This morning I dragged myself into the dentist’s office so she could diagnose the source of the aching pain that has plagued one of my molars for the last few days.

Of course, being high as a kite on lorazepam–quite the niftiest pharmaceutical solution to anxiety imaginable–did facilitate our interaction. I’ve written before that we get no extra credit for suffering, and that needless suffering at the dentist (or elsewhere) should be avoided without shame.

So I was shame-free in my kind dentist’s chair, and as relaxed as possible, when I received a diagnosis and treatment plan. The good news is that the problem is treatable gum inflammation.

The bad news is that if I want to cure the inflammation and prevent it from returning, I need to two things. First, use a prescription mouth rinse and take ibuprofen for 10 days, which is simple enough. Second, I have to commit to using a water flosser after I brush my teeth every night.

Upon receiving this second mandate, which had been cheerfully suggested and just as cheerfully ignored on many previous visits as my gums gradually deteriorated, I felt my back stiffen and my lips press together tightly.

Resentment coursed through my body. Hot on its heels was something far worse–fear, anxiety, and certainty that I will fail. I don’t even want to try, I thought.

This is not due to laziness, of which I freely admit I have plenty. And it does not indicate lack of faith in my dentist’s expertise. Rather, the problem is learned helplessness. If I had a dollar for every time I have replied, “Yes, I’ve tried that already” to well meaning people who tell me about the product or treatment they saw in the news, I could buy a lifetime supply of stool softeners!

I’m well experienced at trying things. If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again, right?

I have tried many different skin care products for the skin breakdown on the remaining part of my right thigh, which gets irritated by my prosthetic leg socket. And I’ve tried a zillion approaches–medical, alternative medicine, and “woo woo” or spiritual–to controlling phantom limb pain and to coping with break-through pain. I’ve tried a dozen remedies for the constipation that results from my continual reliance on pain meds.

I’ve tried different styles of crutches to help the tendonitis in my arms, different systems for attaching my prosthetic socket, different types of shoes, insoles, and shots for the Morton’s neuroma in my biological foot. I’ve tried them all–one right after another.

And you know what the take-away lesson from all of this “trying” is? That most of things I try do not help at all, and the ones that do help somewhat come with side effects that range from unpleasant to intolerable.

It’s enough to make me not want to try, try again. Trying is so… well, to use a bad pun, trying.

Experimenting with this new remedy and that one, over and over again with high failure rates may be exciting or at least intriguing to scientists in laboratories and inventors in startups, but it’s a hell of a way to live. It’s expensive and tedious and demoralizing. It erodes my spirit.

Does this mean I’m giving up? No. I’ve persisted through far worse and I’ll persist through gum inflammation, too. Siting in the dentist parking lot, sipping Diet Coke and sobering up from the lorazepam, I ordered the damn water flosser from Amazon.

I promise, I’ll give it a good try.

I still get a kick out of saying “Vagina!” out loud, as often as possible, in my vibrant, feminist voice on my Jesuit university campus. I feel subversive! I feel strong!

And I feel sad.

It’s 2018 and legions of women (and a much smaller number of men) are still being sexually assaulted on college campuses every year. April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month, and like many feminist professors on college campuses around the U.S., I am lending my support to various events that provide space to talk, once again, about how women are too often denied sovereignty over their own bodies.

I am sad, and I am angry. #MeToo has brought the issue to the forefront of public discussion, but as far as I can tell, it’s not actually lessening the number of sexual assaults on college campuses.

At SCU, I am the long-time faculty advisor to the Vagina Monologues student organization, and their always amazing performances will occur later this month. I’ll also speak at the Slut Walk sponsored by Feminists for Justice, providing some historical and social context for the event from a women’s and gender studies perspective. I am working with faculty governance and administration to establish a better support system for survivors of sexual assault on campus and to improve our university policies about sexual harassment and assault. I am passionate about this work and happy to be supporting my outstanding students.

But I want so much more for women than just not to be assaulted.

I want healthy vaginas, in the World Health Organization sense of health: “a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.” And actually, I would like healthy vulvas, healthy clitorises, healthy labias, and healthy anuses, too. I want women to not just be able to make decisions for themselves, but also to experience pleasure rather than shame from their healthy bodies, including–most especially–their entire reproductive systems.

I think of my own body, which has been repeatedly, and sometimes traumatically, violated for my own good by surgeons. Make no mistake: It’s not the same as sexual assault. Not. The. Same. Yet the repeated subjugation of my body to others’ control with painful, long-lasting consequences has left me with psychic scars that often enable me to bear witness to the suffering and survival of sexual assault survivors.

I empathize not because we are the same but because I too have felt violated, shamed, and scared. I listen carefully and I believe.

We still aren’t doing enough to promote health in women, including our vaginas (and including a variety of genital configurations of transpeople and intersex people).

I am going to keep saying “Vagina!” on my campus, loud and clear. It’s not enough, but it remains vitally important that young women and their allies speak out for vaginas–and all their other body parts–without shame.

I’m sad but I’m also hopeful.

 

The other day I found myself staring at the toilet seat in my bathroom and realizing it is a lot like my soul.

Weird, right? But hang in there with me for a moment while I explain.

So I’m staring at the worn spot on the right side of the toilet seat before I sit to do my business. As with most—but not all—changes, this one has appeared gradually.

Several years ago, Glenn and I bought a house that is—by California standards—quite old; it was built in 1930. Among the old-fashioned elements is the toilet in the black and white, art deco, master bathroom. It has a heavy seat that is definitely not plastic. It is, or rather was, white.

I generally don’t pay a lot of attention to toilet seats, but awhile back, I noticed that the white toilet seat had a brown discoloration in one spot. Given the association between that particular color and the purpose of toilets, I grabbed a sponge and a spray bottle of cleaner and endeavored to scrub the seat clean, but without success.

Over time the discolored area grew and darkened, and I finally realized that the hard, epoxy-coated socket of my prosthetic leg hits the seat in that same spot every time I use the toilet. My cyborg body is slowly wearing the smooth white finish off that area to reveal the underlying material, which is brown.

I searched the Internet to find out what toilet seats are made of—ostensibly because I am an insatiably curious researcher but really because I wanted to avoid some work—and have deduced that this one is likely made of “medium density fiberboard,” which is a molded mixture of resin and recycled wood and is the heaviest type of toilet seat.

I see this worn spot on my toilet seat as I begin and end each day, and often several additional times in between, if I happen to be home all day. My initial response was to dislike this worn spot as yet another annoying sign of my embodied difference.

But I have gradually come to view that worn spot on my toilet seat as a scar, a testament to the notion that I keep going even as some parts of me show significant wear and tear. Their surfaces don’t look tidy, but both the battered seat and my scarred soul still perform their essential functions quite well.

I’ve had this metaphor swirling around in my head for days now, alternately depressing me with its message of slow, relentless disintegration and energizing me with its perseverance. In my soul—the deepest part of myself—I know that the wear and tear of living with late effects, especially chronic pain, will not defeat me. My gratitude for being alive does not make these problems go away, but gratitude buoys me as I cope with them well enough.

I cannot help but notice the “both/and” quality of the toilet seat—it is both scarred and remarkably resilient, worn and stubborn, imperfect and effective. Kinda like me. And everyone I care about. And most other people as well.

Here’s a crazy thought: this probably even applies to the people at the other end of the political and ideological spectrum who drive me crazy with their Facebook posts and memes and Fox News segments. Presumably they all cope with deaths and divorces and sick kids and bad days at work and money problems and chronic illnesses, just like the people of whose voting records and advocacy I approve. And maybe they end up both slightly dented and strong, too, just like me.

Of course, I could replace the toilet seat with a new one that would hide the evidence of the daily friction between my prosthesis and the seat and between my soul and suffering. But it would be, at most, a temporary fix.

Soon enough, the new seat would start to wear and gradually lose its smooth finish. For now, I think I’ll leave the imperfect seat where it is and embrace the metaphorical moment when I sit and embrace my resilient, stubborn, cyborg self.