ArcaMax

My absent hunger was the first sign something was wrong. Normally, even when I'm physically full, the suggestion of, say, a gooey cookie will open a vacancy in my stomach.

This fateful day, though, I skipped breakfast, and then headed to lunch with a co-worker.

"Huh," I thought. Every bit of bread and cheese and chia on the menu sounded repellent. I ordered a smoothie. It tasted like paste.

"Huh," I thought, when the smoothie was not agreeing with me. "Huh," I thought, driving down the highway later with a generalized maelstrom of pain.

"HUH," I thought, hunched on the couch at home, sweating as the clock ticked ever closer to middle school pickup. "HUHHHHHH," I thought, driving to the school tensed up like a tiny crab.

Now's when you may remark, "Why didn't she ask for help? Why didn't she stop driving everywhere?"

These are valid thoughts! I figured I had menstrual cramps, even though I knew the timing was off, and this pain was different. I'd had a similar bout a few months earlier, and my gynecologist chalked it up to rupturing ovarian cysts. I experienced my first cyst rupture when I was 13: pain like a hot bolt of lightning.

For those of you without the benefit (?) of a uterus: Many of us walk around regularly with abdominal and pelvic pain that could take down an ornery bear. We tolerate the discomfort, headaches, bowel issues, bloating and bleeding while being told to smile in the shampoo aisle of CVS, while running corporate meetings and delivering packages and coordinating family lives. We have become adept at relaxing our facial masseters and putting others at ease so they may never know Bruce Willis is rappelling from a proverbial Nakatomi Plaza near our fallopian tubes.

Whatever this was, I'd been training for it my whole life. Not only are women cursed with recurrent physical pain, but we are also tasked with being likable.

I went home and lay down in the shape of a comma. The pain started to ease, and I thought, silly lady! You're fine! The next morning, I felt sore but better, with plans to chalk the agony up to the Beautiful Mystery of Womanhood. Health care, who needs it?! I started work, yet I remained distracted by pain congregating ominously in one area.

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