Contents
Here’s Biopsy Hilarity pt one & pt 2 if you haven’t read them yet. Also? This is extraordinarily not safe for work.
So.
Yeah.
How do I start this….
Well first I should explain what I mean by Not-opsy. The procedure we’re about to talk about was not a biopsy. It was Hilarity indeed. At my expense by miles.
But despite not being a biopsy, the hilarity makes it go with this series.
It is the season finale, as it were.
Toward the end of having cancer, you get to go through the whole PET/CT scan, heart check, stage again followed by lots of fun procedures as necessary.
The first thing we found out, was that while my body was having tons of fun having the cancer poisoned out of it?
I had a bunch of traitor-ass mark-ass snitch-ass tumors in my uterus. To see what kind of awesomeness was up in me, they were going to have to do a transvaginal ultrasound.
Having spent practically a year of my life constantly on Google, I wasn’t too keen on looking up what the transvaginal part of ultrasound was about. I figured cold ass gel, weird plastic thingee taking pictures of my inner girldom, NBD.
I was more preoccupied with how I was going to hold my water.
You see, before a transvaginal ultrasound, you’re supposed to drink approximately twenty-seven fuck-tons of water, then not go potty until the procedure was over.
A procedure during which they are going to press objects against an area of your body that will make you want to go pee.
My mother came with me because she’s a fucking champ. Who would be mad that I cussed near her name but ninja I’m grown, feel me?
Anyway. I have not had children. And I have a chronic pain issue. And I hate holding it, because my mother’s speciality is dialysis, and I know all about how abusive it is to your kidney to not go.
But despite how much I hate it? I’m normally good at it. Because in the morning I can’t bound out of bed to pee anymore on account of the pain.
Nope. I have to sit there like a hobo waiting for all of my stupid back-stabbing jackass extremities to get in formation first. Then, in maybe five to ten minutes, I can get up.
I have fallen back asleep trying to ease myself into a pee party. So. Yeah.
But then a few months of chemotherapy ruined everything and in order not to be in the bathroom all night, I had to stop drinking liquids five hours before I sleep.
Which is a bitch because
- my painsomnia got wicked during chemo sometimes,
- and my mouth was dry literally the entire time I had chemo.
And I also hated the taste of filtered water, my all time number one favorite drink of all time. But I HAD to drink and also HAD to not drink and sometimes was the incredible peeing woman.
Fuck. My. Life.
So, knowing this about me, I split the suggested water intake mission into two parts.
It was 15 minutes to get to the doctor. I had purposely not eaten. I drank a half liter of water before getting in the car, then once we got downstairs, I drank another 16 ounces.
They were not fixing to tell my ass that my bladder was not full and we would have to resched.
Ain’t nobody got time for that.
We get there, everything has gone as planned, including resisting the nagging of my precious angel Mom to drink the water before we arrived.
Distract. Do not engage. I love you Mom. That’s how I learned so many of your tricks.
We get in the lobby. I’m so proud of myself.
Always my downfall but I never learn.
I saunter up to the counter, crack some jokes, fill out two miles of paperwork that should be electronically in the system BECAUSE IT’S 2016, FFS.
Just barely thinking about rivers, waterfalls and open faucets.
They take my paper work. One more cup of water for good luck since there’s a cooler in the corner.
Five minutes pass.
I’m afraid to laugh or cough.
Fifteen minute pass.
I start to pace a little.
Forty. Five. Fucking. Minutes.
To make all of this worse?
There’s a bathroom in the lobby of this place.
People go in and out of it the whole time I am on the brink of bursting. This is my post-chemo record for resisting the urge to pass water.
Forty six minutes and I fly into the bathroom.
As I’m coming out?
“Ms. Abatho- Abercrombie – Abuyumizoomi?”
Turns out they were waiting for a referral from my doctor since I couldn’t find the copy of it that had been in my purse.
They had me go back and drink more water, then they’d see me between appointments.
I drink less water this time, thinking I’ll trick my body.
They call me back. I didn’t drink enough. I go back to the lobby and keep drinking.
Five minutes pass.
Half an hour passes.
I can’t do it. I go and pee.
And yes, as the door to the rest room is still closing behind me I hear…
“Miss Abernathy?”
I’m sitting on the toilet before I realize these fuckers are talking to ME.
Fuuuuuuuuuuuuck.
HOW HARD IS ABAYOMI-PAUL. SOUND THAT SHIT OUT. I scream inwardly to myself for the millionth time in my life, trying to stop peeing.
Can’t.
Finish peeing, wash hands, scurry into the lobby as fast as my twisted pain-ridden bod can waddle.
I go up to the window. “If I go drink more water, can we still have this party today?”
Boring back and forth ensues.
We almost leave.
I say whatever, let’s stay. I ask my mother to go get me a sandwich from the hospital cafeteria. If there’s food in my body I can hold it longer.
Another false start from not drinking enough water, then? Bob’s your uncle! I’m in it to win it.
I’m not even nervous about the procedure by now. Pssh. Like I’ve never had an ultrasound before, what-the-fuck-ever.
At least we’re finally doing it.
I lay back, the technician is a nice lady who is familiar with Nigerians through marriage.
She has seen a lot of Nigerian women like me in her professional life too, and says with us, it’s almost always fibroids, not uterine cancer.
Or anything else ridiculously scary one might lose sleep over for several weeks about before their appointment.
We chat about how, through her unscientific observation over almost three dozen years that fibroids have some correlation to being treated shittily by a romantic partner.
How interesting that I have been fucked over so many times that I’m started to think I have “care too much and will give you all her money” tattooed on my vajayjay.
I think about asking her to check but that’s not the angle she’s examining from if you know what I’m saying. It was more lower-belly-ish.
This exam is over, I start to sit up.
Then there’s some business about stirrups.
Huh. You don’t say. Or rather, not any freaking body said.
She lightly breezes through an informational overview of what will be happening.
She is going to take a very fun sized … apparatus.
Nah fuck it this isn’t going to be a book for kids.
A GODDAMN DILDO. She’s going to shove a goddamn dildo up my Virginia and take some Glamour shots.
Child I started looking for the cameras.
I’m no prude?
But I have never thought to myself: “you know what would be fun? If a total stranger lady jabbed her size-definitely-matters length of pole up the business end of my hoo-ha while I really really really really needed to pee.”
After about a year and a half of voluntary celibacy.
Here I was, days away from what I hoped would be my last chemo ever, though I never dared to actually dream.
And of all the ridiculously absurd days I had endured? This was about to be one for the record books.
But what was I going to do? Run for my life? What if I slipped and fell?
Upon the fall my bladder would burst and since my back would definitely go out, I’d have to call for help, covered in the effervescent aroma of previously-held-in pee.
Bloody hell.
I did what any champion does.
I put my feet in the bastard-ass stirrups, took a deep breath and tried to think of things that were the opposite of water.
The technician spends what feels like ten thousand minutes lubing up this big animal of a probe.
So this was the one thing my insurance was good for? The most gigantic Dildo Baggins camera ever made? Isn’t better technology supposed to be making things smaller?
Wait, was I getting the ghetto probe?
Why didn’t I follow my sister’s example and go to the doctors in the whitest neighborhood I could find? I just HAD to choose my (lady!) doctors based on merit. Dammit.
It was now the moment of truth.
Truth only a couple of inches short of most of the boyfriends I’d ever had, and at least as, er… girth-y.
Seriously only one of the guys I ever dated, shall we say, fell short of my expectations in that department.
Sorry not sorry.
There’s really no point in riding a bronco that’s actually a pony. I’ve always had my pick and I’ve picked big unless I was in that like soulmate type love. Fuck what you heard.
Anyway, I braced myself for the moment when my new silicone boyfriend… breached my perimeter. About which I can only say it is the least fun I have ever had with any type of probing ever.
And to make the experience extra fucking special, this trick is talking to me. Not about the procedure.
Conversationally.
Here’s her: “Yeah I’m sure it’s just fibroids. You might not even need surgery. I’ve always wanted to travel to Nigeria. What’s it like?”
Here’s me thinking: Jesus Hercules Christ why is this thing so big?
I really really really have to pee.
Why do I feel like an almost empty container of ice cream? Hooker, I promise there is none left. Ok that was almost nice for a second.
FOCUS YOU BITCH. DO NOT RELAX OR LAUGH OR WE WILL PEE AREN’T YOU EMBARRASSED ENOUGH?
Is this real life? Maybe I’m going to wake up. Ah-ow? Not ow but but… wtf is she looking for there? Curly’s gold?
I hate this I hate this I hate this how clean is that thing.
Oh. Oh. Ok wait a minu- nope, that was momentarily pleasurable and not even close enough to being worth it.
I’d just rather die next time. Yeah next time they just have to find another – shit is she talking to ME?
Here’s me talking: “*grunt* *mumble* It’s beautiful in places. There are some areas where if they dropped you directly from the sky, you’d look up, see a KFC and think you were in South Florida.*pleasantry*”
Finally, after several millennia, it’s over and I can go pee.
She leaves because – get this – she wants to give me some privacy while I dress.
Even though she’s seen my WHOLE personality, now she wants to give me some privacy.
I was going to invite her to go fuck herself and everything moving on that floor but shit, the girl was just doing her job and trying not to get peed on.
Since I walked in with my cane, she thankfully had enough sense to adjust the thing I was laying on so I could get up comfortably. I immediately stopped wanting to punch her.
I don’t know what happened but it was a very painful ten minutes getting up.
I’ve been through in this position enough times to know that calling her back to help would only cause a situation where someone would pull when they should have just waited for me to lift, and I’d end up in the hospital overnight.
I. still. really. needed. TO PEE.
By this time it’s just too fucking funny to me.
So I’m laugh-crying from pain and amusement, praying not to have an accident.
I mean the only thing worse than trying not to pee when you really have to go?
Is trying not to laugh when you feel hysterics coming on but absolutely cannot laugh before you very painfully and slowly make your way to the restroom.
But I made it.
And I swear to you it was one of the happiest moments of my ridiculous ass year.
Until. I tried to get up from the toilet.
Pain from the middle of my back down.
Blinding, stumbling, was-that-a-Mack-truck-that-hit-me pain.
I natural-childbirth breathed through it enough to put on my pants because dammit, after making it to the bathroom I was NOT going to have a nurse come in here with me in that state.
After about 15 minutes of wanting to drown myself in the sink, I made it to my feet.
Flushed the toilet, hooked onto the sink by my elbows and washed my hands. Looked at the towel dispenser longingly because fuck contorting my body to dry my hands, then opened the door.
Closed it behind me and folded to the ground in pain.
Barely had the breath in my lungs to squeal “help, help please help me oh God.”
Of course, my mother, the champion of all mothers, somehow got there first. She, a nurse and a tech helped me up into a chair. They later brought a wheelchair that I’m not sure how they got me into.
I thanked every God I could think of for my dark skin once again getting me out of further humiliation, because I was hot from the neck up- if I was as light as my mother I would have been beet red.
Sitting in the chair, humbled so greatly by the failings of my body, I knew I shouldn’t be embarrassed or bothered or feel any time of shame.
But I did. My stupid body was always failing me.
But then of course, I pictured the worst case scenario of being discovered passed out, in the middle of crawling my way to the bathroom in a pool of piss?
And laughed the whole miserable thing off.
Just another day in the cancerhood. Feeling good today. Finally peed and it’ll be okay.