Endometriosis

The Same Yesterday, Today, and Forever

by Katie Schuermann

I was unprepared.

I mean, I understand how it works. Eventually, ovaries run out of eggs. Every girl knows this from her very first period onward, and she somewhat cheerfully anticipates the ending of the diva-like cycles that storm onto the stage of her life, punch her in the gut, cramp her style, and make a mess of her dressing room.

She also knows that these cycles are part of God’s mysterious, marvelous design, and that amidst them, Lord willing, comes the opportunity to conceive and bear children.

No wonder our cycles stomp and shake their fists when there is no child in the womb! Even our periods know what is good and groan with the rest of creation under the burden of sin.

But back to my ovaries.

As the decades wore on, I somewhat began to welcome the idea of the Great Change, even managing to greet the manic, perimenopausal shifts in my menses’ quantity and quality with humor if not actual grace. For amidst my hot flashing, I could recognize God’s mercy to me in granting my petition to make it through the remainder of my estrogenic years without needing another surgery. This mercy was no light thing for me, this being granted enough health to exit the stage the scripted way, with all of my props still in hand.

But though I could celebrate God’s good gifts of an intact uterus and floatie-free ovaries, I was unprepared for the death-sentence that is menopause.

A few years ago, when a nurse, giggling convivially, announced my post-menopausal status to me over the phone as if it were my greatest triumph, I could not return her laugh. My lips, my tongue, my lungs, my heart, my very cells were frozen and immovable like some vast tundra. A horrible, tomb-like cold was emanating from my womb, and my very soul frosted over.

I tell you, it felt like I was gestating an ice pack, and the rivers of my blood froze in my veins.

My fertility was dead. It was laid out before me as if in a casket. I was viewing the dead, and my mortality shivered from the frigid reality of my barrenness.

Barren forever. Barren forevermore. For all eternity.

Never before had immortality seemed so terrible, so final.

It took me awhile to recover my wits that day, for my womb taunted me on repeat: “I am the same barren womb yesterday, today, and forever.”

And I would have despaired — would still be despairing today as I write this post — were it not for the fact that my eternal barrenness is washed and redeemed by regenerative Baptismal waters.

In this alone I have hope.

For my barren womb is not the only thing in my life that is the same yesterday, today, and forever. Jesus the Christ — the Righteous, the Fruitful — also is the same yesterday, today, and forever, and when Pastor Newman poured water over my head and said, “I baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,” I put on Jesus the Christ, the Righteous, the Fruitful. In my Baptism, Jesus took my barrenness upon Himself and gave me His blessed fruitfulness in exchange.

Which means, though my cycles have made their final bow and exited the stage for good, I am more than just a closed show. I continue to walk this earth as one fruitful. Jesus’ blessed goodness, mercy, love, hope, peace, and joy remain the same in my life yesterday, today, and forever.

And when I no longer walk this earth but rest from my labors in my grave, Jesus’ omnipotent sameness will call my name on the Last Day and raise my barren body to new life — to eternal vitality and fruitfulness — never mind my womb.

Fruitful forever. Fruitful forevermore. For all eternity.

Reasons We Never Used IVF – #7

by Katie Schuermann

In all my years of barrenness, I knew never to enter my doctor’s office alone. Jesus always came with me, and so I never bore the pain nor the panic nor the problems apart from His wisdom and support. Always, His wise Word was at hand to guide me and to bless me.

If ever I was unsure of what to think of any particular assisted reproductive technology offered to me by my doctor, I knew that I didn’t need come to a conclusion about it that same minute. In fact, rushing any big decision into a 15-minute time slot seemed unwise. Surely, Christ’s wisdom in praying “not my will, but Yours, be done” shapes my own understanding of the importance of pausing and praying and considering God’s role in all matters concerning life and death.

And so, I would tell the doctor, “Thank you for caring for me. I know you are giving me your best advice. I would like to take a few days to talk to my husband and think about it and pray about it. I will call you soon.”

Then, Jesus and I would walk out of the doctor’s office together.

The moment we were safe behind the locked door of my car, I would lament aloud to Him. I would confess and complain and cry, pouring my grief into His ear.

For that is what barren women do when they are given hard choices. They grieve their hard lot. They sweat and weep with Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane, praying, “Father, if You are willing, remove this cup from me” (Luke 22:42).

Or, specific to my situation, “Father, if You are willing, heal me through this technology offered to me by the doctor.”

The thing is, whenever I prayed that prayer, I was immediately reminded that there was one more question in need of answering first: “Father, is this technology even healing medicine?”

For if it is, then — Rejoice, O daughter of Zion! — it is part of the daily bread God provides to support my body and life. I am free to use it!

But if it is not …

The trouble is, IVF is not healing medicine, for it heals nothing. It only separates and puts asunder the parts of our bodies God created and joined together in marriage. It bypasses the very procreative act God designed for bringing children into the world, and it does so never minding our health. It does so never intending to heal any disease.

In fact, IVF not only doesn’t heal any disease, it does harm to others. The very children we wish to create must suffer isolation from their parents and the indignity of being judged worthy or unworthy of life by sight and statistics alone. They also can be subjected to physical abuses such as enduring genetic testing, being withheld from their parents’ physical, emotional, and spritual care, and being frozen and stored in liquid nitrogen indefinitely, all without their consent. Some children are even disposed of in the clinic or selectively terminated in the womb.

No, IVF is not healing medicine.

Understanding this, I knew all of those years ago and still today that IVF was and is not for me to use.

If your conscience is burdened because you used IVF, know that you are not alone in your regrets. The apostle Paul teaches us in his letter to the Romans that “none is righteous, no, not one” (Rom. 3:10). He also writes that “there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 8:1). Please, talk to your pastor or a trusted Christian friend about your regrets, and put your faith in Jesus’ words from the cross about His work of salvation on our behalf: “It is finished” (John 19:30). Because of Christ’s mercy, we can live our lives looking backward in repentance yet forward in hope.

The Hysterectomy

by Rebecca Mayes

There is a strange phenomena in Western medicine that if an organ is diseased you should just cut it out. This seems to be our best method of “healing” after thousands of years of practicing medicine. Much of our society is walking around without gall bladders, a kidney, a scrotum, part of their intestines, breasts, and, of course, a uterus.

It was recommended early on in my reproductive health struggles that I have a hysterectomy. This was the best promise for relief, they said. But I refused.

So why keep it around? Why not get rid of it? This organ was supposed to be healthy for me, and getting rid of it could put me at risk for cardiovascular issues, a decrease in bone density, or a messed-up metabolism. But most importantly, if it actually performed the way it was supposed to (and there was always the chance it could) then I would have a child, and that would be worth every minute of pain and discomfort and unpredictability. If I let them cut out this organ, I knew they’d be removing hope along with it. To let go of one meant letting go of the other.

So I kept it, despite the fact that it could not contain or control its own endometrial lining, but allowed parts of it to go astray inside my abdominal cavity, creating webs of tissue that would sear with pain when hormone levels changed.

I kept it, even though its partners-in-crime, the ovaries, would regularly spawn cysts that sometimes grew until they burst, causing me to go into shock and rendering me lifeless on the floor (once in the bathroom at work, where the EMS kindly extracted me).

I kept it, regardless of how disappointed my OB/GYN always looked when I handed in my fertility tracker, which was supposed to have green, yellow, and red baby stickers lined up and color-coded, in an obvious pattern. Mine looked more like a traffic light gone haywire.

I kept it, though its unpredictability and lack of punctuality pushed me to the brink of insanity by producing monthly (I use this term loosely) signs and symptoms that gave hope of a pregnancy and then dashed them to pieces, over and over and over again.

I kept it, and simultaneously detested it, when it neglected to nurture my one biological child and instead allowed him?/her? to die.

I kept it, though the amount of blood it was producing in my 40’s was enough to make me anemic.

Until one day, I finally told this uterus of mine (figuratively) and my OB/GYN (literally), “Cut it out.”

This was not, of course, without first praying about the decision and talking to my husband. I felt like a hypocrite, having denounced so many times over the years the over-prescribing of hysterectomies to women who were done having children. It’s true that this was (still is?) a flaw in our medical system, and few physicians or patients recognized the important role this reproductive organ serves beyond reproducing. But my doctor, a Christian man whose joy in life was to help couples bring children into the world and and also lead healthy, pain-free lives, could truly do nothing more for me. It was time to let go.

Seven years later, I can tell you that this surgery completely changed my life. My wise doctor left the healthiest ovary to help me gently transition through menopause, so there was no sudden hormonal shift. My physical pain was completely gone. The optimistic voice in my head that chanted “but what if??” incessantly each month had ceased to haunt me. I was no longer afraid of sudden, conspicuous leaks in public places, or of having a cyst episode while away from home. I could finally have an entire month where I was fully present with, and taking care of, my precious family. My heart had always loved my family, but my body had prevented me from taking care of them consistently. Now this cross had been lifted, and I “rejoiced with great joy.” I still do.

My story is not your story. My decision is not recommended to all who share my medical issues. Sometimes surgery does not provide the full relief a woman is looking for. I knew that going into it, which is one reason I was hesitant to do it earlier. There are no guarantees. The idea of intentionally removing all hope of conceiving probably sounds insane to those of you still without any children, but I was not in that position. I was at a place where I was ready to let the surgeon take both the hope and the pain together.

After our first adoption, someone gifted us with a beautifully framed poem, which read as follows:

“Not flesh of my flesh,
nor bone of my bone
but very remarkably,
all my own.
And never forget,
for a single minute,
that you weren’t born
under my heart,
but in it.”

I read the poem to my oldest son when he was around 5 years old. He looked up at me, bewildered and confused, and said, “That’s a big heart.” Maybe it was time to remove my uterus so I could have more room for the heart.

Happy Grandmother’s Day!

Have you considered the facts?

Your uterus is not performing at her peak these days.
Your doctors draw your blood regularly and order further medical tests.
Your pillbox has both an AM and PM dispenser.
You spend your evenings volunteering at church and around town because you have the time.
The majority of the Christmas gifts you wrap end up under other families’ trees.
You pull up pictures and videos on your phone of other adults’ children to show at parties.
You thrill when a small hand makes a sticky print on your clean window or spills apple juice on your polished floor.
You rejoice when a child asks you to read her the same book five times in a row.
Children tell you their secrets and ask you to display their colored artwork on your refrigerator.
Parents generously bring their children over to your house to visit at their best hours and then take them home for their worst hours.
You travel all across the nation just to sit on a bleacher and watch amateur sports.
You wash the dishes and wipe down kitchen counters for weary mothers.
You offer them your shoulder to cry on and hope they will allow you to mother them this late in life.
You watch parents struggle in raising their children and hold your tongue.
You pray for all of them day and night.
You grieve your own empty nest.

Have you considered the fact that you skipped motherhood altogether in this life and jumped straight into the role of grandma?

It’s not what you wanted, I know, but you have to admit: the joys are deep, the work abundant, and the sleep better than most. It is good to be you.

And for this reason, may I wish you the happiest of Grandmother’s Days tomorrow and every day?

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God with Us

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My mom does something really nice. She sits on the edge of the world with me, both literally and figuratively.

She, who is uncomfortable in high places, hikes to the cliff of my choice — usually the nearest, rough-hewn, dangerous place to which perpetual grief has pushed me — and shares my rock.

Those moments are un-rushed. We don’t talk much. We sit and look and listen and be. I sometimes meet a sob at the end of every breath, but other times my lungs are too busy handling the clean fragrance of juniper berries to bother with anything else.

But Barrenness, my tethered companion, is on that rock, too, and my mom knows it. She wisely never tries to push it over the ledge, for she knows it would take me with it. No, she let’s us both remain, and she stays with us for as long as we want to sit there.

My dad does something really nice, too. He sits with me until the pain goes away.

One summer afternoon my insides throbbed and twisted and turned with the force of a hurricane, and I sat doubled over in pain for hours. My dad led me out onto the front step — there was more privacy outside than in that day — and weathered every minute of the storm by my side. He never said a word but offered me his arm to squeeze through the violent gusts. He was my lighthouse and my harbor, a silent, unmoving, hopeful presence amidst the raging tempest.

My parents serve as masks of God to me in my suffering. They sit with me and wait with me and bear with me, preaching to me with their presence that God, indeed, sits with me and waits with me and bears with me in my suffering, too. They are icons of God’s promise never to leave me nor forsake me, beautiful illustrations of Emmanuel, “God with us.”

I try to remember this whenever I am given the opportunity to sit with someone else in her suffering.

Bearing the Pain

pain

A co-worker sent me the link below. It’s an eye-opening account of what it’s like to live with chronic pain. I would imagine many readers of this blog will be able to relate to Christine Miserandino’s descriptions. Perhaps it’s not physical pain you carry with you each day – perhaps it’s emotional or psychological. It doesn’t matter. Whatever it is, if it occurs each day, or for certain seasons of your life, you know what it means to wear the “I’m doing fine” mask, and it makes you weary and feeling closed off from the rest of the “healthy” world. See Christine’s unique analogy here: ButYouDon’tLookSick.com.

Allow me to put things into perspective, though.

First, from Romans 8:18: “For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.”

And second, from the Lutheran Service Book, Hymn 423:

Jesus, refuge of the weary,

Blest Redeemer whom we love,

Fountain in life’s desert dreary,

Savior from the world above:

Often have Your eyes, offended,

Gazed upon the sinner’s fall;

Yet upon the cross extended,

You have borne the pain of all.

Artifice

20071224-1937 copy A long time ago in a land far, far away – long before Prince Charming entered the story – I used to sing for my supper. Literally. I taught at a private music school during the day and gigged at night, and some evenings my teaching schedule crept dangerously close to the pit orchestra’s downbeat.

On one such evening, I remember having only a meager thirty-five minutes in between my final piano class of the day and curtain call at the theater to turn my loafer-ed, spectacled, teacher-self into a seventeenth-century princess with full corset and wig – all without the help of a fairy godmother, I might add – and every one of those thirty-five minutes needed devoting to transportation. The theater sat a good forty-five minutes across town.

I did what any reasonable adult would do. I applied my stage make-up before my final piano class and strategically set my bag by the door so I could bolt to my pumpkin-carriage the second my students finished playing their major triads.

Only, there was a small glitch in my plan. One of my voice students lingered too long after her lesson, and I only had time to apply make-up to one eye before the piano class started.

I felt like a freak show as I walked into that classroom, my right eye a circus act of blues and pinks and curling lashes while my left eye remained a plain, unadorned stagehand. I remember little, blonde Alexa looking at me with wide eyes, and I braced myself for the unfiltered truth which would inevitably pour from her six-year-old mouth.

“Oh, Mith Katie,” Alexa lisped. “You are thoooo beautiful.”

Huh. She didn’t seem to mind that only half of my face was a rainbow. Apparently, even a little bit of make-up was an improvement in Alexa’s eyes.

“Thank you, Alexa.”

I won’t bother you with the details of how I actually ~~broke the law~~ managed to get to the theater on time that night, nor will I spend time psychoanalyzing the concept of beauty as understood by a young, female child. I will simply tell you how this experience set me up to cope with something that occurred fourteen years later.

“Aunt Katie,” my niece said a few months ago, sitting on my lap and eyeing my face with a good measure of fear and disapproval, “you don’t have any eyebrows.”

“I know.”

“Why?”

“Some medicine made them go away, and they never came back.”

My niece reprimanded that which was missing with a sharp wiggle of that which she had in abundance before settling back in my lap to resume the story we had been reading.

Thankfully, Alexa had taught me the magic spell make-up casts over young girls, so I didn’t panic. I simply purchased an eyebrow pencil and cut some well-placed bangs across my forehead. Now, my niece doesn’t even notice what’s missing. I’d still rather not have to walk through the Midway that is the make-up aisle in department stores, but I suppose I’ve hit that age when indulging in a little artifice is a service I can offer to my littlest neighbors.

So, bring on the Rimmel 001, ladies. Feather those bangs. Endometriosis may try to be an evil stepmother in our lives, but she need not keep our princesses from going to the ball.

The doctor’s in…

IMG_1879 copy We were blessed to have an OB-Gyn speak with us at The Great Getaway last summer. Here is a collection of some of the wise tidbits he shared with us:

On infertility…

“Fertility is one of those areas in life where God has us where He wants us. We have to lay it down. We have to give it to God. Who ultimately is in control? It’s not me [the doctor]; it’s not you and your husband; God is the one in control.”

“Infertility is a cross. It’s the cross God has given us. We are to bear our crosses.”

“We can’t even claim to understand why this is happening. This is a wound only God can heal.”

“No matter what happens, your Father loves you. Your Father has your best in mind.”

“Our culture says, ‘I have a right to have my 2.2 children when I want them. Children are things.’ We do not have a right to have children…Children are a precious gift from God.”

“If we had something that worked 100% of the time, then we would lose the awe and wonder of creation.”

On IVF…

“Infertility is not a disease. It is a symptom of a problem. IVF circumvents that problem. Let’s figure out the problem rather than circumvent the problem.”

“Who in the world do we think we are in saying that someone is a Grade D embryo?”

“For every baby that is born through IVF, between 20 to 30 are lost.”

The cost? “$15,000-$18,000 per cycle”

On why life begins at conception…

“Genetically, that embryo is not the mom; that embryo is not the dad. That’s a new person.”

On whether or not the pill ever acts as an abortifacient…

“If it happens once, isn’t that too many?”

A Hot Mess

I broke in my workout a couple days ago.

I was holding a high plank, staring at the black, cork floor as my sweat made a shiny puddle under my nose. My arms were shaking.

“C’mon, Katie,” the instructor knelt in front of me. “You’ve got this.”

I had just fatigued my shoulders doing renegade rows and double kettle bell push presses, and now, after completing a pushup, I was supposed to walk my hands backwards until I stood bent over my own feet, then walk my hands back out into a high plank and do another pushup. Over and over again. This was only the fifth one in the first set, and I was already about to fall flat on my face. There was no way I could do three sets.

“You can do this.”

I felt a familiar panic overcome me, a desperation of spirit that comes with the Law, with the knowledge of the limits of my own, fallen, diseased flesh. I had felt it before. I had felt it as my doctor filled out a request for diagnostic mammograms four years ago; as my menses started a week late when I was sure I was pregnant; as I rocked back and forth on the floor during a pain episode related to endometriosis; as I put on the hospital gown before my surgery; as I leaned dizzily against the gym wall while I was on Lupron.

My flesh always fails.

The puddle under my nose went blurry as hot tears mixed with my sweat. I gave in to my panic and leaned back on my heels, too embarrassed to look the instructor in the eye. My face was already red and shiny from my workout, so it took a second for her to see the tears.

She leaned back on her own heels. “What’s going on?”

“I just feel so weak.”

I don’t remember what she said in response. I know she was encouraging, and I am sure whatever she said was true. It’s just that there was so much I wasn’t telling her. The pain of endometriosis. The fear of it coming back. Every day of my childless life being a reminder of my failing flesh.

My tears weren’t really about a few measly pushups. My tears were about the grief of this creation groaning in response to sin. My sin. And it overwhelms me sometimes.

In those moments, there is only one thing to do: turn in faith to Him who has mercy on sinners.

“Christ, save me. Christ, forgive me. Christ, come quickly.”

Then, wait in hope for the LORD to deliver me from my failing flesh on the Last Day.

And, while I’m waiting, I might as well try to do another pushup.

Certainty

I am certain that doctors who recommend women with endometriosis abstain from beef are not actually referring to burgers.

I am also certain that naturopaths who recommend women with endometriosis abstain from dairy are not actually referring to feta cheese.

And I am most certain that nutritionists who recommend women with endometriosis abstain from sugar are not actually referring to the sugar in dark chocolate.

This I do swear to be the the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me to a bag of chocolate chips.