Lies She Told(10)
My doctor, Angela Frankel, enters with her practiced empathetic expression. Brows flat, mouth set in a line, eyes swimming with sympathy. I’ve watched her with other people, seen a smile light her face as she calls in couple after couple who will leave twenty minutes later twittering about genders and genetics. Her mouth has never curled when inviting me into her office.
She takes the chart from a clear bin affixed to the door and asks after David. I excuse his absence as work related, refusing to admit the looming truth. David is done. He can’t deal with the specialists, hospitals, and clinics anymore. He’s finished with slathering scar solution on laparoscopy incisions in my belly and hearing me belch carbon dioxide. Done with ejaculating into sterile plastic containers destined for petri dishes.
My doctor grabs a rolling stool from beneath a desk supporting a model uterus. The sculpture is propped on a metal stem like a carnivorous slipper orchid. It stands beside a tower of urine collection cups. In my mind, the other rooms have better knickknacks: model wombs split like walnut shells to reveal developing babies and gestational growth charts comparing average fetal sizes to common fruits. I’m always seen in room B.
The snap of latex gloves focuses my attention back on my physician. Casters rumble across the tile floor, coming to rest somewhere between my legs. A gloved hand grabs for a long wand attached to a small monitor. The device is about the size of an electric toothbrush, only thicker, with a bulbous tip. I hear the embarrassing squirt of lubricant before the internal ultrasound disappears below my paper dress. Pressure fills my pelvis.
“How are you feeling?”
This question is one of those standard doctor diagnostic tools. She doesn’t expect a real answer unless I’m in serious trouble. I am to complain only if it’s time for the epidural.
“All right. Thanks for asking.” I force a smile, unintentionally tensing my body in the process and worsening my discomfort. “How are you?”
I pull myself up on my elbows to see her response. Between my legs is a wild mass of corkscrew curls, cut short to keep strands out of her eyes. She’s not looking at my face. “Okay. Just relax,” she says.
I slurp air through clenched teeth. How am I supposed to relax with someone puttering around my womb, poised to certify my female handicap? No fertile ground here. I miss my last shrink. If only she could appear like the insurance agent in a State Farm commercial. It would be nice to have someone sympathize with the torture of wanting something so much that your cells ache. I haven’t seen Dr. Sally in nearly a year. Fertility treatments aren’t covered by insurance, and good psychiatrists also expect cash up front. My last book advance didn’t cover two out-of-pocket specialists.
My fertility doctor stares at the monitor as she moves the wand around. I shut my eyes, unable to bare the familiar black void on the screen without clenching every muscle. “Well, the good news is there are fewer fibroids this time around, so the progesterone is helping.” A sharp pain radiates in my hips as the device probes further. “And the ovaries have multiple ripe follicles.”
Before I knew better, the mention of “ripe” in connection with my female parts got me excited. The adjective brought to mind plump apple trees, limbs bending from the weight of swollen fruit ready to fall from the branches and accept a worm. I soon learned that in hard fertility cases, like mine, the follicles are rarely the problem. God, it turns out, is a pessimist. Instead of giving women five hundred or so follicles—one for each month of the forty-some-odd years that the average female is fertile—he starts us all off at puberty with more than four hundred thousand. Each follicle is capable of producing an ovum, so nearly all women have enough eggs for a hen house. Thanks to the drugs, I have half a dozen ready for market in any given month. If all my fertile eggs managed to hang on to the walls of my scarred uterus, I’d birth a litter.
All at once, the pressure releases. I remove my feet from the stirrups and scoot back into a more modest position on the examination chair. “If the fibroids continue to decrease, do you think in vitro could be an option? Maybe we could remove some of the eggs, fertilize them, and force them to implant?” My voice squeaks. Despair is awful, but hope can hurt worse. At least with despair, the cycle of destruction is complete. Hope is the Novocain shot before the surgery.
Dr. Frankel takes a short breath. “We aren’t there yet.”
I wipe the napkin sleeve of my gown against my lids before the tears can fall. My OB-GYN must be so sick of seeing me cry. God knows I’m disgusted with doing it.
“There’s still a chance that an egg might implant naturally.” She stresses the word “chance.” There’s a chance of winning a casino jackpot, too, but few people stake their future on it.
The casters roll to my right. I look up to see Dr. Frankel with her gloves off and an open laptop resting on her thighs. Since starting this experimental trial, our visits always end with her taking notes for the study. “So tell me, how are you doing emotionally?”
“Okay.” I force another smile. “I try to save all my tears for this office.”
She gives me a knowing look. “How are the mood swings?”
“Swing” isn’t the right word in my case. My emotions don’t vacillate between happy and sad like a pianist alternating between major and minor scales. They’re stuck in a discordant chord. For the past six weeks at least, my days have started with a vague sense of foreboding. Throughout the day, my anxiety tends to intensify. Mild confrontations and disagreements have morphed from being uncomfortable to utterly panic inducing, leaving me unable to calm myself down.