Volume XII: The Golden Humor
And now, an essay about doctors, endometriosis, and Ancient Rome that one editor called, "hard to read."
The Golden Humor
You know those moments in life when you are exactly where you want to be with exactly who you want to be with? Those moments when the breeze on your skin is the perfect temperature, the rhododendrons are so exquisitely fuschia they look like land dwelling coral, the sky is so blue and clear you believe in God? Those moments when your partner’s hand in yours throbs with the love between you? You walk together on the sidewalk, it’s quiet except for the cicadas, you say nothing because you’re thinking nothing, you’re just feeling, completely, utterly, at peace.
And then, beads of sweat form between your leg and the plastic bag tied to it, the heat pooling on your skin. You’ve just pissed. You piss all day and all night. Sometimes at home, you amuse yourself by watching the piss travel from the tube inserted into your urethra that’s taped to your leg as it runs into the pouch. One minute the bag is empty, and the next it’s completely full. “Look what I made,” you say to your beloved. You made two pints of piss.
—
I’m not afraid of urine. When I was 23 I had acne. I worked at a coffee shop with a hippie who shared my birthday and was likewise left handed. I trusted him. He was stinky but his skin glowed with good health. Every morning, the hippie would catch his first pee of the day in a cup and then use a cotton ball to dab it onto his face.
“It’s the perfect skincare,” he said, “because it’s completely PH balanced to your body.”
“The Golden Elixir,” he called it. “Look it up.”
At that time I would have done anything for beauty. So, for one month, I’d start my day by urinating directly onto a cotton ball and then dabbing it all over my skin. Then I would go to work making rosebuds in lattes, smiling to customers through a face caked with pee.
“Gina no,” my friends sighed.
This wasn’t a huge departure from my other home remedies, most of which I found on Google. I was known to put cloves of garlic in my vagina to ward off yeast infections. I’d plunge greek yogurt in there too, crossing my fingers for a cure for bacterial vaginosis. I resisted the more obvious treatments because even at 22 years old, a long, eventful gynecological life ahead of me, I had already learned that doctors are not always helpful.
—
When I was 33, I had my first surgery for endometriosis.
“I understand how hard it is to have a chronic illness, believe me. I’m living with Crohn’s,” my surgeon told me. I’d later realize this would be his one and only attempt at empathy but at the time it was enough for me to trust him to scrape lesions out of my pelvis.
When I woke up from the surgery I cried and puked. I couldn’t walk without assistance and was bleeding out of my vulva.
“She’s ready to go home whenever, “ the nurse told my boyfriend. Mike took me back to our apartment and put me to bed, but not before I drank many glasses of water.
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