Issue #32 Shake It Like You Own It
Welcome to A Most Unreliable Narrator, the slice-of-life newsletter of GenXer around town, Lisa Rabey. I talk about anything and everything with a bit of swears. I’m glad you’re here.
True to my word, on February 10, 2018 I started the "lifestyle change" TEH and I put together and I have stayed with it. Cue applause and give me my g-d gold star. The diet consists of no added sugar, no cow dairy, low sodium and carb, no white foods (mainly white bread, flour, and rice) and we eat three snacks and three meals over the course of the day. Eating six times a day is often difficult and on occasion a pain in the ass and as I stuff my mouth, I am reminded of how foie gras is made.
After eating mainly lean proteins, veg, fruits, and whole grains for a few weeks, my body revolted the night we ate white flour based pasta despite the fact I was eating whole grain bread for sammiches for those few weeks and felt fine. I went gluten-free the next day and as soon as I dropped all bread, white rice, and Sun Chips out of my diet, the bloating from what I suspect was from gluten-based foods disappeared. I got some tips from a friend's husband on brands to buy for replacement bread/pasta and so far I've found a few breads that don't taste like cardboard but rice remains elusive and disgusting.
Adding GF to the diet hasn't changed the diet too much but it's hard when going out as I am 12 and I love chicken fingers. TEH and I were eating out 3x a week, at least, prior to the "lifestyle change" and that stopped once we started eating "clean." A woman cannot live by at home foods for long so we decided to go out to eat, at a nice place, once a month. (I cannot even imagine how much money we are saving not eating out. Hundreds per month at least. We ate out. A lot.) This past Wednesday we went to a local steakhouse and partook in a four course meal. I took Benadryl and enjoyed cheese and sour cream on my loaded baked potato along with bearnaise sauce on my steak (but no gluten foods) and I felt fine. TEH, however, is a different story. His body revolted and he felt ill for a few days after while I only gained roughly 1/2 a pound and had slight bloating.
A few nights later we were out running errands and he did not want to cook and we were both sick of our usual fare so we headed to a Cuban restaurant where I had croquettes for the first time in over a decade and while those are fried, I enjoyed them with every ounce of being. I'm reasoning having a rare treat is okay and giving myself that kind of permission is making this "lifestyle change" so much easier.
I've lost nearly nine pounds in the last month and I'm feeling pretty good about this plan since I am proving to myself I can be disciplined about a thing and seeing results from that discipline. There was a rocky week or so where I kept bouncing around the same three pounds and I couldn't figure out what the fuck was going on. I had Kate assess my food intake on MyFitnessPal and she said nothing was ringing alarms so how about I drop the caloric intake down to 1700 from 1950? Even after a few days of that, the weight wasn't budging and it took all of my resolve to calm myself from the ledge this change was not working. It has only been a short time, I reasoned. You have nearly nine months to see results, I told myself. But I couldn't stop the occasional panic.
Looking over my spreadsheet, I wrote down my moods and any changes that might cause the weight to stubbornly remain and saw over the 30 days we changed our eating habits, my period showed up three times with about a week for at least two of them for a total of 15 days. I have PCOS so having wacky periods wasn't new but having it three times over the course of six weeks is and it was heavy enough I was bleeding through industrial tampons as well as an industrial maxi-pad every three or so hours was a concern. I booked an appointment with my doctor who referred me to an OB/GYN radiologist to get an ultrasound. The ultrasound did not look good: the long lack of occasional sloughing of my uterine walls was causing a thickening which could lead to "trouble" (quote unquote from the OB/GYN radiologist). The radiologist referred me back to my GP to make accommodations for a uterine biopsy which is where they clamp open your cervix and scrap your insides. Fun!
There was a week spread from the ultrasound to the biopsy so I began to give some thought to the options the doctors briefly mentioned when my legs were spread and before the ultrasound dildo camera was inserted up my vagina which were all basically a variety of different pills. I asked about weight gain and I was told "minimal" but if there is a pill that has a weight gain side effect, I'll gain the weight plus more. Initially, I refused to entertain the idea of taking pills but if the biopsy came out fine then maybe pills of varying degrees were my only options.
But I was reminded from friends with similar problem there are definitely other options other than pills like surgical options such as D&C and ablations and they said it changed the way their body handled periods and how they felt overall (for the better). A few had hysterectomies and they said it was one of the best decisions they've ever made. I found out recently an aunt had uterine cancer coupled with my mother had cancer of the vulva and my maternal grandmother had cancer of the cervix, so there is a historical health component as well. I've been told I could not have kids (or it would be extremely difficult). There is a lot going on in my uterus.
I then began to reason I've had my period in some form for over 35 years (I started when I was 8) and the amount of money I have spent on tampons, pads, and other uterus products is probably in the tens of thousands. I am an old, coupled with the family history of reproductive cancers, 90% unable to birth a child, and TEH doesn't want to have kids. I am just done.
This is not an easy decision to make but as I sat naked from the waist down and covered by a thin paper sheet before the biopsy, I blurted out I wanted to explore the option of having a hysterectomy. My GP said she absolutely supported me in this decision given my family and my own histories. The biopsy then became elective which I opted to do to see if there was any "trouble" as the radiologist feared. (As of today, Wednesday 3/21, I have not heard back on the results of the biopsy but I have received my referral to the OB/GYN surgeon so appointment in the upcoming weeks.)
I have been walking through the idea of a hysterectomy with a few friends who've had them and a few other close friends who acted like soundboards to see if I was being rash or not. We all agreed it was a pretty hard decision to make AND the surgeons would be taking an organ out! That's some serious shit. I began to feel pretty on board with it (though speaking to an OB/GYN surgeon will answer questions and clarify things for me, for sure) until I found out one of the people I stalk online is pregnant. I felt a gut punch to my stomach and heart and my body completely deflated.
I've become disillusioned with this stalkee for awhile. I've been following them for years and it's only been in the last six months or so I've grown tired of them but checking up on their life was like an old habit. Their online feeds have moved from bits and bytes of their personal life mixed in with their work to now it's all about the shilling of their work, RTs of people tweeing about their work, and policial rants (tho' they often hit the nail on the head). What made following them from the days of LiveJournal so enjoyable because they were relatable but now they had reached that sphere of celebrity where it's so carefully curated their personality has been wrung out and left to die, I couldn't relate to them anymore.
In regards to the disillusionment came to a head within the last few weeks when they made a claim that I knew not to be true. That claim is they have sold every piece of work they have ever created. Every. Single. One. I found this claim to be ridiculous and inauthentic. 99% of advice given by writers is you'll write shit work and then you get better. You get better at writing shit work. A lot of it will be unpublishable. That's the point. You may also have a trunk novel or five. (A trunk novel is typically one of your first (or second or third) novel you've ever written and it's unsellable because it's crap. Even Dickens had his moments of not selling all the things.) This claim was also false because it triggered a memory from the days in the beginning of their career they couldn't sell a goddamned thing. That was a big lament on their LiveJournal account years ago. Their work got rejected over and over and they are prolific as hell so why make this claim?
A part of me is still jealous of their life, sure, but it's calmed down significantly but seeing they are pregnant with a kid and they are in my age group? Jesus, you would have thought the world had ended.
The immediate deflation of my personality and body was so apparent TEH grew concerned. "I'm sad," I said. "Why are you sad?" he asked. "I don't know why" I replied. But he teased it out of me and when I confessed I was reading that particular stalkees updates he blew up and told me I knew better. I was torturing myself for no reason. I knew he was right but rational thinking was not happening so I took a Klonopin, laid on the couch, and eventually slept for 13 hours which were punctured by strange dreams.
The gut punch was not so much that stalkee was pregnant but that the stalkee had a choice to bring a child into the world (or not). I've never had that choice. I was told from an early age that having a child was going to be extremely difficult AND the history of reproductive parts cancer AND my age AND a history of mental illness which is hereditary killed that chance for me. I've been angry about this for at least a decade if not more. It did not help that when I was in the prime of my child birthing years, I put it off. Ex-fiance #2 wanted kids when I was in my 20s but I wanted to have a career. When the career option failed and I went back to college, I told myself I would have a go at having a child on my own (I had sperm donors lined up who were even more eager once I told them I would absolve them of responsibility) when I was 35 but that went to hell when I couldn't get a decent job after college and ended up in two master's programs, one right after the other. I was 38 when I was done with school and then it was back on the career path. TEH was slightly wobbly on the whole kid having thing but I had my first round of unmedicated crazy breakdown around 2012 so having kids immediately got tabled.
It's never been a matter of wanting kids or not. Sure, I wanted a daughter to look like me and someone I could unconditionally love but if I was honest, it was more of an "everyone's doing it so I should too" feeling but in the end, I never got that luxury to make that choice.
I've been working on how to phrase what losing my uterus would mean to me other than the lack of children. I've been cautious on what words I want to use because I want to be inclusive of trans women who do not have uteruses themselves. This forced me to ask what it meant to be a woman and what was that definition. I kept finding myself relying back on my sex organs defined me but it should be more than that but I am failing at the answer. I've always defined my womanhood as having a vagina, uterus, and boobs and not by my interests, appearance, or talents. It wouldn't be just the loss of not having children as trans women who do not fully transition still have that option open to them.
So, I don't know what makes me a woman but all I know is the anger of having the choice taken away from me to have kids is almost as depressing as when the #teamharpy case came about. Almost.
(I don't have a playlist for the issue. Sorry about that folks.)
You've just finished reading A Most Unreliable Narrator,
the spill-your-guts newsletter by Lisa Rabey.
If you dig this, pass me on to a friend!
Comments? Questions? Want to say "Hi!"?
Just hit reply and send me a note!
(Fuck fascists and Nazis!)
You've just finished reading A Most Unreliable Narrator: the slice of life newsletter from the GenXer about town, Lisa Rabey. You can find me on Instagram, Facebook and Bluesky if you're so inclined. I am everywhere. Copyright © 1996 - 2025 by Lisa Rabey