I don’t know if I was becoming extremely attuned to my body or a hypochondriac, but after learning about the cyst I started to imagine it, and sometimes think I felt it weighing down on my ovary like a paperweight. It was unfortunate that the news of the cyst and what that entailed derailed us from being excited about the increase in my antral follicle count. Going from 6 to 9 was a big increase, and I believe that it was the acupuncture/herbs and change in diet, lifestyle, and perhaps attitude that got my count up. While different studies have different findings on how acupuncture contributes to IVF success rates, what I know is that acupuncture has been around a lot longer than IVF. There are no side effects or downsides to trying it. And it got me more follicles. It just takes more time than modern day humans are used to. We want a pill to make whatever pain we have go away, NOW. Sticking needles into the body today so that we can feel relief a month later, even if it’s longer lasting, doesn’t appeal to all folks. But Eastern medicine works with the body’s natural cycle and healing process and works to promote balance. Take it or leave it. I’m taking it. But maybe it’s easier for me to believe in forms of natural healing because I grew up with them.
My mother is a somewhat of a witch doctor. If she were Latina she would be a curandero. But she’s not Latina, she’s Japanese, and she always believed that medicinal herbs and various plants could heal most ailments.
When I started feeling a sharp pain where I knew my cyst to be, I immediately called my mother.
“My side hurts. It’s been a dull pain for a few days and now it’s sharp,” I complained into the phone. My mother never really cares about the specifics. She will always start by telling me to heat it.
“Put the heating pat on it,” she said. I liked that she calls it a heating pat rather than a pad. I had already called my sister-doctor three times but she had not returned my calls.
“I know. I have it on,” I whined.
“Do you have the black liquid?” Mom asked.
Ahh. The black liquid. It’s a mixture of rubbing alcohol and the water of boiled leaves from a loquat tree, which supposedly has medicinal anti-inflammatory properties.
“Take a pillow case and soak it in the black liquid and put it under the heating pat,” she instructed. Mom loves to deconstruct pillowcases, towels, sheets and dad’s T-shirts. Ripped up pieces of fabric are stacked in their linen closet, so that if you go to grab a towel, you’ll often end up with just a rag or half a T-shirt. Occasionally you’ll find squares of flannel from a pair of boxer shorts or old pajamas. My poor dad will be looking for specific articles of clothing for weeks, never realizing mom has some weird concoction or medicinal leaves buried in what used to be his bathrobe, being used to warm her kidneys or heal a slight sprained wrist.
“I’m not ripping up a pillowcase,” I responded.
“Ok, just rub it on your tummy with a cotton ball.” There is usually a much less complicated way to apply the herbal salve, which makes me think mom uses her witch medicine remedies as a way to clean out dad’s closets.
I rubbed the black liquid on my tummy and curled up into a ball, trying to decide at what point I would go to urgent care. I googled “cyst rupture” and spent an hour self diagnosing and cursing my sister for becoming a doctor and not being at my beck and call. Then I went to see Gilli.
Gilli agreed that maybe my cyst was draining or bursting. She pushed firmly, exactly where the pain was, just as my mother would have done to confirm that it hurt, and in her Israeli accent said, “put a heating pat on it.”
I knew why I was starting to feel genuine love for Gilli. She was rooting for me and was a constant source of support and advice, but she also reminded me of my mother. Though they were decades apart in age and on opposite ends of the cultural spectrum, they both shared the belief that the human body could heal itself, and that natural methods could assist in that healing process.
When Hana and I were kids, mom had all kinds of natural healing methods, all of which burned, smelled funny, and tasted gross.
She had a remedy for a throat ache that would make a child protective service worker suspicious. I have enlarged tonsils, so my childhood was filed with sore throats. Most mothers would give their child a cough drop, maybe some Sudafed or a throat spray to help the inflammation go down. Not my mom. My mom grated fresh ginger root and tied the pulp around our necks with a bandana, not letting us remove it until the burning and stinging sensation on the delicate skin of our necks had subsided leaving us red and slightly itchy and smelling spicy. To her credit, after a day or so of this remedy mixed with a ginger, lemon, honey tea, our sore throats would be gone.
Bronchitis (or a cold that is more in the chest) was treated with a mixture of powdered mustard and flour slathered on cheesecloth and applied directly onto the chest. Again, we had to wait until the stinging stopped and our chests were sunburned pink before we could remove the poultice. After several rounds of this followed by a bath in either ginger or boiled loquat leaves and that chest cold would be long gone. And so was wearing any kind of V or scoop neck shirt that week.
An ear infection, sprained ankle or wrist, or ingrown hair: Treated with taro potato, grated into a mushy wet mess and wrapped around whatever body part with a scrap of flannel sheet and an ace bandage. The potato is kind of mom’s go to. She has it stored in old yogurt containers and spaghetti jars in the fridge turning various shares of mucous white to gray.
A headache, toothache, stomachache or basically any other ache was treated with Umeboshi, a little salted plum that we’d either eat, drink or tape to our temples with band-aids. Umeboshi is her Tylenol. It’s her panacea and tastes like a sour gumball rolled in seaweed. Hana and I got used to it and ate it often for tummy aches. If Umeboshi didn’t work mom, told us to go sit on the toilet while dad told us to stop complaining and go to school.
That was how sickness was healed in our home. Dad didn’t always agree and I remember a few occasions where we were miserable for days on end with an ear infection and crusty potato crud oozing out of ace bandages around our heads and dad would insist we see a doctor. But going to the doctor was rare.
Finally, my sister-doctor returned my call. I was in bed with my heating pat noticing that the pain in my side had significantly subsided. I wondered if I imagined the pain just so I could have an excuse to lay in bed all day with a good book.
“God, what took you so long? I almost died,” I complained, taking a sip of tea and earmarking the book I was reading.
“I was on night float. We had a crazy night. One of my attendings delivered a baby and the mother was bleeding out so I had to resuscitate the baby. It was blue and not breathing. It had poop in its lungs and trying to intubate it was almost impossible. I was going to call for a code because it wasn’t breathing at all but then I got it to breathe. It was scary. Then we had five new admissions…why are you dying?” She was tired. I had done nothing more than complain about my side pain, eat almond butter on toast, and write a few emails while she was saving babies. Getting her eggs would be a solid upgrade.
“I think my cyst exploded. Wait, did the baby die?” Our conversations are always so strange when she is on night float.
“No, its fine. It was a huge baby. A really stressful delivery. Where does it hurt, closer to your ribs or your pubis?” She asked.
I loved that she said words like pubis now instead of “privates” or “chee chee,” or my current favorite, “homey chow chow.”
“It’s like just next to my hip bone closer to the…coin purse,” I said with a smile. She brushed over the reference without so much as a giggle.
“That’s either your intestine or the ovary. It could be gas. If it hurts and then stops a lot, the ovary might be twisted. That probably won’t happen though. The cyst was pretty small. Does it still hurt?”
“It’s better now.”
“Did you tell mom?”
“Yeah.”
“Let me guess, you’ve been heating it. Did she suggest a castor oil pack made from dad’s underwear?” She said.
“No,” I laughed, “but that’s a good idea.”
“You’ll be fine. But if you’re not then go to urgent care.”
“We don’t go to urgent care. I’d have to have my arm severed off to end up at urgent care!”
“Fine. Then eat two Umeboshi and call mom in the morning.”
