The Real 2011

We just wrote a Christmas letter to send to our family and friends, and I found it difficult to restrain myself from producing the prose equivalent of tearing a 2011 calendar off the wall and jumping up and down on it.* I’m not even talking about global news, although that has been pretty dire. Merely on a personal level, it’s been a rough year.

Snowy, Red-Trunked Trees Last February

Now that we are at the end of the year, we can look back at it and remind ourselves that we have come out of it reasonably well, and can look at 2012 with some hope. Nevertheless, 2011 felt like the year when, all of a sudden, we were pushed into *real* adulthood.

Without revealing any confidences, I think I can say that it has been a hard year for our close friends. Two of our friends lost their fathers, one quite suddenly and the other after a long, slow, and painful struggle. Friends have struggled with their health far more nobly than I have, and it has altogether been a hard year where a lot of plans and hopes have been turned upside down.

We went to see the Cherry Trees in bloom after I passed my Comps.

My own struggles (along with the fact that I was writing on a remarkably heavy schedule) are one of the reasons why this blog went so suddenly silent. I wasn’t sure I could take you along on another ride of “I’m having a health crisis” after the whole suspicious-thyroid-lumps-during-my-comps-preparation journey.

(Having an ultrasound guided biopsy of one’s thyroid, as someone petrified of needles, is a pretty good reason to want to wish a year a fairly hearty farewell.)

Back in June, I went to see my doctor– you know, the one who convinced me I probably had thyroid cancer, and then when I quoted statistics about thyroid cancer to her, said, “well, it’s always serious” despite knowing that I have a documented anxiety problem which she had treated and then just offered me sleeping pills–about some problems which I thought might be related to the thyroid.

“Well,” she said, “it’s probably endometriosis, and just so you know, endometriosis can come with inexplicable and infertility, not related to scarring…”

Also, I paid a lot of money for a haircut I just hated.

I spent most of the rest of the appointment feeling like the ground was falling from under me, and trying to conjure up the image in my mind of the two wonderful sons of a friend with endometriosis.

I went back to my carrel, and thought, “well, this frees up my career choices. If I can’t have children, I’ll be an academic. If I have to hurry to have children, I’ll be a mom and go back to a career later.”

That was liberating for about five minutes, before I went back to feeling like the bottom had fallen out of my heart.

I read all the Catholic infertility blogs. I gave up caffeine. I gave up wheat. I quit running. I had an ultrasound. There was a lump. At least nobody said “cancer” this time around. I cried a lot. I went to confession. At the mass afterwards I realized it was the feast of Saint Anne. That provided some comfort.

(Dear members of the clergy: if a young woman comes to you and says that she feels angry with God because she’s been told she has a high chance of not being able to have children, “you can always adopt,” while a factual answer and one which she should probably pray over accepting, it still isn’t a *good* response.)

And I felt guilty.

Late in the summer, I was having a lot of stomach pain, so I was sent back for another ultrasound. With one thing and another, I didn’t get around to getting it until mid-November, after I was back from Freiburg.

In Freiburg, we were housed in the residence where the Pope had stayed just a few weeks before.

And the result? It’s not Endometriosis. It’s something else which isn’t, you know, ideal, but… it’s not endometriosis. The weight of guilt, the weight the knowledge that worse pain was coming, and the weight of concerns about my ability to bear children are (for now) lifted. Apparently, my body is just really good at building benign lumps. All that stomach pain? Stress.

I cried some more.

Freiburg was lovely. Of course, all the days the conference ran it was foggy.

I’ve switched doctors.

My new doctor rolled her eyes when I told her about the other doctor’s comments. “You’re young. You’ll be fine.” Doctor’s prescription? Go get more exercise and drink more water.

Even without a child in the immediately visible future, this was, for me, what Tolkien would call a eucatastrophe. So I look at the advent candles at dinner, and I think of all the pain we and our friends have been through this past year, and I pray “come, Lord Jesus” with a greater desire than I have before, and I try to remember that my professor once said: “creation is a comedy, because it will end in joy.”

But nevertheless. 2011: Don’t let the door hit you on your way out.

(PS: You probably know I’m running a new blog. I’m reading a rabbi, trying to get people to teach me about Thomas Aquinas, and soon I’m going to start posting about gossip (as a concept). It’s… it’s more fun than it sounds, I promise.)

*Also, KB told me there was “too much beer drinking” in the first draft.

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