Reflections in Personal Growth

1.      When someone tells you that you are among the most <insert adjective here> people they have met, believe them. They are not just being nice. 2.      Do not worry about disappointing your parents. You inherited their genes, so chances are your non-conformist ideas are not all that whacky to them. They might cheer lead you into them. Or not. If not, that's fine too. They are more resilient than you think.  3.      You are allowed to have opinions, not everything is good or bad. 4.      You are inquisitive by nature, question everything. And wait for the explanation. Judge, but after you listen to the explanation. 5.      Express disapproval. Do not make excuses for the other person. Do not just shut up and then resent it afterward.  6.      Express disappointment. Invite dialogue. Be willing to challenge your assumptions. 7.  ...

My woes with the uterus has been a longstanding one. I wouldn't dare to call them woes, I am looking for the word that describes children being irritating and annoying, but they are yours and you shouldn't complain, because they are yours. Well, this is somewhat like that. Except children are just being themselves, while the uterus is being mean and vindictive, and you can kinda reason with children (sometimes), but not with the uterus. However,  the uterus is an integral part of me, and how can I separate a part from the whole and be mad at that part. Never mind that the uterus has no such hang-ups, it is out there waging war on me, BUT I will be the bigger person and not be the second one to tango and I will not submit to the war-mongering.  I am not kidding when I say the uterus is waging a war on me. It began its first battle when I was a teenager; it just refused to do its monthly duties. I have had irregular periods that quickly got labeled as PCOS with its vicious cycle...

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.        They may not mean to, but they do.    They fill you with the faults they had     And add some extra, just for you. But they were fucked up in their turn     By fools in old-style hats and coats,    Who half the time were soppy-stern     And half at one another’s throats. Man hands on misery to man.     It deepens like a coastal shelf. Get out as early as you can,     And don’t have any kids yourself. - This be the verse, by Philip Larkin, quoted by Mae in Ted Lasso, "Mom City", S3E11 The past year has been an unusual year in many ways. One, I uprooted myself from everything familiar and moved lock, stock and barrel, halfway across the world, almost on a lark. This meant life as I knew it, ceased to exist.  Timeboxing as I had been used to, no longer worked, and I had to develop new processes around work, ho...

Let's take a quick detour into the current rabbit hole I am in. We will get back to the the follow up on the polyp and what happened, in another post.   So the biopsy from the surgery last month came clean, it ruled out any presence of a cancerous or pre-cancerous growth. That's great news. It was the best we were hoping for. However, that led us to the question of - then what is causing the excessive bleeding? The one in the running is adenomyosis. I phrase it that way because I have seen a whole spectrum - hyperplasia, no hyperplasia, polyp, no polyp, adenomyosis.  What is adenomyosis? Simply put, it is when the cells from the endometrium (inner layer of the uterus) grow in the myometrium (the middle, muscular layer). The myometrium is the muscle that contracts during childbirth and also during menstrual cramps. The endometrial cells are supposed to stay there, but when one has adeno, they end up growing outside and into the muscular layer.  So, what? Adeno is asso...

I had a "What a relief" moment last month when I got the results of the biopsy after a procedure to my uterus. Little did I know it would set me off on yet another rabbit hole. But first, a bit of back story.  One Sunday last January, it had been a month since I had moved into the US. My cousin and his family were coming home for dinner. My period had just started earlier that afternoon. I was cooking, and I had gone to change my pad and tampon. I had just changed, and was walking down the stairs when I felt like I had passed a really huge clot. I went back to the bathroom and found out I had completely soaked through the tampon and the pad. This was my reality for the next several hours. Everything I read on the internet told me that I needed to go to the ER immediately. I didn't. I was able to get an appointment with the OBGYN the next morning (however screwed up the US Healthcare system is, this was possible). She put me on progesterone pills and told me to come back i...