Total pages in book: 110
Estimated words: 104050 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 520(@200wpm)___ 416(@250wpm)___ 347(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 104050 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 520(@200wpm)___ 416(@250wpm)___ 347(@300wpm)
I close my eyes and try to breathe, but every exhale just seems to wind me up tighter.
The door opens with a soft knock, and Dr. Patel glides in. She’s petite, maybe about forty-five, with a waterfall of black hair and a white coat that looks freshly ironed. Her voice is gentle, almost melodic. “Simone? I’m Dr. Patel. So nice to meet you.”
I nod, not trusting my voice.
She sits on the stool and wheels over, her movements slow and deliberate. “I hear you’re having some trouble with pain and irregular periods?”
I nod again, gripping the paper sheet with both hands. “Yeah. It’s because I have fibroids. I’ve known since I was sixteen. They said it was a mess in there.”
She smiles, soft and not at all patronizing. “Well, we’ll take a look and see what’s going on, okay? I know this can be scary, but I promise I’ll talk you through every step.”
She asks me to lie back, scoots the table to recline, and covers my knees with the sheet before lifting my feet into the stirrups. The metal is so cold it makes me gasp.
“Sorry,” she says. “We try to warm them, but it never quite works.”
I grit my teeth and try to focus on the ceiling, which is covered in stickers of cartoon clouds and hot air balloons. It’s meant for little kids, but somehow it helps.
Dr. Patel talks as she works, her hands gentle but confident. “I’m just going to do a quick exam,” she says. “You’ll feel some pressure.”
Pressure is an understatement. It’s like someone trying to inflate a basketball inside me, but I don’t flinch. I keep my eyes on the fake sky, counting every breath.
She hums as she examines, then pulls back. “You’re doing great,” she says. “Now I’m going to do a quick ultrasound, okay?”
I nod. She picks up a wand from the counter and wraps it in a plastic sheath, then coats it in clear, gloppy gel. The sight of it makes me want to puke, but she’s so fast and practiced that before I know it, she’s maneuvering it gently inside me.
The screen on the wall flickers to life, showing a blurry, grayscale world. Dr. Patel tilts the probe this way and that, clicking the mouse every so often.
“That’s your uterus,” she says, pointing. “And here—” she circles an area with the mouse, “—are the fibroids.”
I squint at the screen, trying to make sense of it. It looks like a storm cloud, with white specks floating in the gray.
“Are they bad?” I ask.
She clicks again, zooming in. “You have three, moderately-sized. There’s some distortion of the uterine cavity, but nothing we can’t work with. I’ve seen much worse.”
She withdraws the wand (mercifully fast), then helps me sit up. “Okay, you can get dressed. I’ll give you a moment, and then we’ll talk options.”
She leaves me with a box of tissues and a sense of vertigo, like the world just tilted sideways. I clean myself up and pull on my leggings, hands shaking so much I can barely manage the zipper.
When Dr. Patel returns, she’s holding a stack of pamphlets and a notepad. She sits across from me, crossing her legs at the ankle.
“There are a few ways to treat fibroids,” she says, drawing a little diagram on the pad. “Medication, minimally invasive surgery, or sometimes just monitoring, if the symptoms aren’t too bad.”
She slides the diagram over to me. It shows a normal uterus, then one with fibroids bulging out. “The main concern is fertility,” she says. “But with advances in surgery, we can often remove or shrink the fibroids without damaging the uterus.”
I stare at the paper, trying to make the words stick. “Really? So I could actually get pregnant?”
Dr. Patel looks me straight in the eye. “With the right treatment, yes. I won’t lie—there are no guarantees, and even after removing fibroids, some of my patients have had difficulty conceiving. But I also have patients with similar cases who have carried healthy pregnancies.”
The words land like a punch. For years, I’ve thought of my insides as a biological dumpster fire—something to be worked around, not with. The idea that I could someday grow a kid in there is so foreign, I can barely process it.
Dr. Patel sees the panic on my face and softens her tone. “I don’t want you to feel pressured. You’re young, and we can take this as fast or as slow as you like. If you want to talk to a counselor, or even just come back for another exam in a few months, that’s perfectly fine.”
I nod, then shake my head, then nod again. “I just…I didn’t think it was possible to get pregnant.”
She smiles, not a fake doctor smile but a real, human one. “I’m not sure who told you that. Possible doesn’t always mean easy, but it’s not impossible. You have options, Simone, and you’re lucky because medicine has developed minimally-invasive laparoscopic, robotic, or hysteroscopic technologies for addressing fibroids which preserve the uterus for future pregnancy. It’s a brave new world out there.”