Mo Cuisle (Part I)

In April 2004, right before Easter, I realized I was late. And I was worried. Not because I thought I was pregnant but because I thought something seriously wrong with my reproductive parts. My last period was barely a period. I spotted for a day or two, had some light bleeding for barely a day, then spotted some more. I knew I was not going to get my period anytime soon. I just did not have the usual premenstrual symptoms—backache, crankiness, etc. And, if I thought about it, my cycles had just felt off for a long time. They just did not seem the same since I changed my work environment in 2000. At first, I attributed this offness to stress of a new work place and to a new, more demanding work environment. While I had kept track of my period, religiously, since almost my first cycle ever (thanks to my mom who would always mark our day 1 on a calendar in the bathroom by circling the date and marking “M” for mom and “S” for me) I completely lost track of it that year. I eventually started keeping track again on and off for the next few years, then an even closer tab about 7 or 8 months before that April in 2004 because that is when Mr. Warrior and I decided to stop using any kind of birth control. We weren’t deciding to have a baby, exactly. Just that if it happened, then it would happen. I also started keeping some mental notes on when we were having sex. It wasn’t difficult, really, because it wasn’t happening that often. Mr. Worrier had been walking the depression fence for the preceding few years and it affected our sex life. Then, for some reason in February 2004, I started marking sex on my cycle calendar also. There was just one mark that month, on day 8 of my cycle. I remember thinking at the time, if only we had done it a week later, it would have been a perfect hit for ovulation day. I wasn’t charting at the time, but my cycles had always, ALWAYS been 28 days and all the books say that with a 28 day cycle, you ovulate on day 14, right? The books can’t possibly be wrong, right? I mean, each and every single one of them say that a 28 day cycle means you ovulate on day 14. So, it was no surprise when I had bleeding three weeks later even though it was a barely there period. There was some strange, but very light pink on the toilet paper thing about a couple weeks before the barely there period, but I didn't want to think about it. It made me worry that something was drastically wrong with me but I just pushed it into the back of my mind. I actually was able to do that until I realized the Saturday before Easter that I hadn’t gotten my period yet and I was overdue.

I got on the computer and consulted Dr. Google. Dr. Google introduced me to Dr. emedicine who told me all about ovarian failure, ovarian insufficiency, PCOS and a multitude of other conditions whose symptoms included not getting your period. And, in all these descriptions, the first thing to do was to rule out pregnancy before further testing. Since it was a weekend and there was no possibility of seeing a flesh and blood Dr right away, my thinking was that if I took an HPT to rule out pregnancy, when I did get in to see the Dr in a few days, we could go straight into the serious testing to identify the REAL problem I had. I told this to Mr. Warrior and he just kept asking me, are you sure you aren’t really pregnant? Maybe you’re really pregnant? You have been kind of moody lately and tired a lot. And, didn’t you say your boobs were aching almost all the time? I showed him my clearly marked calendar and gently reminded him that we really only had sex one time this year and that was in the previous cycle. No sex this cycle, no way I could be pregnant. I mean being pregnant when you haven’t had sex was kind of like saying if you threw a rock off a tall building it will shoot up into the sky and hit the moon. Kind of unlikely to happen, you know? So, yes, I will take an HPT, but just because that is what you do first when you want to diagnose these kinds of problems. Being the type of people we are, we read up on what the most effective HPT on the market was (First Response Early) and walked across the street to the drugstore. Came home, then learned to pee on a stick. Immediately one line showed up dark as night, as we watched the liquid flow up the stick. I thought it was awfully strange that the reference line was backwards on this stick. I mean it was completely opposite what the little picture on the directions showed! What horrid quality control!! And, this is supposed to be the good test?!? When I pointed this out to Mr. Warrior, he gently pointed out, that it was the pregnancy line not the reference line. I wouldn’t believe him...until minutes later when the second line appeared, lighter than the first. It didn’t matter now which was the reference line and which was the pregnancy line. It was a definite positive.

I still couldn’t make any sense of it but I cried from the sheer joy and relief of it.