Blast from the Past

It's official. I'm cursed.

In the latest installment of "The Miscarriage That Refused to Die," I visited my primary care doctor on Monday. Because how could I let a federal holiday pass without interacting somehow with a medical professional? I really don't want to say why I went to her, except that it's crucial to the punchline of the story, which I will get to in a minute. You see, sometime while I was taking those antibiotics after my D&E, I started having, ahem, digestive issues. And since the symptom hasn't yet gone away my RE's office recommended a visit to the old primary care doc, an idea that seems somehow quaint at this point.

At any rate, my doctor said it probably had something to do either with the antibiotics killing good bacteria in my stomach (why does this concept of good bacteria remind me so much of Glenda the Good Witch?) or some random thing I may have picked up during my stay at the hospital (which is encouraging, because I was really lamenting not having a souvenir). And then she said something truly awful: the only way to know for sure would be to bring a "sample" to the lab. On two separate occasions.

I don't know about you, but at this point, I am totally fine with procedures involving my reproductive organs. Want to put foreign objects in there, look around, take some pictures, redecorate? Totally fine -- just show me the stirrups and have at it. Want to talk about what I do behind the bathroom door? Um, no freaking way. I would rather have a daylong root canal in a dark alleyway than discuss and/or deal somehow with that. Which is why I tried to avoid it for the past two days, hoping and praying that the probiotics I started taking would kick in and eliminate my symptoms and the need to do what she asked. But they didn't, so tonight I somehow willed myself to do the dreaded deed, hurry in the car and run the atrocious package to the (mercifully nearby) hospital lab.

And here's what confirmed for me that either someone has a voodoo doll with my name on it or that I'm starring, unwittingly, in a revival of Candid Camera/a very bad sitcom pilot: Upon walking into the lab, I found myself face-to-face with a woman I went to high school with. And she recognized me immediately.

I don't know if finally mustering the courage to poop in a jar and then delivering it to a lab that coincidentally employs someone you haven't seen in 15 years is the most embarrassing thing that could have happened tonight, but I do know that I wanted (still want) very, very badly to make it unhappen. That being impossible, I wish I could at least have explained to her the whole story -- for some reason it seems more pitiable, and therefore palatable, that I was there as result of a miscarriage than some random thing gone awry in that part of my body. I obviously couldn't get into it, but she was very sweet, just like I remember her when we were both over a decade younger and several pounds lighter. She will probably not tell anyone else she saw me under these circumstances, if she even stays in touch with anyone else from my hometown. It doesn't really matter if she does or doesn't -- I know this.

Still, please pray she is not there again tomorrow, when I steel myself and deliver installment #2. And then please pretend I never told you any of this.