Things my mother taught me

Pretty blond woman with bangs in a coral coloured t-shirt, smiling while trying to hold onto a cranky toddler.
my Mom crocodile wrestling my daughter

Mother’s Day is a paltry slip of a day, heavily laden with overcrowded brunches and poorly molded hand print ceramics — but that’s why they made mimosas an acceptable breakfast drink. Really though, society? A single day for having manufactured a human? Or for raising and civilizing a tiny monster you otherwise procured? Seems like weak-sauce (this is a bad thing) to me. One should celebrate their amazing Mom on a daily basis. Showering her with praise and candy, so long as it doesn’t result in a concussion.

On this Mother’s Day, I would like to impart some amazing things that my Mom taught me. Things that inspired me to become the person who I am, and have heavily influenced the type of mom that I’m trying to be.

A grocery store is a good place for a water fight

Twelve-year-old-Erin and Mom were actively groping vegetables, as one does before you commit to taking something home. In the produce section of the grocery store, they occasionally “shower” all the vegetables that can benefit from a postmortem wet t-shirt contest . My Mom gave me a sneaky look, picked up a bunch of parsley and with the skill of a frat boy in a locker room armed with a wet towel, whipped a fairly sizable torrent of water at me — right in my face. After screaming and finding proper produce with which to retaliate (leafy ones are better — they hold the most water), the tradition of grocery store water fights was born. We weren’t kicked out of as many grocery stores as we should have been. However, I look forward to being banned from many stores when continuing this tradition with my daughter.

You can never have enough free condoms

I waited until I was eighteen years old to have sex for the first time, and by today’s standards that makes me an honorary nun. As my Mom and I had always talked openly about everything, especially sex, I told her that I was planning on bumping uglies with my boyfriend. She responded, “It’s about time, I would have done him a long time ago!”, attempting to horrify me. To which I replied, “I’ll take photos so you can give me tips afterwards.” It’s okay if you are all now jealous that you do not have sarcastic sex talks with your moms. I was already on the pill for two years because Mom put me on them when my little sisters started having sex (“Better safe than pregnant!”), but I did not yet have condoms. We didn’t have condom money (we saved that for things like food and rent), so Mom marched me over to the free clinic to pick some up. At the free clinic, they had a fish bowl full of condoms up for grabs. The assumption was that you would take two or three and be on your merry way. My Mom charged up to the front desk, the waiting room full, eyes burning holes into the back of my head, as she gleefully started putting handfuls of condoms into her purse. Like, more than twenty condoms. “Mooooooooommmm…” I protested in my best embarrassed teenager voice, trying to get her to stop. She looked up, elbowed me in the rib and drawled, “Well, we don’t want to have to come back tomorrow!” Then my head exploded and I died. I’m totally doing this to my kid.

Feel bad for bullies…their parents are stupid

I have always had opinions and have never been shy about expressing them. In elementary school, my opinions included: being an atheist at ten years old in a town full of Catholics; carrying a briefcase of books around school was an amazing thing to do; foraging for clover on the school ground to add to my lunch sandwich was wise; and it would have been better to have been born a druid so that you could train trees to eat your enemies. Also, I had unique fashion sense, got straight A’s, had thick glasses, a bad perm, braces and head gear. So, yeah — I was bully bait. I used to come home from school crying all the time because I was teased so badly. Sensitive Erin was sensitive. People couldn’t call me stupid, so they went with the traditional “ugly”, “weird” and variations thereof. Not a very creative bunch. Still, words hurt, and my Mom did not like to see me upset every day. So she sat me down and very earnestly told me, “Erin, people are going to be mean to you. It’s not because what they’re saying is true, it’s because they’re jerks and they were raised improperly. You need to feel bad for the bullies because their parents are jerks. Think of how awful it must be to have jerk parents.” While I understand this is not 100% true in all cases, I super loved this as a response. I did feel bad for those kids and their exceptionally jerky parents. I even told a few kids how I felt bad for them in the midst of some bullying sessions, which was met with entertaining reactions. The bullying did not stop, but I stopped caring what they said, and for that, my Mom will always be my hero. I hope I never have to use this line with my daughter, but it’s logged in my brain just in case.

So, I submit that we ramp this up and expand Mother’s Day to a full week! Seven days to celebrate the lady who raised you is hardly a chore, children of the world. And if you happen to have a terrible mom, you can use this time to reflect on what she did that you absolutely will not do to your kids, should you choose to have some. Those brunch mimosas, they work everyday of the year after all. To my Mom, who could most certainly beat up your mom, I want to say, “Happy Mom Day!” and give her virtual hugs all the way up in Canada. I’m here all Mother’s week… ba-dum-tish!

Escape from the uterus

tiny cuddles
tiny cuddles
tiny cuddles

My daughter Agent (yep, I named her that) is turning two in two weeks, and at this stage, lot of moms tend to start thinking about adding another human to their collection. The memory of labour has faded, your child is able to run about on their own, and your body has felt normal for awhile. I am currently husband- and uterus-free (I had cervical cancer). but instead of feeling sad that I cannot reproduce, I decided to vividly re-live my epic labour to remind myself that one is a fine number of children to own.

Pre-labour is the best part

I started labour at midnight on May 5th, 2011 with the baby face-up (yay for back labour!) and had contractions every thirty minutes, moving up to twenty minutes until 8am. I woke up my then-husband and told him that we were likely having a baby that day. I decided to live-tweet my labour, which I highly recommend, because now that Twitter allows you to download your archive, you can re-hash your specific insanity.

twitter text

Then I called my sister-in-law/doula Lex, who was supposed to come to San Francisco from Calgary, Alberta, Canada two days later. She suggested I have a glass of wine to see if the contractions would stop because I was hoping she’d be here. I opened a bottle of South African wine we had been saving for the day of, because that’s where Agent was conceived. Sadly, the wine did nothing but taste awesome at 8:30am and make me slightly tipsy while ginormously pregnant. I watched cartoons with my then-husband during the morning to try and distract myself from the pains, while we did the countdown until we were supposed to leave for the hospital.

Just got called by state disability insurance: "Have you delivered yet?" Me: "No, I'm in labour right now." SDI: "Oh, well carry on then."

Get your ass to the hospital

My contractions were five minutes apart at 11:15am, then moved to two minutes apart at 11:42am, so we called an Uber Taxi (the driver of which was a little terrified) to take us to the birth center at the hospital. The midwife and nurse didn’t think I was reacting enough to the contractions and almost sent me home, until they noticed a drop in the baby’s heart rate when I was on my back. Later they praised me for my calmness during the contractions and realized that I just dealt with it all in agony-induced-silence.

twitter text

They decided to put me on monitoring and checked me in. At 3:10pm, I was 4cm dilated. At 7:08pm I was 6cm dilated. The baby’s heart rate continued to dip every time I had a contraction, and twice an hour they would rush into the room and have me change positions from the birthing ball to the bed and back, flipping my belly to different sides and so on until her heart rate came back up. A few times I was on oxygen to help her get through the contraction faster. They thought at the time that she was pushing on the cord in an awkward position, causing her heart rate to drop. It was all very frantic and scary.

twitter text

I had made a snazzily designed birth plan which was heavily geared towards a natural birth, and I was trying to tough it out without medication.

Screenshot of highly over designed birth plan.

Take all the drugs

At 9pm, I had not eaten, hadn’t slept, and just needed to rest so I requested a dose of Fentanyl, which just dulls the peaks (but not the sensations) of the contractions and allows you to rest. I had one shot at 9pm, then another at 10:15pm. At 11:15pm, I was 7cm dilated and had been able to have some rest between contractions, which had stayed at about two minutes apart.

Drugs. Just say yes.

All the while, my then-husband and wicked friend Ashley (who was standing in for my doula/sister-in-law Lex) were doing back compresses and kept a heating pad on me while I contracted. My friends John and Robert were also there entertaining me for a good portion of the hospital labour. Robert brought burritos, which I immediately decided needed to leave the room due to smell and John was aiding my iPad cartoon-watching. Then I had a final shot of Fentanyl at midnight, which didn’t do anything for me but give me a headache — not ideal. My then-husband was sleeping and Ashley and John were at home resting. I was by myself in the room awake on a birthing ball with contractions, now every minute, wondering if it would ever end. I was checked again and I hadn’t progressed in dilation at all, so I decided to ask for an epidural at 1:30am. Spinal needles for the win, yo.

Photo of an IV bag.

Just take this baby out of me now

By 2:30am I was 8.5cm dilated, but the baby was still having distress. By 6:13am, I still hadn’t progressed at all and the baby was still in distress, so we decided to break my water manually and try to induce with Pitocin. The baby seemed unimpressed, and it didn’t make me dilate any further. They injected me with something to stop the contractions, which made me shake like I was having a seizure, but it didn’t really stop the contractions. They then wheeled me to the emergency surgery area, and the OB came in to talk to me about the options. We decided to continue with a low level of Pitocin to see if it would do anything before opting for a c-section. It just dropped the baby’s heart rate more, so they prepped me for surgery.

C-sections are spooky-cool

As I headed into the surgery, my then-husband nearly passed out. But he managed to recover and get some sweet-ass photos of our baby being torn out of my body. They lowered “the veil” so we could see her being taken out of me, clawing her goo-covered self into the world, and my then-husband went with the nurses as they checked her out.

At 8:32am I delivered a lovely 6lbs baby girl, who had the cord wrapped around her neck twice. She was 19.75 inches long, and had pooped my uterus as a result of her distress, so it’s good that we just got her out of there. She pooped all over everyone, apparently (over-achiever like her mom), and then they brought her to me and put her by my head for a while so I could nuzzle her before they took her to pediatrics to see if she had suffered any trauma from the blood flow issues she had been having.

By 9:30am I was done with surgery, and at 11:30am I got to leave recovery and was able to meet Agent properly. I wound up with a fantastic baby, a nice scar that looks not-unlike a smile right above my vagina, and a spectacular war story to tell at my kid’s wedding.

Apocalyptic ballerina cancer fundraiser

A ballerina crouches with intent on a rooftop. Her face is near the smoke drifting out of a pipe venting in the roof top.
Two objectively stunning women standing together at an art show in front of photos of a ballerina.
Erin and Linda at our show/ photo by steffen matt

After my friend Linda was diagnosed with a type of breast cancer that was was only treatable by chemotherapy, radiation and surgery, we decided to do a photo series of an Apocalyptic Ballerina together. We had always wanted to do this, but suddenly it became more poignant. After some chatting, we thought it would be great to make it a fundraiser for a local breast cancer charity. We partnered with Breast Cancer Action, a group that researches and educates on environmental causes for cancer, and embarked on our first charity event. It was Linda’s first ballet photo series, my first solo photo show, my first composite photo/Photoshop-heavy picture attempts, and a hell of a lot of fun. We also learned some things.

Charity is harder than it should be

One of the first things we discovered is that if you want to make money for charity and not have it taxed as income, it is not easy (we did this in San Francisco). You either have to find a charity to work with you (which we did), or you have to fill out a seemingly endless stack of paperwork to get full-time or temporary charity status. Also, the charity itself has to do a huge amount of work for you, to allow you to help them, as they are subjected to the pile of bureaucratic mess that you are trying to avoid. So not all charities are willing to partner with someone who wants to do their own event — though they will all just take straight up donations. Marie Bautista of BC Action was our charity superhero sponsor. As we wanted to provide tax receipts for people who purchased art, there were many stipulations we had to follow. Also, we found out that you can only give tax receipts for physical purchases for the amount above the cost of the physical item. Charity, it seems, is in the paperwork.

Most businesses don’t donate a lot to charity

We had started out thinking that we would be getting all our locations, outfits, hair, makeup and prints donated to us. We had figured out a way, via Breast Cancer Action, that people who donated time or physical items could get a tax receipt for the goods or services they provided. We thought this was awesome and everyone would totally go for it. Good cause? Giant smiles? Cancer-ridden ballerina? Who isn’t going to help out with that?

It was a harder sell then we thought it would be — but we did have successes. Diva International did Linda’s hair for the Pier Shoot. They are super rad people. They were not open during the times we needed to shoot the other scenes, but they did offer to help as much as we needed. The background for the Coal Mural shoot was lent to us by Zeph Fishlyn and the Beehive Collective, and we shot that scene in the Obvious offices. eBay was the only business we found that actually has a charity policy, wherein they wave their fee entirely and let you use their service for free. They also had amazing customer service, who helped us out when we accidentally got ourselves banned by testing our auction with insane numbers that set off their fraud detector. Our mannequins and easels for the show were donated by Leslie Wong of Blueprint Studios. We got charity discount rates from our other vendors TCHO (thanks Tyler!) and Photoworks, but we both still ended up having to shell out a reasonable amount of money to make it all happen.

Another discovery we made was that businesses tend to run out of their charitable donation budgets early in the year. So if you’re planning something, start in January.

DIY and have really good friends

Linda and I did her hair and makeup ourselves after the first location. Linda was also largely outfitted with my personal clothes, as I tend to own a lot of puffy, gothy dresses. My old rave gear and Burning Man accessories were also heavily featured. This cut costs and justified a lifetime of playing dress-up. We did have to buy a cheap cat suit online, but I later re-purposed it. You can always use a cat suit at some point in your life, at any rate, so it’s never a bad investment.

Our friends: Ashley, John, Juan, Ally, Ramiro; Linda’s husband Steffen; and my then-husband, all volunteered at a few shoots each. We kept to free public locations mostly, but Ashley and John let us use the rooftop of their building as well. My friend Dan DJ’d at the event, providing great apocalyptic accompaniment.It’s amazing to have real friends to help out when you really need them, and ours stepped up to the challenge.

Special shout-out to the Chronicle building security guard for not kicking us out of the Minna Street bridge tunnel for throwing garbage around and blocking the street temporarily (giant smiles did come in handy there — and yes, we did clean it up).

You can get a disease ironically

Maybe it’s because I live in the Mission in San Francisco and am constantly surrounded by hipsters who love irony, but near the end of our shoots, I found out that I had cervical cancer. Oh well, at least I was already raising money for someone’s cancer, right? Our show was set for two weeks after I got my diagnosis and two weeks before my hysterectomy, so it was nice to have a distraction.

Apocalyptic Ballerina art is hard to sell…but cool as fuck

Three pieces of mounted art showing a ballerina writing notes on the pier.

We did end up selling quite a few pieces and raised $4400, but we have some left. (Hint, hint!) Maybe a goth ballerina surrounded by toxic waste is not everyone’s cup of tea? Clearly we think it’s awesome, but we definitely have a target market. I don’t think we got enough visibility by word of mouth alone, but we tried, had fun and raised money for a good cause. So without further ado, I give you the Apocalyptic Ballerina!

The Apocalyptic Ballerina

The Toxic Pier

In a world of toxic turmoil, the Apocalyptic Ballerina stands guard on a pier, ready to warn nomads to stay away from San Francisco. It had recently been deemed a ‘dead zone’ by the government, but news, even official, was traveling slowly these days. She sees a war ship approaching a dock and quickly sets to writing a note, “Caution, quarantine area”, that she stuffs into a bottle and throws into the water. She hopes they get the message in time, and she wonders how much time she has left for herself.

A ballerina clad in cyberpunk black clothes stands, arms raised, waving at ships off the pier.
Nomads on the move
A ballerina clad in black cyberpunk clothes, writes a note, while crouching on the pier.
A warning to send
A ballerina, clad in black post-apocalypse clothing is writing a note. You see close up that it reads, "Caution quarantine zone."
Caution quarantine zone
A ballerina wearing black tight apocalypse style clothing holds up a bottle containing a note. The sky around her is a green fog.
Message in a bottle
A ballerina stands, head down with her hand up. A bottle with a note inside is in the front of the frame. She has thrown it into the air.
Fly away bottle

The Lookout

A month had passed since the last toxic cloud rolled in, but the Apocalyptic Ballerina insisted a sentinel be posted by Twin Peaks everyday. People needed to get the gas mask warning; no one was wearing them all of the time because of the blistering. Volunteers were waning, so she was on her 3rd shift in a row. She thought she saw something on the horizon, but she wasn’t certain. Straining, she almost wished they weren’t pumping anti-toxins from all the buildings, because then, she could smell it coming. It came over the hill so quickly she almost didn’t have time to put on her own gas mask, let alone sound the warning sirens. A wall of toxic cloud, they had created, and it was going to kill them.

Ballerina in a flowing black dress stands looking over the side of a rooftop. A gasmask is on the roof beside her.
The sentinel watches
A ballerina in a black flowing dress is crouching on a rooftop, eying something off in the distance.
Suspicion on the horizon
A ballerina holding a gas mask in her hand, stands on a rooftop. A dark cloud is rolling over the hill towards her. A pipe jutting out of the roof has smoke drifting from it.
A toxic cloud approaches
A ballerina crouches with intent on a rooftop. Her face is near the smoke drifting out of a pipe venting in the roof top.
Breathing in the anti-toxins
A ballerina, surrounded by dark clouds, has her hands in the air. She is wearing a gas mask.
Gas mask warning sounded

The Clean Up

After the toxic cloud dissipated, there was still too much chemical debris everywhere to walk around without a gas mask. The Apocalyptic Ballerina was scouring the city for ‘garbage hot spots’ to bag up. When the acid rains came, they reacted with the plastics and metals in the garbage which created a localized fog that further poisoned the ground. She thought that if she contained the trash and stored the bags under bridges, it had less of a chance to get wet. It was too easy to get ambushed in the buildings, so she preferred to be outdoors. She was hopeful that she could try to grow food one day. Even with the reduced population, canned goods were not going to last forever.

A ballerina wearing a gas mask and gloves stands on her toes on a covered street. She is standing over mounds of garbage.
New garbage hot spot to clean
A ballerina in a white dress, wearing a gas mask and gloves is crouching to pick up a broom from the street. She is surrounded by garbage.
The cleaning begins
A close up of a ballerina's feet and the bottom of her white dress, while she sweeps garbage into a pile.
Toes in toxic debris
A ballerina in a white dress, wearing black gloves and a gas mask is standing in a covered street full of garbage. She holds her hand to her head, weary from cleaning.
Exhaustion will overtake me
A close up of a ballerina wearing a gas mask, black rubber gloves and a white dress. She is holding one hand over her head and the other in front of her chest. In the distance coloured street lights are blurred.
Until tomorrow

The Nightmare

After days of cleaning up garbage from the streets, with little rest, the Apocalyptic Ballerina collapses from exhaustion. She tosses and turns as her mind fills with troublesome thoughts. She is a child’s toy, a ballerina doll, twisted from rough play and then tossed into the trash because she is no longer a perfect plaything. The garbage world she lands in is horrific and terrifying to the delicate ballerina doll. It echoes the history of the surface world of long ago, before the pollution reached critical mass. She tries to escape, through the darkness, but no matter how fast she runs, the world seems to travel around her, bringing her back to the beginning over and over. Weary, she pauses and wonders: at what point could we have stopped this?

A ballerina in a black long dress with white ruffled slip is falling in front of a black and white tapestry. The tapestry shows a world in which coal has no bounds. The ballerina has her hands in the air. She is wearing pigtails and has doll-like black makeup.
Tossed into the trash
A ballerina in a black long dress with white ruffled slip is leaping in front of a black and white tapestry. The tapestry shows a world in which coal has no bounds. The ballerina has her hands behind her and looked terrified. She is wearing pigtails and has doll-like black makeup.
A horrified leap
A ballerina in a black long dress with white ruffled slip is sneaking in front of a black and white tapestry. The tapestry shows a world in which coal has no bounds. To the left, a dark shade encroaches.
Being chased by darkness
A ballerina in a black long dress with white ruffled slip has jumped magnificently in front of a black and white tapestry. Her hands are both off to the right, while she looks off to the left, frightened. The tapestry shows a world in which coal has no bounds.
Stuck in a loop
A ballerina in a black long dress with white ruffled slip is bent over, as though tired, in front of a black and white tapestry. Her hands are bowed towards her feet and her face is obscured. The tapestry shows a world in which coal has no bounds.
A moment of reflection.

The Path Forward

According to the rumour, that the electrical field from the old transformer station repelled the chemical clouds, so the air there was safe to breathe. However, all of the people who lived there — that the Apocalyptic Ballerina knew of, had died of massive organ failure. It seemed as though, without maintenance, the transformer station could cause widespread tumours. It was unfortunate that all the gas masks stopped functioning. There were no more replacement filters and it had just gone on too long. So, she didn’t really have much choice but to risk it. There was one precaution she could take though… aluminum foil. It shielded you from the electrical field, or so she hoped. With grace and speed, she was covered in a matter of minutes. Now all she could do was take a deep breath, and wait.

A ballerina in a body suit that matches her flesh tone stands with aluminum foil spread between her hands. She is standing in front of a large electric line grid. The skies are pink, maroons and greys.
Close to the electrical field
A ballerina in a body suit that matches her flesh tone stands on her toes. She is holding a roll of aluminum foil over her head and it flows five feet long behind her. She is standing in front of a large electric line grid. The skies are pink, maroons and greys.
The foil will protect me
A ballerina in a body suit that matches her flesh tone is holding onto a fence. She has a corset of aluminum foil covering her middle. She is on her toes in a standing split in front of a large electric line grid. The skies are pink, maroons and greys.
Keep holding on
A ballerina in a body suit that matches her flesh tone is laying on her side in front of a fence. She has a corset of aluminum foil covering her middle, her bottom leg and her arms. She is in front of a large electric line grid. The skies are yellow, blue and grey. You can see the sun is going down, covered by clouds.
A gentle armour
A ballerina in a body suit that matches her flesh tone is laying on her front, doing the splits in front of a fence. She has a full outfit made of aluminum foil. She is in front of a large electric line grid. The skies are yellow, blue and grey. You can see the sun is going down, covered by clouds.
Only time will tell

How to rock cervical cancer

A uterus post surgery, placed on a surgical outfit.
A uterus post surgery, placed on a surgical outfit.
That’s a fine looking uterus
 

I found out that I had cervical cancer on Halloween day 2012 (trick or treat!), after having my first abnormal pap smear ever in early September the same year. I had gone for a pap every year since I started having my period. I ended up having three procedures, culminating in a hysterectomy, during which my doctors also took out seven lymph nodes but left in my ovaries. I was 35 years old when I got my diagnosis and was fortunate to have already had a baby, who was in her first year and a half of glorious life. Unfortunately, she was heavily teething the evening I found out and my then-husband was incredibly unhelpful, so I was up for six hours that night, trying to calm her down by myself. This did give me a lot of time to reflect, though: I had fucking CANCER — boo.

Regardless of the stage you’re in, or the type you have, finding out you have cancer is not much fun. If you’re me, you then feel guilty about being mad because other people have much worse cancers than you, so what’s your problem? The first thing I learned is, it’s okay to be mad that you have cancer of any kind. You have cancer! Be mad, cry, be upset. I didn’t cry until after it was all over, because I was trying to be strong for my then-husband, and now I feel a little cheated. So please cry, rage, scream, feel hurt and bad for yourself. You deserve it. This sucks. It sucks specifically for you. No matter what the effect on other people, you need to mourn your mortality and your previously-thought-good health.

I’m going to explain the process of pap to cancer based on my experience, as well as some things I feel are really wrong in the medical industry. But I feel that I rocked this in the end. Hopefully this will help someone not get cancer, or at least amuse someone who currently has it.

1. Don’t die

Early detection is the key to beating any cancer, but not all cancers are easy to detect. HPV, the precursor to cervical cancer, is detectable before you get cancer — provided that you get a pap smear regularly.

So someone gave you cancer…

HPV (Human papillomavirus) is a sexually transmitted virus. In most it cases goes away on its own, but sometimes it turns into genital warts, and sometimes it turns into cancer. So you can be happy in the knowledge that someone probably gave you cancer. In my case, I knew that my ex-husband had cheated on me, so infer what you need to from that. However, I also have PCOS (polycystic ovary syndrome), which is an insulin related hormone disorder, so it could have been a dormant strain that lay unnoticed for six-plus years, and awakened magically by additional estrogen provided by my pregnancy. But there is no way to tell. Some strains can lay dormant for years; however I could not find any specific information online of how many “years” this entails. So not only did someone give you cancer, you will never know who it was unless you have only ever slept with one person. The only way to try and not get HPV and still have sex is to always wear a condom. As condoms are not 100% effective, and HPV is incredibly contagious, you can still potentially get it. Most sexually active people today have it; or have had it. The CDC (Center for Disease Control) estimates that there are approximately 14,100,000 new HPV infections in the United States alone, each year. You actually don’t even need to have full-on intercourse to get it, you just need to have physical contact with each others genitals. Yay!

HPV vaccines

Two HPV vaccines exist that can be given out to both boys and girls before they have sex; Gardasil and Cervarix. They are free in Canada, but Canada rules, so check how much they cost in your country. A vaccine that will help your kid avoid getting cancer, or giving cancer to others? Seems like a good idea, but they haven’t been tested extensively and there are potential side effects. In theory, I love this, but I don’t know enough about it to endorse it. The CDC says, “While both vaccines protect against HPV16, which is the most common HPV type responsible for HPV associated cancers including cancers of cervix, vulva, vagina, penis, and anus and oropharynx, only one of the vaccines (Gardasil) has been tested and shown to protect against precancers of the vulva, vagina, and anus.”

Fun with q-tips

If you’ve never had a pap smear before, you’re in for a treat. A gynecologist will insert a speculum (a plastic device that looks a bit like a hollow barreled gun) into your vagina, and press the trigger, which opens it to widen your vaginal opening. Then the doctor uses a long cotton swab to take a sample of your cervical goo. It is only a little uncomfortable and takes very little time. Generally this is followed by an internal exam, which is less fun; the doctor inserts two fingers into your vagina and pushes on your abdomen. This part is to test your ovaries to see if they are enlarged and if you have any pain. Ovarian cancer is also something that is not great for you, so just suck it up and get the test every year. As not-fun as it is, cancer is less fun.

The AMA (American Medical Association) now claims that women under 21 years of age do not need to be tested. The CDC says that young people (ages 15-24) are particularly affected by HPV, accounting for half (50 percent) of all new infections, although they represent just 25 percent of the sexually experienced population. There is a long time span between when a lot of kids are having sex and 21 years of age. If not everyone is getting vaccinated, this makes no sense to me.

The AMA has also scaled down the recommended screening frequency for most women from every year, to every three years. They claim that this is the sane thing to do, as screening every year doesn’t find more cancer statistically than doing so every three years. Remember, I got a pap smear every year. In one year, my cervix not only developed abnormal cells, it got a full-on tumor. I got cancer in one year. Also, my tumor was really close to a lymph node — so close that they decided to take out seven of the lymph nodes in the area. If I had waited for three years to get my next pap, my cancer would have spread and definitely required chemotherapy and radiation. So, to the AMA, I say: fuck you. Get your pap every year ladies. Every. Fucking. Year.

Colposcopies are fun for no one

Once you have had an abnormal pap smear, your doctor will typically decide to take a biopsy to see just how far you’ve come and how deep into the tissue your HPV is situated. This procedure is called a colposcopy. At this point, you don’t have cervical cancer, and remember, HPV sometimes goes away on its own. You don’t need to panic, and really, don’t panic ever. It’s not going to help you get better and it’s a waste of your energy. During a colposcopy,the speculum is again inserted into your vagina along with a longer device meant to bite a tiny chunk out of your cervix to send to the lab. It feels like a bad period cramp. They then open your cervix, which feels a little vomit-inducing, and take another bite out of the inside of your cervix to see how widespread the issue is. The inside bite is worse than the outside bite. It’s super fast though, and will not stop you from doing anything that day. You may not want to have sex until the next day because it makes you feel generally icky, and it’s hard to get in the mood when you’ve just had the very interior of your crotch bitten medically.

Take a LEEP

When your report comes back from the lab, your doctor will let you know if they feel that this is the type of HPV that will just go away on its own or if you need further intervention. For most of you, that was it, and you can go on your merry way. But your doctor will want to see you for another pap smear earlier than a year for follow up, to see how things are progressing. Go to these.

If you are lucky like me, then they will have found abnormal cells in a very high grade (high-grade squamous intraepithelial lesions are what they call advanced precancerous cells on your cervix) on both the outside and inside of your cervix and you will need to have a LEEP procedure or cone biopsy, which are the two cell removal options that your doctor can offer. As I have no experience with the cone biopsy, I’m going to focus on the LEEP (Loop Electrosurgical Excision Procedure). A thin, low-voltage electrified wire loop is used to cut off the abnormal tissue, which they see via placing a solution on your cervix and surrounding area that identifies the bad cells. Basically, they electrocute your cervix slightly and cut some of it off. Because my cells were so high grade, and I had them on both the inside and outside, I was sedated and had my procedure in the hospital. Often, you can have this done at your doctor’s office and do not need anything other than a topical pain killer. Due to my level of cell abnormality, they also decided to do some additional biopsies on the interior of my uterus.

The pathology report

Reading a medical pathology report is painful, even if you consider yourself an otherwise smart person. Do not feel bad. Ask your doctor to explain it to you over and over until you feel you have a grasp on it. I had my doctor draw me a picture of my interior junk and we numbered the sections, which helped a lot.

My doctor (who is mad-skilled and the head of the Women’s Center at her hospital) was confused because she found abnormal cells at the top of the uterus, but none on the sides. The portion of the cervix she removed seemed to have the same level of abnormality as they had previously thought after the original biopsy. She decided to send my biopsies to the sister hospital, which had an oncology (cancer) department, and made me an appointment to meet up with a cancer specialist there to go over my pathology report. We talked about how this could mean that I might need to have another, deeper, LEEP, or potentially even a hysterectomy. But at this point, it was all just high grade abnormal cells — nothing to worry about.

The oncologist

On October 31, I was mad that I had to go to the oncologist (cancer specialist) because I had a one-year-old and matching dinosaur costumes. I wanted to be home dressed up, handing out candy to the neighbourhood kids. The doctor’s office was swamped because of late patients from the morning appointments who were stuck in traffic due to the Giants’ parade (they had just won the World Series). My appointment at 3pm was beginning at 5pm, and I met my newest doctor and her two interns in the exam room. I felt that she was just there to consult on a piece of paper, so I began to argue that I have had more than enough people up my snatch lately and I didn’t think I needed to have another pelvic exam to round out the experience. She told me that their lab, which was a better lab, actually found a tumor in the piece of cervix they took out in the LEEP. It was encroaching on lymphatic space and I had cancer. I had cancer. Well fuck.

I sighed deeply, asked them to leave the room so I could put on the paper gown and disrobed from the waist down, as one does in those situations. I texted my then-husband, who was asking me how much longer I’d be, that I had cancer and would be late. He replied, “Oh boo.” Then we made the plan for my hysterectomy, which was to be on December 3, at my gynecologist’s hospital. Both my gynecologist and my oncologist would be performing the surgery. As I already had a child and my cancer was super efficient, we all felt this was the best thing to do.

2. Don’t suffer in silence

I have always felt that talking to people about what I’m going through is helpful. Cancer isn’t the first bad thing that’s happened to me, and I don’t think it was even the worst thing so far. It’s not going to be the last thing, either. Tell people you have cancer. Every cab driver in San Francisco knows that I had cancer. Every person who works at restaurants that I go to knows that I had cancer. You now know that I had cancer. Trust me, it really works. It might make you cry every time you talk about it, but that’s part of what makes you eventually feel better. You need to own it. You have cancer, it sucks and you’re going to fight your ass off.

People will surprise you. I had a giant outpouring of support both online and in person. My friends who had largely faded after I had my baby all came back in droves. Old co-workers, strangers, neighbours, moms on the email lists I subscribed to, all offered me help and support. The key with all of these amazing people was to take them at their words and accept their support. I hate feeling needy; it’s my least favourite feeling. I’m much more of a helper. I don’t like to need anyone to do anything for me, but this is the time to sit back, “relax,” have cancer, and let other people do things for you.

Have a going away-party for your girl parts. Seriously. I had heard about women who had breast cancer, having parties for their breasts before mastectomies, and I thought that was just great. So I had a party for my uterus. I asked all my friends to bring me a flower they thought most looked like female genitals so that I could have the bouquet in the hospital for my recovery, and I served pink foods. One friend, a gay man, said that no flower reminded him of a vagina, so he brought me a nutria skull (in lieu of the creepy-store-where-one-can-buy-animal-skulls not having a beaver). It is one of my most prized possessions.

3. Have fun with your hysterectomy

Hysterectomies suck and hurt and the recovery time is generally given as four to eight weeks. I had pain for much longer than that, but I’ll go into the recovery in a bit. The main point I want to mention here is that you’re going to need help. There’s nothing worse than feeling like crap by yourself. Having friends and family around is going to make you feel a lot better. My mom flew down before the operation and stayed for 18 days to help with my baby. I found out that my husband was unemployed and cheating on me throughout my entire recovery, so if you feel you are in a bad situation and you have no one to help you, having someone who is supposed to help you but doesn’t isn’t a picnic, either. My friends and family, on the other hand, made up for the bulk of that. Also, I got my doctor to take a photo of my uterus (as shown above), which I Instagrammed (why not?). When else will you get to have a photograph of your organs on the outside of your body? Hopefully not often.

Set up a care calendar

I set up a care calendar for people to make and drop off food for my mom, my son and me. Because my daughter and I have a gluten intolerance, this was additionally cumbersome, but people made amazing food for us. Moms on my email lists volunteered to come over and have play dates with my daughter so that she could see people from the outside world. I had a new friend over to hang out pretty much every day, and I got a lot of visitors. There are plenty of care calendar options, but the UI on most of them are terrible. I’m hoping that people make new ones, so I’m not going to link to them. But they are very handy in coordinating people to help you out.

Resuming normal activities

As I mentioned, the recovery is supposed to be four to eight weeks. I think it was about three months before I didn’t have pain, and I still get a twitch every now and again. When they say that you can resume normal activities in about two to four weeks, they must be referring to people who walk to and from their car — not so much those who carry their 23-pound toddler around strapped to their body, walk up three flights of stairs with groceries and ride a bakfiets dutch bike with a car seat bolted onto the front. Healing is going to take longer than you want. Give yourself that time. Stay in bed as much as possible, even if you are bored to tears. I did not do this and I ended up creating additional complications.

After you’ve had cervical cancer, you have to have paps every three months for the next year, moving up to every six months and then back to every year. You can always get cancer in your vagina, so look forward to that.

All the complications

I am medically lucky. I get “all the complications”. The pain medication they gave me at the hospital made me nauseous, and I vomited a lot. The other medication they gave me to replace it also made me nauseous, though I vomited a little less. The third medication made me feel a little gross, but I wasn’t puking, so we stuck with that. But it made me constipated, and I needed medication to help me poop. They almost wouldn’t let me out of the hospital until I pooped, but I wanted to see my daughter, so I nearly busted a gut to push one out.

The next week was an ordeal. I went on and off the pain meds because they were so unpleasant and made my head too fuzzy. Then I started to “leak” fluids. I searched online because they did not tell me that this was a potential side effect. I found that I might have a bladder cut, causing me to pee out of my vagina. Sweet. I’ve always wanted to pee out of my vagina: who wouldn’t love that? I was going through several overnight pads a day soaking straight through with this fluid. I had to go back to the doctor for a test where they put blue-dyed fluid into your bladder with a catheter and stuff a wad of cotton up your snatch. Then you have to walk around for 30 minutes and see if your crotch wad is blue. Thankfully, it was not. But still, fluid.

They figured out that I was leaking lymphatic fluids because I was over-exerting (walking around and crouching down to hang out with my daughter), and I had pulled some stitches. The leakage continued for about two weeks. It was disturbing. After experiencing what it felt like to be constantly wet in the crotch, I vowed to change my daughter’s diaper twice as often as I had previously because it is very unpleasant. Our bodies are miraculous, awesome, fascinating and gross.

The upsides

Aside from not having cancer anymore, there are a few upsides to having a hysterectomy. If you got to keep your ovaries, then you don’t have to go through menopause. Congratulations! If you didn’t get to keep them, then at least you get to be done with menopause early. I got to keep mine, so I get to have the hormone surge that goes along with having a period, including the intense randiness, without the pesky cramps or geyser of blood. Since I’m going through a divorce and am not interested in dating yet, I have some battery-powered partners to help me along. But not having to take birth control pills is a big upside. There are always condoms, but if you have a partner you trust who has been STD-tested, then you are free to hump your days away, pregnancy-free. Plus, you have some new and interesting scars, and scars are hot.

4. Walk the long hard road

So you have found out that you have cervical cancer, but you are at an advanced stage and require chemotherapy and/or radiation. I was very fortunate that I did not have to go through either of those processes, but I had a friend with breast cancer who recently did, so I’ve had a bird’s eye view and have some by-stander advice to give.

My friend is tough as fuck; still she would call me and tell me to tell her that she had to go back to chemo. It is hard. Sorry. Chemo is the sort of thing that is different for everyone and for every cancer too, so it’s really difficult to tell you what to expect. Join a support group. Get a therapist. Find all the books you want to read, load up your iPad, and get ready to hunker down. Because you got this. It is a huge pile of suck, but if your physician feels that it will help you and get rid of your cancer, then the odds are in your favour. You need to do all the things you can to get well. If you live in a state or country that has medical marijuana, go for it. I’ve been told that the nausea and overall body feel of chemo is heavily improved by vaporizing marijuana. You are fighting for wellness; use the tools at your disposal, and feel good about it.

My friend thought that radiation was less awful than chemo. So if you’ve already done chemo, consider radiation your less shitty follow-up. Again, I have no personal experience with either of them, and I wish you all the strength in the world.

Facing the road less traveled

You are at a stage where they do not feel that treatment will help you. I am so, so sorry. I clearly do not have experience with a terminal diagnosis, and I can’t begin to imagine how you feel. I only know what I thought about what I would do when I was in diagnosis limbo. Eat all of the things and hug all of the people you love. If you can travel and have the funds, do all of the amazing things you ever wanted to do, and cherish all of your moments. Surround yourself with good.

I’ve had a pile of bad happen to me throughout my life, and one of the things that has always made me feel better is trying to help others not go through what I have. If you have the time or strength, this might help you too. I send you all my positive thoughts. I wish I had something better to say.

The point of all this

I knew one woman who died of cervical cancer when she was in her early 20s; a friend’s mom passed away when my friend was young; and I know of one woman currently with a terminal diagnosis. It makes me so incredibly sad that cervical cancer is preventable, but women are still dying. There are so many things out there that can kill you that you that can do nothing about. If getting a q-tip up the muff once a year can save your life, you should really just swab up already.

Barnacle baby & the year of no sleep

Sleep addled woman with lip piercing laying in bed beside a sleeping baby with it's bum (covered by a diaper)
 beside her head.

For her first eight months, my daughter Agent would wake up every forty minutes to every hour or so in pain with gas. After that, up until she was one year old, she slept no more than three to four hours in a row, so neither did I. This is the sort of thing you subject people to for actual torture, to tell you secrets. If I didn’t just tell anyone everything all the time, I would have been ready to talk by the end of that year.

I realized after the first three months that she had a food allergy through my breast milk. I knew this because they say that if the baby has colic that they will magically get better, and Agent did not. She kept getting worse. The poor little hamster would wriggle in agony all day long. I would pump her legs to ‘fart’ her, gave her all the gas medications that exist on the open market, and went through all the homeopathic remedies I could get my hands on. Google was my weapon. All cultures were considered, all options used, nothing worked. So I began to work on the non-standard plans to get Agent well and both of us sleeping.

The usual suspects elimination diet plan

I went off the regular things first, cow’s milk, soy products, carbonation and caffeine. She got a little better and we narrowed it down to the carbonation and the cow’s milk. This meant that I couldn’t try to put her on formula to make her better, because most of them were based off cow’s milk. The soy formula, my pediatrician and I decided, was too close to milk protein for baby intestines, and she didn’t want to drink it at any rate (I tried it out, just to make sure).

The co-sleeping plan

In the mean time, I had worked out sleeping strategies to make life more sane. Agent was sleeping in my bed so I could snuggle, breast feed and calm her down without having to actually move nine times a night. During the day, I bounced her on my lap so that she would nap. This meant being trapped under a baby for six hours during the day and attached to her pretty much all night by the nipple. My then-husband would not help with any night wakings, so I was doing all this solo.

The alternative medicine plan

Then she got worse again. The ex-husband and I had taken a trip to Europe and Agent was in pain all night long, plus jet lag, plus babies just aren’t that into travel so far as I can tell. So screamy madness for two weeks was the norm. When we got back, she was almost six months old and I was now ready to do anything to get her to sleep, even if it meant eating almost nothing. It meant eating almost nothing. Boo.

I took her to a Cranial Sacral Therapist, which sounded, to be honest, like a pile of bullshit. Healing touches for babies…okay, suspicious. However, I was ready for leaches at this point, so go ahead and squish my baby! The people I went to were also Chiropractors so they started working on knots he had on her neck from having the cord wrapped around her neck twice during labour. They said that the vagus nerve in her neck was inflamed and it wraps around your intestines, so it could be causing impaction, not allowing the gas to pass through. I was impressed. These hippies had some science behind them!

The no food elimination diet plan

I started telling the Cranial Sacral Therapists (who I had nick named “Baby Squishers”) about my elimination diets and they had a list of things to try out that hadn’t been suggested by the pediatrician. Then I couldn’t eat dairy, soy, carbonation, lectins, gluten, eggs and foods that are cross contaminants for people with latex allergies (which I have). I could eat meat, a couple of veggies and a few fruit. I did six weeks of the full elimination diet and there was no change in Agent. My personal doctor, who I had brought in on it, said that it must be the gluten, because that’s the only thing that takes that long to detox from. Agent had a bout of getting worse too, and the doctors realized that the gluten was detoxing through my breast milk, so she was getting an extra dose. Two weeks later, she stopped having the gas pains. We were all thrilled!

At eight months old, she started sleeping for three to four hours in a row, which after my previous lack of sleep, seemed like luxury. But she still wanted to sleep with me. Once she crawled herself off the bed, I had to move her to his crib though, which proved an unpopular decision. She was waking up every two to three hours, still required lap napping and I was starting to go a little squirrely. Okay, a lot squirrely. I forced my then-husband to start taking on the mornings from 6am-7:30am so that I could have some baby monitor free sleep, which helped but, damn, a woman needs more sleep!

The sleep training plan

After Agent turned one, my paediatrician’s nurse recommended Dawn Fry to me. She had a non-cry-it out sleep training method that I might like. We had already tried to cry-it-out, but Agent has staying power and cried for five hours straight, convincing me that I hated that method. Dawn came over, gave me a training session and within four weeks Agent was sleeping in her crib for all naps and all night, for the entire night. She now even sleeps through teething at night (for the most part — teething plus colds sometimes will cause her to wake and need re-settling). Naps, not so much. But I love the hell out of this method. There is some crying, but you always come to the baby when they do cry. The key is not to do anything in the room during sleep time that they can’t reproduce on their own. No talking, or shushing. You set up a loud white noise machine and keep the room really dark. While the white noise machine is on and the lights are off, you do not pick them up or talk. You can give them reassuring little squishes to simulate them rolling around in bed and you get them attached to a “blankie”. You teach them that they can sort themselves out with toys and sippy cups of water unless they have a real issue, and they learn it! Dawn was writing a book when I met her, I recommend buying it if it’s out.

The victory dance plan

I’ve had many months of sleep now and I don’t know how I survived that first year without killing several people. The up side to elimination diets is that you easily lose all your pregnancy weight, the down side is that you hate everything. There is no up side to not getting to sleep. None. People need to give new parents more cred for just being able to cope with things like lukewarm tea, figuring out how to turn a shirt right side out and not leaving their baby on the counter beside the garbage disposal.Those who go back to work and are up all night too get my intense sympathy. For now, I’m just going to victory dance every morning I feel well rested.