Field Trip: Alie’s Mystery Surgery!

catharsis for me. Let's see. But first, just a quick thanks to everyone at Patreon dot com slash Ologies for making the show possible. You can join if you'd like for a dollar a month. You can submit questions to the ologists ahead of time. Thanks also to everyone wearing Ologies merch on their bods. You can get that at ologiesmarch dot com. And do we sell bathing suits so other sunbathing hotties can identify each other? We do, so

put us on your butts. Also, thank you to everyone who sent me well wishes as I have been recovering from this mystery surgery, and also for leaving me reviews for me to read from my couch, such as this recent one from Sea Love, who wrote one show and I was hooked. I love how you share your life with us, love your guests and all the topics. Please stay well and keep potting. Love you dad word, which, if I may say, it's an apt one this week because I'm about to share perhaps too much of me

in an effort to stay well. So thank you, Sea Love, and also anyone who's ever left review. I've read every single one of them, that is the truth, and often they make me cry. Speaking of crying, let's reveal what in the effing heck is going on with me. Did I have a planned abdominal surgery? Is that where I've been? Did I have a facelift? Did I get a toe removed for cosmetic reasons? Was it fun? How much did it hurt? And come along with me as I find out what this means for the rest of my life.

But it's casual. We keep it casual. It's heartfelt, but it's important to me and I hope maybe to someone in your life. Okay, let's do it. Okay, It's January twenty fifth, twenty twenty four, and this is just day one of this. I got off the phone with doctor earlier this morning, actually earlier this morning. First thing this morning, I had a call with a lawyer about estate planning and what happens if I becoming capacitated and need a power of attorney and living will and an advanced directors

of all these things. I had this big phone call this morning to get all that shit in order. So this was a long standing item of my to do list. It's taken me years to figure out how to do it. But if you're listening to this and you're alive, make some preparations in case you die, which you will probably not today. But the fun of life is you never know. What is not fun though, is paperwork. I know, trust me,

So do it for the other people you love. Let your loved ones know if they should throw you into the sea or if they should have a bounce house at your wake. And also get a will. If you own a home, congrats and get that shit in a trust or make arrangements for who gets it if you get attacked by a zoo animal or something. So if you don't do this whilst alive, it can go into like probate and your relatives need to come up with lawyers fees just to have the chance to sell off

your stuff. So let this be your message from me and from life that use like legal zoomer, set asided data, Google it. I finally did it. I had this big phone call on my calendar for weeks and by chance, the hospital reached out the very same day, and then an hour later I talked to my doctor on the phone and learn that there's a ten percent chance I have uterine cancer right now there's a ninety percent chance

that I don't. But the next step we decided is to get a hysterect to me, which i'll get late next month. If you've ever voted or will vote, it affects reproductive rights, particularly for people who were born with a uterus. And if you are one of those people who have elite, complicated organs that evolved to grow human life, congrats and can get real messy up there. It's kind of like owning a vintage car or a large fish tank.

It's cool, it's not always easy. So if you're human on a planet Earth, you benefited from these organs because you grew inside of them, and you should know how they work and what can go wrong. So by listening, you're going to relate to the biological sex that has to deal with this, and you'll be a responsible human. Also, Am I going to die of cancer soon? Let's find out. I had asked if I could get a hysterectomy like two years ago, and they were like, you can't just

get a hysterectomy because you're afraid of cancer. I was like, but aren't my risks high? I should have had them note in my chart that they said no. But either way, I'm scared. I'm worried that I got me. I'm worried that my life's been too good for too long, and this is another shoe dropping. Although it hasn't been that great. I mean, I was hospitalized this summer. It's been a long roadbag. I had pneumonia, I've been sick a lot, my dad died. Things haven't been very super easy. I

have had a rough go of it. But I'm always afraid that if things are going too well, then something bad is going to happen. Oh hello, anxiety, how are you unfounded? Amazing, great to see you again. So I've learned recently that thinking that when things are good, they're about to get real shitty soon is not a lot of universal karma. It's an anxiety disorder maybe PTSD. So thanks therapy for all. Things you can do about this

include meditating, deep breathing actually physiologically helps. You can talk to a friend or a counselor or journal to see patterns of the good and the bad in your life.

And one thing that I've started doing every day from the last like six months is to journal in the morning to write down what I'm looking forward to and what I'm worried about or what I'm avoiding, and then I check back at the end of the day to see how it turned out, and over even a week, you'll start to see patterns where things didn't go as

badly as you thought. And if you keep doing this, maybe for life you can develop more just trust and confidence in your ability to handle some tough situations, and that if you already have anxiety, that horrible things tend to occur less often than you anticipate. But this was cause for real concern, for sure, So I decided to make some audio recordings on my phone as I went, perhaps it'll help someone you love, maybe that person is you,

But let's die back in. I'm just making this note on the off chance that I decided to document this and just kind of see the arc. Normally, these things are scarier when you first hear them, and then you go, oh, why did I waste all that energy and freaking out again. They're probably not going to find anything cancerous in my cells, and I'll just be glad that I got it over with and I got it out, and it's probably going

to hurt. I probably won't be able to bone for a while from what I understand, and yeah, at least I'm documenting this and such. Okay. January twenty twenty twenty four. All right, So about a week later, they said, please bring your vagina and your uterus into your doctor's office. So I did, and I brought the rest of my body along and you and.

have a vital procedure to deal with uterine tissue. But hysterectomies are common, and my surgeon even does them as gender affirming care for transmen and non binary folks. And they can take your uterus and your cervix and your fallopium tubes. They can leave the ovaries for hormones or they can take them. Now, this operation can happen three different ways. One they may cut into your abdominal cavity

to just remove it. Or two they can puncture a few holes through your six pack to laparoscopically cut some chords, and then they remove the organs through your existing VA gene. And that second option is easier because you might as well use the loading dock that you've got rather than just kool aid man through your aps. So those two methods, though,

they still have pretty long ass recovery time, maybe months. However, there's this new technique called VNOTES, which is a plucky little acronym for vaginal natural orbit transluminal endyscopic surgery, thanks so much, And this lets you totally avoid the abdominal incisions altogether. Nothing goes through your abdomen. You just head up in there, you cut some stuff, and you be beet that mess out of your unused baby shoot. So

that is the easiest way to do it. And I made the mistake of googling this new VNOTES surgery, which led me to a YouTube animation with these clean CGI graphics and this patient represented kind of by a translucent apparition stal cap is secured to the Alexis retractor by closing the lever, and the insufflation tubing is connected to

the insuflation port on the gel sial cap. I'm sorry what And I learned that the patient me would be in the supine lithotomy position, and then I googled that and it means I'd have my legs in the air embraces and my ass at the end of the table just as look at my crotch as you could possibly possibly be for a few hours, which is fine, and then they shuttle your guts out of that most sacred sexual area. So v not notes, it's all through the shoot. You got. That's what we're going for.

the badge as a period. Now on the topic of an endometrium, so when someone has endometriosis, it means that endometrial like tissue grows in places it is not invited, in places outside the uterus, like on the fallopian tubes that lead to the ovaries, and sometimes in places that are not even your reproductive organs, such as one's bladder or large intestines like your colon's, Like, how did I even get involved in this? No, get out of you,

leave me alone. There's also thoracic endometriosis, which is when uterus like stuff crops up on or around the lungs or on that wall of muscle in your abdomen. The diaphragm sending shooting nerve pain that radiates through your shoulder and your back. So this can cause excruciating misery and a massive drop in quality of life. Is there a

cure for endometriosis? Some folks offer for a total hysterectomy and or surgeries to root around like a truffle pig and excize it in other parts of the body if they can even locate it. There's pain management, but no

cure really, so why not now? In the twenty twenty textbook The Paragraph Handbook of Critical Menstrual Studies is a chapter titled the womb Wanders not Enhancing Endometriosis Education in a Culture of Menstrual Misinformation and its author, Heather Guidone, is a program director for the Center for Endometriosis Care and writes that quote embedded in the centuries old assertion that the womb was a nomadic entity wandering about the body,

causing hysteria and distress. Persistent menstrual and misconceptions remained prevalent where pain disorders like endometriosis are concerned, and she continues derived from the misogynist antidiluvian belief that painful menstruation was ordained by nature as a punishment for failing to conceive. Pregnancy has long been suggested as a treatment or even cure for endometriosis. So heck, you want to avoid painful periods, just stop having them by growing and then ejecting a baby.

That's convenient. It doesn't hurt at all. Now, I have friends who have endometriosis, and one of them frequently has to pull over to the side of the road just to writhe in pain and then just get back into traffic. She's had laparoscopic surgery to find it, and it's still a mystery. Where it is. One hundred and seventy six million people around the world have endometriosis. No one knows what causes it. But that was a whole sidetrack because I don't even have endometriosis, So what's going on?

that's not the point. Also, once I had a dream that my grandma came to me and said, sorry, I was kind of evil and abusive. It's just that I didn't even really want kids. I wanted to be an artist, but it was in nineteen forties and of Catholics, so I had six kids and hated everyone. And when I say that this conversation came to me in a dream, I mean during a pharmaceutical grade mushroom trip that I took at the suggestion of my fairy, buttoned up Western

medicine psychiatrist. And I tell you an experience I'll never forget. What a party it was in my brain anyway, because my particular ovaries retired early and put up a gonefish and sign before I turned thirty five, and this was medically not according to plan. It took three years of going to doctors to figure out what was up. I had three male doctors tell me maybe it was just stress, and two two looked me in the face and asked me if I could just quit my job and find

someone to marry, which stressed me out even more. But I essentially I went through menopause like fifteen years too early, and I had to figure out how to navigate relationships and how to process that. Kids weren't really in the cards for me personally, even though someone with primary ovarian failure can foster or adopt or even have a kid with a donor egg, or sometimes your ovary might just grown one to life or pop out an egg unannounced,

which is rude. But for myself, I just kind of knew it wasn't my destiny, which is a little bit of a part of why I'm your Internet father or your dad work. I just just kind of didn't identify it with motherhood. But like endometriosis, primary ovarian insufficiency or premature ovarian failure. What I've got is what's called idiopathic,

and that comes from the Greek. All of this for idios just meaning an ignorant person, and idiopathic medically just means no one knows why it happens, which means no one studied it enough. I guess now, if you have nards and you're still listening, you're one of the good ones, or you might be saying, what does this even have

to do with me? Okay, So, if your hormone makers them nuts suddenly and just without warning, shut down the factory, imagine not having that cocktail of chemical messengers that you rely on.

So if your ovaries tank, you may find that irritability is just causing you to do things like research huts on remote islands far away from anyone who choose too loud. And I shall also say that, unfortunately, there's this company called Rosebud Woman, and they make Obgin approved plant based vulver and vaginal moisturizers for people going through paramenopause and menopause and pre and post natal business and really anyone

in need of skincare for down there. And the founder of this company was going through menopause and found that a lot of stuff made for discomfort was really just lube geared for sex, or it was really medicalized. So she made this company which has gone on to do like Gangbusters and has been written up by Oprah and Wired and Allure and Vogue and Vanity Fair and I

use it all the time. I have some Another fun fact about Rosebud Woman is that the founder is my husband's mom, Christine Mason, and it's a family run business. I definitely had an inside track, and I'm very glad Rosebud invented this stuff for people like us, So just a genuine plug for them. You can use it on all kinds of all of us. Even if you're not a woman anyway, If you have a vary in failure early and your doctor cares, they will put you on

estrogen replacement therapy, which is great. They might even check your testosterone levels and give you a supplement for that, which is awesome. So stick with me here because here's where all my problems started. So if you're on estrogen, you need to take progesterone at the same time to prevent your endometrial lining from building up since you're not doing any perioding. Here's the hitch. So they'll usually give you a synthetic progesterone called a progestine For some folks,

no problem o, two thumbs up. For others, this makes things worse and it really fucks with your head like hormonally think like crying jags, irritability, like terrible pms all the time. I was one of those people. So I was just trying to go about my life while also feeling like absolute hot constantly. So if your doctor is good, they will care, and they might try you on progesterone not progestine, and some people tolerate it better. It'll make

you feel right again. But if you're in a pandemic and can't get to see your doctor because there are morgues on wheels in our major cities. You might stop taking your synthetic progesterone before learning of other options. If you do this for a few years, you won't feel great, and that unopposed estrogen can lead to cancer. How can you tell, Well, you suddenly start bleeding and you think, oh boy, howdy, maybe my ovaries work again, But also you google to learn that this is a symptom in

ninety percent of uterine cancer patients. And then when you tell doctors what's happening and that you stopped taking your progesterone a year or so ago, they might stifle a horrified gasp, and then, without any anesthesia, shove a tool into your uterus and try to scrape out flesh with some sort of hospital melon baller to look at it under a microscope. So this endrometrio biopsy hurts a lot

most pain you've ever felt. Maybe you've been hit by a car before and got your hand chewed up by an escalator like me, This hurts more just on a random Tuesday afternoon, and it's not really something you can tell people back at the office. Like if you had been hit by a car, nobody buys you a beer. Now, if their tests are inconclusive, because that pumpkin Scooper didn't go deep enough, they got to figure something else out. They might do a pelvic ultrasound. In my case, they

did and they found it all normal. I was like, okay, but I was still feeling awful and was having fevers a lot and losing blood. So I found a new doctor and it turns out that my ultrasound was not at all normal. If I had been in my teens and would have been normal, but no, for someone with my history, it was abnormal and worrisome. So good thing I asked a new doc because it might be saved in my life.

watch like kids shows? The kid's science shows? Like on Netflix, or.

her to worry. And I had also learned from when I had pneumonia that instead of suffering and hoping that people offer you the comfort and the soup that you'd like. Just tell them straightforwardly what you need. Tell people you could use some support or some FU, and ask them ahead of time if you need to check in on you, and don't just expect people you love to read your mind, especially if you're usually the kind of person who tries

to be independent and not burden anyone. So I had already processed a lot of the fertility stuff and the womanhood complexities and relationship insecurities caused by ovarian failure, you know, eight or so years ago. And trust me, if you're going through something like this, you're going to need some extra TLC, maybe a counselor a therapist that can talk

you through it, or a support group. But for this potential cancer news I've been going through and the surgery, I decided to just man up and invite a little group of girlfriends over two days before the operation, just to say goodbye to my reproductive system and to eat a cake. And my pre op appointment was the same day, bright and early, and also I was giving a keynote speech to four thousand people for NASA an hour after this appointment is exciting, So it was a busy day.

So let's head in. Let's learn what to expect during this pre op appointment.

And I wondered, I'm like, do I need to take a sharpie and like write on my inner thigh like this hole, not this one with arrows. That'd be fun. Also, if you're wondering how many holes are down there where people pee out of, you can enjoy the urology episode about crotch parts with it truly surgeon doctor Fenwa Millhouse. But also we have a philology episode about Dix with

doctor Emily Willingham. We got a gynecology one with doctor Philippa Ribink and Lincoln it all together, perhaps a dolerology episode with doctor Rachel's Softness, which is about pain.

a cake with the words I'm over it. And my friend doctor Carra Santa Maria, who's been through this surgery of but laparoscopic, brought me special pillows that helped her.

And a friend and scheduling producer Noel Delworth gave me a whole basket of tea and treats and a cozy mug and a fleece hoodie, and Lazette brought slippers and a blankye even though I told everyone no gifts, just hugs, and all in all, I'm just very lucky and glad that on the eve of something so scary that I just asked these palas to be there for me and they showed up and we also got to eat pizza.

So if you or someone you know was going through something scary, sea of a little gathering just might make them know that they're caring for It really helped me a lot. But the night before the surgery, things got pretty real for me.

the middle of it. But I'm scared that tomorrow is going to be like some line where it was like before you had something really wrong with you and after, And I'm just a right of crossing that boundary, I guess, and feeling relieved it all know, but also just really scared that this is like another big shoe that's going to drop. I keep thinking I'm so lucky in my life, and i am, but it's also like it seems like everything's really great and terrible all at once, all the time realist or anesthesia.

for my LinkedIn profile? Can you please do any cather or business when I'm completely unconscious? So in a minute, I'll tell you which of those questions we actually asked. But first we're going to take a break for some sponsors at the show. But wherever we do, we're going to donate to a cause. And this week I'd like it to go to the Monovistic Cancer Awareness Club, which is a group of high school students in northern California

who create posters spreading awareness on various cancers. They write letters to cancer patients. They collab with San Francisco's Cancer Support Community. They host big sales to donate to cancer research, They make care packages for patients, and they share survivor stories and support anyone affected by cancer. And this club is actually started by my niece in memory of my dad, your grandpad, who passed away from cancer in twenty twenty two. So Sophia, you're a gem my dear. I'm sorry this

episode does pretty grow. I don't love that my family might listen, but hey, it's my truth and my crutch. Maybe it'll help someone all right. Thanks to sponsors of the show for making that donation to the Manifestic Cancer Awareness Club possible.

they'll let you. I stole this hot tip from doctor Santa Maria, and it is great because not only is it cozy and warm and a comfort, but also hospital blankets suck shit and they are like thinner than a tortilla and they're only warm for like two minutes if they're fresh out of the blanket. Ovens and then you feel like a dick asking for more layers of them. So yeah, I was very happy that I brought that along.

Definitely recommend I was ready to go and doctor Thomas came in asked if we had any questions, and we asked a few of them, but the catheter and anesthesia. And then Jarrett pulled up the notes app and told Doctor Thomas that I wanted to ask if anyone would see my butthole. I don't know she knew we were kidding, because of course, your whole junk is like in the limelight, your ass in the air spread eagle with like a volleyball teams where the people fixated on the star of

the show, which is your crotch. But the doctor at least humored us and said that don't worry, that won't be the focus of the operation. And she also said that yes, once they take out my organs, she's going to take a picture for me. Now, while we were waiting to go in the hospital, pacystep went off and it was an announcement that the staff should report to the ICU for a code blue. And now, if I had not been doing this podcast for so many years,

I would have completely not even registered. I would have thought that it was like a secret code for like bagels in the breakroom, but no, so code blue in a hospital means that there's a cardiac arrest or someone is flatlining, and so me and Jarrett and the nurse

kind of went silent. I was sending the person good vibes, and then like maybe a minute later, as this nurse was adjusting my v the speaker's kind of crackled again, announcing a cancelation of the blue code, and I asked a nurse like if that was a good sign, like if the person is okay, and she just stopped, and

she looked at Jarrett like should we tell her? And I'm still hoping that it was a cancelation the person was okay, So I made a wish that that person just pulled through suddenly, and then I asked for drugs, so the antithesiologist gave me something to calm the jitters, and the nurses agreed it would kind of feel like a margarita, and within milliseconds I could have committed karaoke with no remorse. And then I remember being wheeled into the oar and feeling like, you know when You're in

a restaurant. You're looking for the restroom, but you accidentally just barge into the kitchen and you're like, WHOA, I don't belong backstage like this. I shouldn't we see in all this equipment and people. But in the oar, in that fog, I realized, Hey, I'm the main course, just surrounded by trays and napkins and little knives. These folks

are about to cook. So I remember getting on a table, but then the next thing I know, I'm coming to hours later in a recovery bed, and it feels like there is a tiny man trapped in the void of my baby baker area and he's trying to get out with a pickaxe, or like some sort of beaked animal is trying to hatch out of my abdomen. And I remember having no control of my face and frowning the hardest I've ever frowned. I couldn't just wincing in paint, And I asked Jared to take a picture of my

face for austerity and friends. I just saw it again looking at the room pictures. I look like a sculpture of myself made of white cheddar cheese that someone tried to microwave like a little greasy. Every feature has succumbed to the gravity of my pain. So they gave me a little more painkiller, which took it from like an eight on the pain scale to a reasonable three. So the drugs worked again, but parts of my body did not work. March first, four, ten pm, still in recovery.

I don't want to be recording this, but I'll be glad that I did. Still in the recovery room, been here for like four hours. My bladder refuses to cooperate. It will not pee. It's not gonna pee, Like, what's your problem? They say, it's asleep anyway. So I'm still here.

through the abdomen, which I didn't have. Your muscles need weeks to repair themselves, and like sitting up standing walking is all from what I understand, somewhere between oh ouch and why why was I born? Like hurt so bad? I was lucky that I didn't have that I had this newer v notes method and doctor Thomas later told me that it was a good surgery and it was

fun vibes in ther which I like to hear. I feel like I threw a good little party, even though I was in hardcore stirrups and not much of a conversationalist. But I'm glad I have pictures of it, like a very goopy photo booth.

think that it's in a freezer somewhere. I don't know if they incinerated, but someone slicing it up like a deli ham and they're going to take a peek at it. So anyway, I'm doing one thousand percent better than I thought I was going to be doing.

Just not sure what they found. But yeah, just at this point, just a few days on the couch went by, and then got a surprise. I pressed record on the voice notes app.

and we're going to go get some pasta. And now now I got to figure out what I'm going to do with the rest of my life, since it's not going to be as short as I thought it might be, at least I mean, I could get killed tomorrow, but you know what I mean.

let my friends and family know. My mom sent me a picture of her, my sister Janelle, and my brother in law Steve eating a tiny ice cream cone to celebrate. And if you we've listened to the episodes of taking care of my late father, you know that it's our family's little toast to him as well. So they ate those for me that night, and I cried looking at the pictures. So yeah, life, life is not perfect. It never will be. Sometimes things hurt a lot. Sometimes you

don't see things coming. Sometimes you do and then they veer and they spare you at the last second. And this time I feel really lucky. I got I'm getting a little more time than I thought.

On a follow up call with doctor Thomas, she let me know that with the condition I had and some cell abnormalities, it could have later developed into something cancer. So here's to what I'm very lucky to consider a success.

So I hope this right along. I know it is a lot of info, too much info, but I hope it was informative enough so that if you know someone going through a health issue, any health issue, or one like this, I hope this gives you some ideas on how to support them, or maybe for you, how to ask for support, or how to take care of yourself, or how to try to stay calm and optimistic until you get all the facts, or maybe you or someone you know is getting this actual procedure for gender affirming

care or endometriosis or another reason. And now you know more about it if you don't have this anatomy, but if you vote in any country others, reproductive health is on the line, so you'll better educate yourselves in those matters, how things work, so you know how much it matters.

And a new study came out recently the cancer's on the right and young adults, So monitor your health, don't ignore funky stuff, and just know that the sooner you get it checked out, the easier and potentially the cheaper it's going to be. And the fact that I live in a country where so many people don't have access to healthcare is cutting to me. No pun intended since they did take my guts out, but again, vote like

someone else's life depended on it. Special thanks as always to Aaron Talbert who addman Theologies podcast Facebook group with assist from Bonnie Dutch and Shinnefeltis. Thank you for their support too. Our scheduling producer and care package angel is Noel Dilworth. Susan Hale so supportive and is also our managing director. Kelly ar Dwyer makes the website Aveline Malick makes the transcripts, and of course our lead editor and

mpath is the lovely Mercedes Maitland of Maitland Audio. Thank you to the whole team for busting out some encores as I recovered, and thank you to doctor Carris Anna Maria for all the advice, Lazette, Sarah, Crystal, Catherine, Dayalon, Noel Susan for having cake. And farewells to Mike, go Nads and.

side of me and walked me to the bathroom. I'm like doubled over and On our way there, we passed the nurses station, where their tones seemed to suggest they were gossiping about like probably another nurse, and one of them went her back to we said what is wrong with her? And I had the rare opportunity to say I just had a hysterect to me, and then they all fell silent for like one tense moment, and I got to go aha, and it was a good time. I scared him, but we all had a happy little

chuckle about it. Also, if you think of it, it's nice to bring a little tree, like some cookies or a fruit basket or something for the staff taking care of you.