Uninsured

The pain in my stomach began again and before I lost my insurance I went and had an ultrasound. The tired, makeup heavy nurse began her stroll across my abdomen and asked why I was so worried. I lay in silence as she rolled and pressed the sticky wand, trying to choose an answer of the many available. I left out my past history with endometriosis, the years of not knowing what was wrong, why I was in constant pain, I left out three surgeries and endless consults, the MRI tick tocking over my body, the late night ER trips, the Advil, the hot baths, the praying on my knees in the bathroom, the blood, the confused doctor faces, the diagnosis, the money, the lost days at work, the lost days with my children, the hours at the bookstore with coffee, researching, the hours online reading, the blood work, the specialists, the fear of worse. I simply told her ' I have a friend who has advanced ovarian cancer, so I want to know that isn't what this is. '

Kaiser found a fibroid, 2cm. My periods continued to be harder, denser, thicker with pain and blood.

A month ago, pain on my right side, intense. After a week, it left. After two weeks, it came back, and now for two weeks I've been in more or less constant right side pain. Pain is a strange, living thing, like fire, flames, it moves and flickers, it changes intensity on a whim, it ebbs and flows and leaves only to burst forth from behind the door even brighter and hotter than before. This pain starts in my upper right side, under the rib cage, and then moves across my stomach, or to my lower right back, or my lower right side, flickering across my stomach in stabby shots. It could be my gallbladder, it could be my liver, it could be my liver and gallbladder, it could be endometriosis growing. It could be the motherfucker C.

I don't know. I don't have insurance. Statistically the likeliest culprit is endometriosis. That is what I have a history with. After my last endo surgery, the doctor told me he found extensive endo lesions and adhesions on my right side. Before that very surgery ( maybe six years ago) I had this same strange lumpy feeling and pain underneath my right rib cage, and I asked him to look carefully there during the surgery. I had this specific discomfort off and on for a long time. He found nothing there. Nothing, he said, lower lip pulled with certainty, nothing. That he found nothing seems to point to gallbladder. The location, and when gallbladders begin to act up- to 'grumble' it is called in the papers, they hurt and swell for a period, then relent. 

Fear. A small caged rodent inside of my chest. It smells old and diseased and sickened like lizards cut in half. I keep it in my chest and let it out in the bathroom, the shower, late at night when I alone. It skulks around my perimeter, tongue out, ugly and completely unforgiving. I hear its nails scraping my ribs during the day while I am ferrying Lola to school, making lunch for Ever, I hear it over the vacuum, whining. 

This week I will attempt to get poor people's insurance. Because of Obama I might be able to. 

I will then get an ultrasound and find out what this caged rodent is.

If not. I can't end this with a question mark, so.