Begins the Voyage Out

Well, this day is over. Somehow, this assertion bears little relief for me. Lately, most of my days are spent looking for eruptions on my skin -- this is one of the quotidian details I will miss when I pass on. Looking for some thing, something discernible as pus, shall we say? Waiting for the little tingle just beneath the not-so-easy skin under my left arm or under my breasts or just at the top of one or both of my thighs, next to my "personal section" that alerts me to what comes next.

It all begins with Hot Water, as much and as often as I can stand. Then comes the cursing, the litany of things I haven't eaten, haven't done: "Godammit! I haven't eaten any chocolate, I haven't smoked any cigarettes! I'm good on the citrus fruit thing, and I haven't had a latte in almost two months! Why does this keep happening?!"

It's silly, really, for me to ask why this keeps happening. The answer is that with me it's chronic. Boils on the insides of my thighs, on my buttocks, on my vulva (of which little remains after a few surgeries) -- any of those delicate places on a big woman's body where her flesh meets itself: warm, dark, moist. It's the bacteria, really.

What I have I have had since the early 1980s. One morning I awoke to find that there were abscesses on my genitals and inner thighs. Horrible, purplish and dark cherry pustules that had arrived on my body in the night. I never saw it coming. Walking was next to impossible and I feared for my life, convinced that this must be some alien strain of VD that I had picked up from sex with a man who spoke no English and who waited tables in my favorite Mexican restaurant at the time. Someone was punishing me.

Olive View was the closest county clinic so I took myself there for my very first misdiagnosis.

After that, it just got more absurd until I found a surgeon who could (a) identify what I had and (b) cut it out of my body. Before he made me feel better, though, he made me feel a hell of a lot worse. Before he made me feel better, he told me that this condition would be with me forever. That's for fucking ever. I was in the hospital on intravenous antibiotics for 5 days before he would even touch me. Then, he removed a strip of skin that started on my right labia and extended almost to my rectum. It was the most painful thing I had ever experienced.

While I was recovering from the operation, the abscesses came back. Somewhere else. Then I began having my period every 19 or so days.

For the next ten years, I tried every treatment I could possibly find. I did my own research, found doctors and alternative health practitioners for myself.

There have been strange teas, acupuncture, acupressure, little black pills, Keflex, Flagyl, Augmentin, Tetracycline, Accutane, medical "intuitives", evangelists laying on hands, nuns in faraway convents praying, stinky salves, homeopathy, naturopathy, a constant supply of 4x4 bandages and surgical tape, Betadine, Hydrogen Peroxide, salicylic acid, colonics, birth control pills, and most recently Depo-Provera. All-cotton clothing, organic deodorant only, Vicks VapoRub and my trusty heating pad.

Right now, this moment, I am alive.

To date, I have had four operations -- three vulvectomies and one other radical excision of three different sites. Believe me, I am one of the fortunate ones. Others have had operations in the double digits; complete with skin grafts and various reconstructive surgical procedures.

My *first* year of graduate school, I had an operation (1999).
My *(supposed) last* year of graduate school, another operation (October, 2005).