I was on the Upper East Side for a pre-surgical testing appointment a couple of months ago. After the appointment I met a friend at Alice’s Tea Cup. I arrived with a large bandage covering stitches on my throat. This wasn’t the surgery I was having testing for, but one I had had 2 weeks prior. My friend, who was born and raised in Mumbai asked me how I was going to go to India with “all of these surgeries.” Very good point. This fall and winter I seem to always be going to a doctor, looking for a doctor or having a procedure/surgery. My thinking was that I wanted to get everything taken care of before we moved to a place where I don’t know any doctors or have any sense of how the medical system works, but getting healthy is turning into a full-time job!
After Mia was born I had a scab on my throat which would bleed on and off without properly healing. I didn’t think it was a big deal, but decided to get checked out just in case. Needless to say, it was something–basal cell skin cancer. If you’re going to get cancer, it’s a really good one to get: Slow growing so it doesn’t spread quickly. I was told that this type of skin cancer is usually seen in patients starting in their 50’s, so I was a bit young, but during high school summers I often covered cardboard with tin foil and baked myself in my backyard so this whole skin cancer thing made sense.
Mohs surgery, which is the type done when the area is really visible like on the face or neck, wasn’t so bad. The dermatologist was very appreciative that I had brought and taken my own Xanax before he started cutting. With a scalpel cutting into the throat that close to the face many of his patients aren’t quite so calm. The only really uncomfortable part was sitting in the waiting room with a big bandage covering an open wound while the doctor looked at skin cells under the microscope to see if he removed all the bad ones. But I only had to go back twice to have more cells removed, so pretty easy. And I kinda like the once inch scar. It looks like I have some life experience. I prefer to tell people knife fight if they ask what happened.
The next procedure was having 8 fibroids removed. Apparently, and I never knew this, pretty much every woman has these non-cancerous growths in the uterus. Sometimes they grow large and need to be removed and other times they are just there not causing any issues and can be left alone or shrink on their own after menopause. I was told by my OB that very rarely they can be cancerous. So better to be safe than sorry and have them removed. I wasn’t so sure. As a rule of thumb, I prefer not to have stuff cut out of my body if I can help it. I spoke with an acupuncturist and did some internet research and decided that completely cutting out gluten, taking vitamins to clean out the liver and using castor oil packs on my abdomen every other day were going to do the trick. I went back to my OB 3 weeks later to see how well my homeopathic remedies were working. Well, not so much. Maybe I didn’t give them enough time or believe firmly enough. But with the move across the world on the horizon, I figured I’d just get the fibroids taken care of medically.
My doctor said that this was a very simple “procedure”—he never used the word “surgery”—so when I showed up at the hospital, and had to put on the gown and that unfortunate looking cap that covers your hair, get an IV, meet the anesthesiologist, wait in a holding area with others in gowns and caps, where everyone looked like they were about to have a surgery, not a procedure I started to second guess my decision. Surely I could just live with these fibroids. They caused a bit of discomfort, but nothing I couldn’t live with. However, soon the Xanax (again, I brought my own) kicked in and I was feeling better about the whole thing: I was already at the hospital, had fasted for 15 hours, so why not just go through with it? By the grace of God that surgery went well too, although I get freaked out thinking about what I was doing or saying when I was under general anesthesia.
2 medical things taken care of and checked off the moving-to-India list. Great! So now to the hip. The hip has been an issue for about 2 years. Sometimes it’s really bad and I want to throw up and cry, and other times it doesn’t hurt at all. I had it a tiny bit when I was pregnant with Masan, but it came back in a big way when I was pregnant with Mia and never went away. So far to treat this hip issue I have had acupuncture, worked out every day, not worked out at all, gone to physical therapy twice a week for 6 months, done pilates, taken yoga classes, had 2 spinal epidurals, had an MRI which showed a herneated disc in my back, and am seeing a holistic energy healer named Dr. Cliff twice or three times a week. He’s amazing. But I am still in pain every other day. Because I have to get some relief and can’t just rely on muscle relaxers (I have been watching Nurse Jackie lately and a big fear of mine is falling into a big dependance on pain killers—and nope, a half a Xanax to deal with family weekends and medical procedures doesn’t count. And I checked with a doctor and one can’t get addicted to ibuprofen). So ANOTHER doctor was added to the list. This one did a full work up to see if I indeed have piriformis syndrome, which involved being hooked up to some type of electrodes which shocked various parts of my legs. The result is that I do have mild piriformis syndrome (what would full blown p.s. feel like?!?) and some neurological damage, but not too bad. Yoga poses and some cortisone/botox shots are the plan, so we will see.
On some level, I think my body is having these issues because it’s tired. We are all tired, I know. Life is hectic. There are so many pressures and so much going on all the time. However, being the primary caretaker of young kids makes one a different level of tired. A tired beyond tired. It’s that state of hyper-awareness that’s turned up all the time to keep the 15 month old safe, coupled with the refereeing of the older two that really do me in. It’s so tricky finding a moment to take care of myself in a meaningful way. I may go online to see if I can find myself a bargain on a pair of shoes, make a cup of coffee around 3 pm, pour myself a glass of wine at 5, or watch some true crime documentary while I make dinner to relax, but these are short-lived treats that don’t nourish souls or rejuvenate like I need. Even a trip to the spa to use the gift cards I received from a dear friend didn’t have the lasting effects I had hoped for. It’s probably because I have to jump back into chaos as soon as I get back home. I need a transformation in the way that I handle stress and care for myself instead of just escaping for a few hours. If I figure out how to nurture myself in the midst of this exciting, crazy life, I will bottle it and send it to all the brave, strong moms I know. And if you have it figured out, will you please get in touch? Sometimes it seems that having a place to have a voice helps with the stress. A place for me to process stuff going on with me apart from my roles as “mom” and “wife.” That’s really one of the goals of this blogging. Hope it works, however, right at this moment the baby is screaming for me to pay attention to her so this typing is actually making things worse. It’s a process, I know, I know.
I have written exactly one previous post in my brand new, first-ever blog called ‘Brooklyn Mama in Mumbai.’ It’s about being a Brooklyn mama about to move to Mumbai, India, and now I’m moving to Bangalore instead. And to make things a bit more tricky, Bangalore was renamed Bengaluru November 1, 2014. However, because it took me so long to figure out how to change the name of this blog from brooklynmamainmumbai to brooklynmamainbangalore, I hope I will not cause any disrespect by keeping this blog’s current name. Down the road I may need to change it again.
A field trip with Masan’s class today to PS 3 in Bed Stuy to see a shadow puppet play about peace. We traveled by school bus to get there, in those sticky, tall, faux leather seats, which in itself brought back so many memories. Being on the bus with my own 6 year old child was just so full circle—especially when she reminds me of a much cooler, more confident version of myself at that age.
Brooklyn Mama in India 