cheese sandwich” line, i think, yes, i’d be distracted for the entire visit. i vote hilarious. and now i know what will be stuck in my head at every doctor visit, girl-doctor or otherwise. cheers!
ps- can you stand my lady-doctor story? one visit, years ago, my gyne. was out, and filling in for her was what appeared to be a young cheerleader (no kidding – long blond hair, cutesy face, everything) who had just graduated med school yesterday. when asking me questions about my lady parts — and this is a *gyne* keep in mind — she kept referring to it as my “down there.” wha????? you got through med school like that?
Well, I suppose there should be nuclear holocaust humor, if only to be able to cope with the idea…and wasn’t THE DAY AFTER broadcast without commercial interruption or something which likely only added to the whole weight of the thing?
Which is why, “cheese sandwich” humor in the OBYN’s office is also more than welcome.
Glad the books arrived ~ best, Catherine
Ha, I remember reading something in a Germaine Greer book (ooh, look at me!) which I didn’t finish (or not!) about how the uterus is only round when it has a baby inside it, but most of us have this picture of it all round and empty at other times. Which is probably a reflection of the way we are often pushed towards pregnancy as if our lives and bodies are crying out for it. I’d rather have a cheese sandwich.
What kind of cheese?
Hi Wendy,
This essay in the newest Brain Child made me think of you:
“Little Log Houses for You and Me” by Kimberly Meyer
http://www.brainchildmag.com/toc/indexfall09.asp
according to my gyno, who is terrific, the uterus is like “pear”,
and the ovaries are like “almonds.” Now that could make a nice ladyparts sandwich. Keep an eye on your fibroids. Mine got way outta control, and now I am the lucky recipient of no period way before my time. Acupuncture is great to keep those things from going nutso. Great site. Your a funny gal. Best wishes for calm and happy ladyparts.
I’m guessing you already know about Lauraism, right?
I just found out about it now.
http://www.enp-news.org/