a metaphor

Ok, in case you can't tell by my page and profile name, i have a thing with trees. I don't know why. I'm not much of an environmentalist (i barely remember to recycle) or a naturalist (i love my girly material stuff), i just feel this appreciation for a good tree symbol. I come from a really big family and everyone lives in the same city and we're all in each other's lives and business. and in my angsty youth i had all these plans to move away and plant somewhere else. but i grew up. and i realized that i can be my own person and grow upward even though i'm planted.

after my miscarriage i was comforted by the image of a blooming tree, all branched out and reaching upward. some branches are short and thin and some are fat and big and supportive. i don't know, i realize i sound like a total hippie. i just get a lot of comfort from the cycle of nature and believing that everything blooms and fades. it's sort of my religion, where some people would quote the bible verse "to everything there is a season" i would look at pictures of fat blooming trees heavy with ripe fruit and know that i would get there again.

anyway, that's all back story.

this morning at my monitoring appointment the tech was "wanding me" and i was telling her about what dr. morris said, that my hormones are high enough to produce follicles and we probably can't see them because of my weight. she said that was crazy that she could see my ovaries, but the problem was that one ovary  (my right) goes up and out and the other (my left) hangs down. so she can see my left easily, but my right one is up in my abdomen and "it's a close knit family in there." so she's possibly missing a follicle, but it's not due to my size. though she maybe have been being nice (she swears she wasn't).

while she wanding me she starts hmm-ing and huh-ing and i immediately think something's wrong. "what?" i asked, "is there a cyst?"

"i want you to look at the screen" she said and pointed it towards me. she waved the wand back and forth inside of me. "you see that funnel in the middle? that's your uterus. and you see those two dark circles on either side of it? those are your ovaries."

"but i thought one went up and the other went down?" i said

"try and think of your reproductive system as a tree" she said "your fallopian tubes are like branches and your ovaries are like fruit on the end. when your ovary gets heavy with a big follicle it falls a little, the same way a weighted branch would. now they're right next to each other and front and center. now we can easily see everything."

it was a beautiful metaphor. and it made perfect sense to me.

by the way, these are our wedding rings.
i wasn't kidding about the tree thing.