Rebooting My Uterus

At one of my old office jobs, there was a woman in tech support named Miao. She had moved to America from China only a few years earlier and her English was limited. Whenever anyone called her with any computer issue whether it was related to email, Microsoft word, the keyboard or the entire computer in general, she’d always have the exact same response: “POWER OFF! POWER ON!” and then she’d promptly hang up the phone. The amazing part is these four words were incredibly effective. Nine times out of ten, it would fix your problem without any explanation. I don’t understand how or why but it really doesn’t matter. You can’t argue with results.

After getting a second opinion, I am officially in what I can only describe as “Polyp Purgatory”. I’m in an intermediate state waiting to become polyp-free and possibly reproductively functional. Maybe it’s less like a purgatory and more like a holding pattern? Any which way, working towards getting pregnant has been replaced with working towards getting “Jackson Polyp” the hell out of my uterus.

Somewhat surprisingly, I’m realizing there are sincere benefits to being on hold. A few weeks ago, we decided to try things the old fashioned way and just have a lot of sex and see what happens. Even though we immediately put “Operation Monkey Sex” into effect, neither of us could completely put the chance of conceiving out of our minds. It’s so hard to let go of the hope… even when you’re naked, eating a banana and hanging from a chandelier. Hey – don’t judge.

Having a polyp however has made it clear that we are definitely, without a doubt, on a trying to conceive break. Who knew “Jackson Polyp” was SUCH a cock blocker?

The point is that this polyp purgatory is serving as the “power off” to our trying to conceive... and that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. We’ve almost gone back to the way things were before we started working towards getting pregnant. For over the past year, we’ve had the best intentioned romantic dinners ruined by talks of his sperm count, my cervical mucus and whether or not we should have sex in the morning or at night. These days, none of that matters. Lately, we’ve been discussing our feelings, our families (and competing for which one is more dysfunctional) and most importantly, how in the holy hell my husband could be “Team Jacob”. Seriously! Jacob’s got nice abs and all but have you seen Edward?!? He could eclipse my moon anytime.

I’m sorry. What were we talking about again????

In addition, eating what I want, drinking what I want and not thinking about trying to get knocked up makes me feel like I’m reclaiming my body again. It’s a break I didn’t know I needed but one that I'm enjoying.

On July 8th, I’ll be having a Hysteroscopy & Dilation and Curettage procedure done. From what I’ve read, part of this process will entail scraping out both the polyp and the endometrium (lining of the uterus). The fact that they use the word “scrape” sounds very wrong to me. I mean, scraping your knee is one thing. Scraping your uterus in entirely another. I've never put Bactine on my uterus. My uterus will never fall off its bike and hurt itself so let’s just use the word “remove”, shall we?

Putting the medical description aside for a moment though, I’ve decided to look at it more as an extensive cleaning of my lady parts. I’ve powered my system down, Mr. Clean is coming in and will make my uterus all spic and span! Power off. Power on.

If Miao knew what she was talking about (and I suspect she did), I’ll be back up and running in no time.