This post is going to get introspective, people, and it’s going to get medical, so you can skip this one or not as you like. I’m going to put the majority of it behind the fold, ’cause if you don’t actually personally know me, this may be a bit more information about me than you want to know.
But. I need to vent. So.
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With a hysterectomy looming in my immediate future, there are two sets of thoughts rolling around in my brain.
One, I’m never going to have a period again. I shall never more have to make jokes about Shark Week, or about “having red in my ledger”.
(Side note: best goddamn description of that EVER. To go along with this. Because FUCK YES.)
This is… weird. I mean, yes, I knew this would be coming someday; that’s a basic fact of biology. But given that I’m not even out of my forties yet, I wasn’t expecting this to hit quite so soon. My system hadn’t hit menopause yet, and now I’m going to get to have fun conversations about whether I’m going to need hormonal support before I get closer to an age where menopause would have otherwise been happening.
Two, babies are now apparently officially going to be a thing that Other Women Get To Have and Not Me. And yeah, I kind of knew this already too–because again, in my forties. Having gotten this far without having a child, I knew the chances of it still happening were pretty slim. Because basic facts of medical science, not to mention the basic fucked-upedness of the American health care system.
I’d kind of already emotionally prepared for that, and I’ve been at peace for a while with the idea of being the Eccentric Queer Auntie in the West Who Writes Novels to my brother’s kids, and my sister’s kids, and maybe the kids’ kids eventually.
But that was before my system went, “Yeah, you know that stunt we pulled with the thyroid and your right breast. ABOUT THAT.”
And now when my system goes down for medical maintenance, as it were, we’re pretty much ripping out the entire part of the code base in charge of replication. Because other parts of the repository have already proven compromised, and well, if the code’s buggy, the damn code’s buggy, and who the hell QA’d my genetic code, anyway? Intelligent design, my ass.
Dara points out quite correctly that we could look into preserving my eggs once the ovaries come out. Which had indeed occurred to me. On the other hand, I’m not terribly convinced right now that I want to inflict my clearly problematic genetic code on an unsuspecting infant.
It’s a weird mental space to be in. I’ve never been in a huge hurry to actually be a mother, but I like kids. I totally enjoy it when our friends who have kids come over to the Murk and the kids want me to play with them. I love making faces at babies, and getting them to smile or giggle at me. Rumor has it I’m pretty good with singing a kid to sleep, too.
I’ll be at peace with this eventually; it’s not like my system’s giving me much of a choice, after all. And I’ve already gotten quite a bit of practice having to deal with previous medical vagaries, anyway.
But yeah. Feeling a little weird about this right now, and thoughtful, and wistful.
Sooner or later, this’ll probably show up in a character.
