The Case of the Missing Ovary

Author's Note: Daddy, you may want to skip this one. 


A few weeks ago my right ovary went missing. True story.

It was gone for a full twenty minutes, and I’ll be honest. I was kind of sweating its absence.

The room where it all went down was mercifully dark, but somehow that didn’t make my situation any better. I was there for an ultrasound. Not the cute baby kind either.

Before the appointment even got started, there’d been the typical confusion and panic over the Gown of Doom and the Little Red Button of Humiliation. For those (i.e. MEN) who may be blissfully unfamiliar with these Villains of Gynecology, allow me to introduce you.

The Gown of Doom is a starchy, scratchy, pillow case thing that, at the beginning of a “yearly checkup,” every woman is left alone with to fight to the death in a battle of wits. The Gown is tricky, see. Most hospital gowns open to the back, but no! Not the Gown of Doom. The Gown of Doom must open to the front. I’m probably the only person in the world who has a hard time remembering that, but even without this complication, the gown is uncomfortable and evil. Trust me.

Via - What comes up when you google "Gown of Doom"

After frantically calling my best friend, mom, and sister to confirm the proper usage of the gown, there came the Little Red Button of Humiliation.

When I was first taken into the ultrasound room, the technician chirpily told me that once I was undressed and gowned up,  I “should just press the red button and someone will be right in!” (By “right in” they usually mean twenty to thirty minutes later after the Gown of Doom has given you a rash, and you’ve given up all hope of ever getting out of there alive.)

She made it sound so simple.

I followed her too-happily-announced instructions and stripped. The room was at least 62 degrees, and it was still January. Chill bumps popped up to join me in my shame. The Gown of Doom offered little comfort or warmth.

I eyed the Little Red Button of Humiliation, looked back at the exam table.

The Button.

The table.

They were probably six feet apart.

I decided to try sitting on the exam table, then reaching back for the button. This seemed feasible. I wasn’t an Olympic gymnast or yoga master, but even I could manage the little stretch it would take to reach the button.

Negative.

As I attempted to make the little stretch necessary to push the button, the Velcro from the Gown of Doom violently protested by ripping apart and leaving me exposed. Now, if I was telling a made-up story, this would be the part where the nurse knocks and walks in, taking in all my shame and full body blush. But alas, nothing nearly that funny happened, and I was left to readjust the Gown of Doom, hop off the table, and press the Little Red Button of Humiliation.

I somehow managed to rearrange myself and get back on the exam table with that awful crinkly paper before the Ultrasound Tech Chippy McChipperton came back in. Thus began the exam.

“This will be a little cold.”

Holy Mother of God!!!!

Yes, she was right. The gel and ultrasound wand thingy were equally cold as she pressed them along my lower abdomen and made small talk about the weather and her kids. Intermittently dispersed amongst the small talk were her attempts to point out various parts of my body. Looking at the gray fuzziness on the screen, I was reminded more of a geography class as she chattered on:

“There’s Mozambique, and then to the South of that is your left ovary, and…

…hmm.”

 Hmm? Nobody wants to hear a medical professional ever say “Hmm” when they’re looking at your body or something inside it.

I took a deep breath, searching the Tech’s puzzled face. “Is there something wrong?”

“I just can’t seem to find your right ovary. You do have one, right?”

What the hell kind of question is that? I mean, I guess I have one, unless unbeknownst to me it fell out! “Umm…yeah.”

She pressed the wand thingy harder into my abdomen, moved it here, then there…and back again. 

For twenty minutes.*

The Gown of Doom bit into my skin. The wand thingy started to kind of tickle. I struggled not to squirm.

Finally. Finally, she smiled and said, “Oh, there it is!”

Turns out the whole time it was hiding just behind Russia or some gas bubbles in my colon. Silly ovary.

*Time may have been exaggerated, but it seemed like twenty minutes. Believe me. 

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I Never Promised You a Rose Garden

Good luck getting that song out of your head for a few days. You're welcome.

I officially have a farmer's tan/sunburn. Woot! It's drop-dead sexy; I'm not gonna lie. Yep, spent the morning in the sun yesterday, and now I'm nice and lobster-y. Oh, the joys of my skin. On top of the sex-ay sunburn, I'm also aching all over from lots of hoeing. And no, I haven't started hooking to pay off the new laptop. Jeremy and I actually planted our garden and front yard flowerbed yesterday. We've planted a lot this year, including little J.M. so pray we don't kill anything everything.

We started with lots of plants, four bags of mulch, and two very obviously neglected garden plots.

And ended up with a pretty little vegetable garden and a sorta okay flowerbed.

A little underwhelming...

even more underwhelming.

Hey, so we may not be master-gardeners yet ever, but we sure enjoyed our little foray into gardening. And once the vegetable garden is all grown up, maybe I'll even cook something using our very own, home-grown peppers, tomatoes, and zucchini. If someone knows of a dish using all three, even better! Let me know, and Jeremy and I will be sustained all summer on said dish from our garden alone...

By the way, I wanted to share with you guys a contest I'm participating in that I think is way fun for a new blog that One Mixed Bag introduced me to. Do Sweat the Small Stuff needs a pen name! Help her out by clicking below:

The Pale Girl Blues

I'm pale. Painfully so. I came to terms (mostly) with that fact years ago. I come from a long-line of pale people. I'm more than two-thirds Irish; it's just in my genes. But pale is not the world we live in. Just look at the Jersey Shore cast.

GTL, anyone?
courtesy: google image search

In high school, I rebelled against the pale. The hours I spent laying in a tanning bed were some of the most relaxing of my life. I loved tanning. Loved it. I loved the way it made my skin feel, the way I could relax under the fake beams of the fake sun. I worshipped the tanning bed. Unlike the sun, it would give me an actual, kind of, tan. The sun would just burn my skin and turn me into the red girl instead of the pale girl. I preferred pale. But the tanning bed gave my skin a slightly golden sheen (along with hundreds of new freckles...in addition to being pale, I also freckle). But alas, my days of tanning are now but a faded memory.


When I was in college, my Daddy started developing skin cancers on his face and hands. Turns out years of sun exposure with little or no protection had taken a toll on his naturally pale skin. This was a huge wake up call for me. My love affair with the tanning bed ended abruptly. I now get on my friends' nerves when I harass them about how they need to stop tanning.


Needless to say, I've been tan-less and pale for quite awhile now. During the spring and summer, I do enjoy getting outside as much as possible, but I have to slather on sunscreen to keep from burning and turning into Lobster Girl. So even in the middle of summer, I remain fairly pale, and while my husband loves my fair complexion, I usually hate it. Not because I hate fair skin. In fact, I love the look of a healthy, even ivory complexion, but such a complexion is a curse when you're trying to hide your emotions.

Not what I'd call an ideal tan.

Ladies and gentleman, I'd like to introduce you to splotching (or blotching as some might call it). The ugly cousin to blushing, splotching is an awful affliction that plagues my daily existence. It can best be described as a form of "spotty" blushing, and it typically pops up all over my chest and on my neck. Splotching makes it impossible to hide your true feelings about anything. Embarrassed about that giant mistake you made on an admissions evaluation? Up pops a splotch! Angry at the last-minute student trying to get enrolled in classes on the day the classes start?! Oh, there's splotches all over! Hell, if you even get a little warm in your over-heated office that for some reason never cools down even when they turn on the AC, you'll be covered in splotches! Notice splotches usually and most often make their presence known at work. Home and personal-life splotching almost never occurs...UNLESS, I scratch my skin or even touch it just a little too hard...then there it is.


The worst part about splotching? People usually think you have a rash or some other disease or something. I can't tell you how many people have looked at my neck or chest in complete disgust and said, "Ew! What's wrong with you?" "Is that a rash!?" "Oh, my gosh, your skin is horribly discolored!" Okay, maybe I'm exaggerating a little. But honestly, people do notice, and they almost always say something. And guess what pointing out the splotching does to the splotching?  You guessed right: it breeds more splotches!


So, yes, I do sometimes miss tanning. I miss the relaxation of it. And I miss being able to hide every little emotion that I have. But in spite of the splotches, I love my pale skin, and next season, I hear pale is the new tan.