🎶"JUNE...SHE'LL CHANGE HER TUNE..."🎶
Or, Tara Tells the Truth About Surviving the Not-So-Merry Month of May
This May was the longest May in recorded history, according to me.
The last 31 days challenged me in more ways than any lone person needs. In my previous post, I lamented the lack of money coming in, despite my best efforts to increase my earnings while also continuing to be an untapped goldmine with a mind worth multi-millions. That’s all still true, and I’m still never giving up on getting what I want.
But May still decided to be mostly a roller coaster of emotional fuckery, throwing all kinds of unexpected, scary, and expensive shit at me all at once.
I’d finally gotten myself on HRT in February after years of falsely believing it increased cancer risks—I’m 100% Ashkenazi Jewish on both sides, and we have the highest cancer rate on Earth, lucky us—but thankfully, those myths have all been busted. My mother is a nearly 30-year breast cancer survivor, and both my brother and I have thankfully tested negative for the BRCA-1 and BRCA-2 genetic mutations, sparing our combined six kids. We also both diluted our gene pool by marrying Italian Catholics (he’s still married to his), so hopefully that helped to decrease their risk factors.
My friend Alicia Rose, the moxie behind MENOPUNKS, is the one who convinced me to finally give HRT a go. Other friends of mine had told me about HRT improving things for them, but it was Alicia’s deep knowledge of the whole process that got me to make that appointment with my “gynie,” as my mom says.
I started on 100mg of micronized Progesterone, along with the Climara patch, and my night sweats evaporated, which was glorious. Other than that, nothing else seemed to change. I sleep fine, and since I work from home, my energy levels seem the same. I’m also spending the same amount of time with my tweezers (because my mother mated with a Jewish Sasquatch instead of defying convention by marrying the tall goyishe guy she was dating before she met my dad. That guy became a neurosurgeon. My dad was like if Trump was a truck driver in Jersey in the 70s and 80s. It’s fine, I didn’t need any biological advantages in life).
But on May 14th, I noticed I was bleeding for the first time since I’d had my final period in 2019 and immediately started freaking out.
While breakthrough bleeding is a common side effect for up to 40% of perimenopausal and menopausal women in the early months of HRT, I knew what I was experiencing wasn’t normal for postmenopausal women. I immediately sent a message to my gynie via the Kaiser Permanente app, but she was out of the office until the 19th. I didn’t think I needed to go to Urgent Care; I wasn’t in pain, I didn’t have a fever or any other symptoms of anything. Without going too deeply into TMI-world, it was definitely menstrual blood-y, but not at the scary “soaking through” levels. I put toilet paper in my underwear like a high schooler who doesn’t fully understand her cycle yet and nervously asked the Google about uterine cancer symptoms.
That was a very bad idea.
On Friday, the 15th, I got a call from the OB/GYN department at Kaiser because they’d seen my message. I was told that I needed an endometrial biopsy, two very scary words. I’d never had a biopsy before, just regular mammograms every year for the last 21 years and regular colonoscopies since my 45th birthday, and after this year’s, I don’t have to go back for five years, woo hoo! She’s a clean teen, y’all.
Because it was already late on a Friday afternoon, there weren’t any open appointments until the following Friday, the 22nd. In the meantime, I was told to increase the Progesterone to 200mg, which should stop the bleeding.
You’d think that would feel like an unbearable amount of time to wait for something that important, and normally, I’d say you’d be right. But just as I was forced to make a run to Fred Meyer to buy mini-pads (you should’ve seen me standing there, incredulous and clueless: How many would I need? Would 22 be enough? Do I need Long Supers? Are Thins ok? Why is this happening NOW?), my sweet baby Duke decided it was the right time to get the worst-ever recurrence of his Feline Lower UTI, an unfortunate chronic side effect of a surgery he’d had two years ago to fix a urethral blockage. THAT had cost $5,000, which was paid for by maxing out my Care Credit account and contributions from good people who follow me online. While he’d had other flare-ups before, they’d been manageable with some extra moisture, belly rubs, and patience, lasting about four days. But this one was very different, and he was clearly in pain, the poor buddy.
Duke and I ended up making two separate visits to our local pet ER, Dove Lewis, which is WONDERFUL and staffed by the best humans ever. But it’s also expensive as all fuck, with them charging you $225 just to get your pet seen. The two visits, plus the pain meds Duke needed, came to about $800, which was once again funded by good people with way bigger bank accounts than mine.
The vet also insisted that Duke needed the prescription cat food that costs $83 per case, because the regular urinary cat food just isn’t enough. And so I got some (thanks to another lovely Twitter follower who hooked us up with a $200 Chewy gift card. EXCELLENT customer service at Chewy, I can’t say enough good things), and even though I did the thing where you put a tiny amount of new food mixed in with their old food, one or both of the cats did this, because I can’t keep Maxine from eating Duke’s food, so they get the same food.
And that’s when I threw the rug away. It’s fine, just add it to my bill.
That was also when I went back to what they were eating before, just with the flavorless UTI meds added to the plain chicken they get after the urinary canned food in the morning. Isn’t this fascinating? I spend more time worrying about what Duke and Maxine eat than what I eat.
Thankfully, Duke is now back to peeing like a champ. And I did stop bleeding just as he started peeing again. When I went for the biopsy on the 22nd, there wasn’t anything going on. I could describe the experience of getting an endometrial biopsy, but if you could just take a moment to imagine the world’s longest straw being inserted into you and then stabbing you around where your belly button is, you’d get the basic gist.
The PA who performed the procedure was far too upbeat for someone who looks at vaginas all day, but she was “basically 100% certain” that my bleeding wasn’t anything to be overly concerned about. She was confident that it was just my uterine lining being “confused” by the influx of hormones it wasn’t used to having, and told me in the cadence of someone who was possibly a cheerleader, or perhaps very active in the Drama Club, that I had nothing to worry about. And that was before she went in there.
Afterwards, she showed me the straw thing and said, “See? It’s like NOTHING!” She also showed me the sample jar, which was a clear liquid with only a few red specks floating in it. “See?” she said again. “You can barely see a thing!”
Also, I’m happy to report that things were healthy, pink, and normal based on her description. All I had to do was wait for the results, and with the Memorial Day holiday, I was told it might take a tad longer than a week. It was an uncomfortable experience, but I felt fine afterwards and even made it to my beloved Low Bar Chorale’s all-CSNY show that night.
I’d only told my nearest & dearest about the biopsy: My mom, my brother, my son, and a few close friends. My wonderful friend Patty wrote me a poem about it once I called her and did an impression of the PA for her.
Because the PA told me not to worry, I didn’t. Instead, I returned to worrying about money. SO FUN! Because on top of the Duke expenses, I also had to renew my car registration before the end of the month, and that endeavor was $273. “Ouch!” I said out loud as I dipped my debit card at the DEQ.
But the next day, three work-related things happened that helped me to stop worrying about money, at least for the immediate future, and they came in within hours of each other. Maybe it was all the Instagram manifesting videos, maybe it was the Universe finally deciding to give the Little Match Girl of the Internets a break, but in any case, none of them require me leaving the house, and now my mom can stop worrying about me for a bit, which is always my ultimate life goal.
I’m proud to say I got a wee pay bump from Raw Story because my pieces generate more weekend traffic than anyone else’s. Then I was asked to fill in for Dean Obeidallah on SiriusXM Progress on the 9th, and I’m guessing it won’t be my only fill-in shift this summer, as other hosts take vacation time. The third thing is something I’ve tried to make happen for a while because I know plenty of other people do it: getting paid to tweet.
You’d think I would have already unlocked that one, but brands tend to want ambassadors who aren’t MAGA targets who swear a lot. However, there are indeed companies that are fine with it, and one of them is now going to pay me to post things starting June 1st. I’ll be focusing on BlueSky and Twitter, and the number of posts I have to make is so easy, I could do them all before getting out of bed. Instead, they’ll be spread out over a month. And while it’s not a six-figure windfall like the big “influencers” get, it’s enough to help cover everything I must pay for every month. So whatever I make from Substack (hey, maybe you’d like to upgrade to the $8/month plan, so you can at least comment?) and the small amount of royalties from The Sound of Settling is now extra, not needed. I can live like a regular person again after the last seven months of struggling since I lost my podcast.
And then, on Friday, the 29th, I got my biopsy results.
NEGATORY!
Even though the sample was “scant,” the little that was there revealed nothing. I’m still scheduled for an internal ultrasound just to make sure every spot has been thoroughly checked out for anything nasty that might be hiding up there. But I’m not worried.
And I’m not worried about paying rent. And now my mom’s not worrying about me. For a minute, anyway.
HUZZAH.
Breathing again feels great, let me tell you. It’s not like I’m going to stop trying to get the book deal, and I still want my “reunited and it feels so good” moment with Dave Grohl, but I can at least have a real summer with my friends like a regular functioning person.
Fingers crossed!