Just as the tabloids would have me fear. Thinking about my day today has led me to the peculiar little family story I'm going to regale you with today, but first, why.
As you may have heard, menopause is not coming nearly fast enough for me. I know it can start at different ages, earlier or later, but I think when it starts at 42, it should be good and over by 52. I'm just saying. At least after today I've got an explanation for the PMS and other fine symptoms I've been experience for the last week. I no longer automatically think "Oh it's that time of the month" because it's more like "that time of the year" but this one caught me off guard.
So here's the tale.
I remember when I was about twelve, my grandmother went into the hospital over night for a D&C, for whatever reason, and that when we brought her home she was very amused; she said it was like she was "a young girl" again. For sure, she had never even seen a store-bought sanitary napkin before up close, and the whole experience tickled her.
Okay.
Way later, maybe 15 years later, she had a hysterectomy. I'm not sure why, she didn't have cancer; my mother said at the time she had "a herniated uterus" and this is what they were going to do, but not like abdominal surgery, they were going to do it vaginally. Okay, this is more than you needed to know, but here's the thing:
Nobody told her that she was having a hysterectomy. She did not know, before, after, or ever.
She must have been about 80, and both my mother and the doctor thought this was the best way (which ultimately it certainly turned out to be.) I was appalled, all feminist-like, and wanted to know how they could do this to her and NOT TELL HER! My mother assured me that this was the way to go; Grandma would think it was another procedure like the one she'd had years earlier, she wouldn't understand, and so on. I was still most non-believing.
About a week before the surgery, which was to be done at a hospital near us in New Jersey, Shirl drove into the Bronx to pick up her mother, and to explain as much of it as she was going to. (Ida, BTW, was in no way impaired, other than, as you will see, by her upbringing.) She was living in an apartment in a huge housing development in the Bronx with her sister, one year older than she, the aunt I have always "affectionately" referred to as Blind Stupid Ugly Aunt Rose. (Man, I hated that woman.) Anyway, so Shirl explains to the two old girls that after the procedure, for a day or so, Ida will feel pressure (I guess) because the doctor will leave ... um ... packing in place to take care of the bleeding. The girls are confused, but can't explain what it is that's got'em, although it's clear to Shirl that the two of them are not understanding the same thing. At last, one of them asks how Ida will urinate if there is packing in place.
Now it's Shirl who doesn't get it. After a whole lot of hmffing and what? it becomes clear: the two old girls do not know that babies and pee don't come from the same place.
HOLY SEX EDUCATION, BATMAN!
Now these are two women who were married for a very long time, Ida for 55 years and Rose for about 40. Their mother, for Pete's sake, gave birth 13 times, once or twice in front of her elder daughters, of whom these were two.
They did not know.
So now you see how someone can have a hysterectomy and not be told about it, and how this can actually be a good plan.
**sigh**
If only my daughters could do that for me. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.
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I'm watching Golden Girls
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