Hale’s Story

I was less than a week into a year fellowship in Peru when I started having abdominal pain and vomiting. Doctors said I was full of gas, and gave me probiotics. The pain worsened. I became something that people glanced quickly at and then looked away. I felt animal. Finally, I was taken to the emergency room, where the ultrasound technician kept asking me if I had to pee. Finally I got up and peed and we continued the ultrasound, but he kept asking me before deciding it must, in fact, be a cyst, not my bladder. The cyst was wrapping around an ovary, and I’m told I need emergency surgery to remove it. The greatest mercy I remember was to become unconscious. 

I woke up in a room and find a tube coming out of my vulva that leads to a bag. This horrifies me until I understand I cannot get up to the bathroom. I can’t sit up or move. My boss from the fellowship is there. The surgeon comes in, and it turns out they know each other from medical school. The doctor wanted to show off his work (me), so he pulled the sheets down to my feet, and my hospital gown up to my throat, exposing me completely before these two men, one of whom is my boss. I reach a hand for the blankets, but I can’t sit up, so I turn my face to the wall until they’re done talking and leave. My body was a man’s accomplishment in that moment, not my sacred vessel. 

There are two stories here, with the same root cause. One about a common health issue and one about a common social issue. Cysts are common in people who menstruate, but I didn’t get to learn about them until AFTER I’d had emergency surgery to have one removed. I deserved access to well funded research and evidence-based educational strategies combined with shame-free intuitive training. I deserved to be left the fuck alone to heal and recover in that hospital bed. 

If you occupy a body that doesn’t have direct lived experience with my story, I ask you to carry my story with you. Keep it at the surface throughout your day and ask yourself how your actions in each moment can create a world where no type of body is taboo or kept in ignorance, and all bodies are treated as autonomous and approached with consent.

-Hale, they/them, 32