Five Quarts: A Personal and Natural History of Blood by Bill Hayes Page B

health scares. The image that comes to mind is Henry Fuseli’s moody Gothic painting
The Nightmare
(1782), in which a defenseless, nightgown-clad woman is splayed atop her bed, except that it’s daytime in my version, Shannon’s wide awake, and the demon perched on her abdomen looks as if it is hatching plans: What vex to inflict next? I can see Shannon in that painting at all different ages—as a frightened girl, as a lonely teen, and as a vulnerable young woman.
    This whole picture changed two years back when Shannon had a partial hysterectomy, surgery her doctors had recommended due to recurring, unusually large fibroids on her uterus. To celebrate this major life change, she joyously threw decorum to the wind and held a “Uter-Out-of-Me Party” at her Seattle home a week prior to the procedure. I was disappointed not to be able to fly up from San Francisco to attend, though she filled me in on the details by phone later that day. It was all good silly fun, she and ten women friends raising flutes of champagne to Shannon’s uterus and bidding good riddance to tampons, panty liners, diaphragms, and bleeding. A friend who’d had the same surgery a year before brought quiche and deviled eggs in honor of the ovaries Shannon’s surgery would leave intact, and organized party games, including rounds of Operation, for which the board game’s male patient was turned into a she with a felt pen.
    Shannon sounded strong, happy, her voice fizzy with high spirits. Still, I, the worried brother, wondered if she was having any last-minute doubts about the surgery.
    “No, I’m ready. I’m so ready,” she said. “Every year, every Pap smear, it’s been something. And these fibroids have caused havoc. I’ve had nonstop bleeding for weeks.” Then a pause. “At the same time, though, there’s a sense of loss.”
    “Well, that’s understandable,” I said. “It
is
part of your body. I mean, I get sentimental about losing my hair”—at which point Shannon snickered. “I practically weep whenever I look at the top of my head.”
    “Well, when you put it that way, I guess it’s okay to feel sad about losing my uterus.”
    The inspiration for throwing the party had come, in small part, she admitted, as a reaction to something our mother had said. “Mom being Mom, when I first told her I was having the hysterectomy, she said right away, ‘Now, Shannon, don’t make a big deal of it.’ ”
    We laughed. If the root of our family’s dysfunction could be boiled down to one sentence, it would be:
Don’t make a big deal of it.
How many times had our parents, now in their late seventies, given Shannon or me that admonishment? How many times had we done the opposite?
    Shannon, according to family lore, entered the world creating drama. After Mom went into labor, my sister squirmed about and turned herself upside down, as if reluctant to leave the womb. An emergency Cesarean resulted, sparing mother and daughter a dangerous breech delivery. Henceforth Shannon was dubbed the child born backward, a characterization that endured and, unfortunately, sank in. Throughout childhood, she never felt good enough, smart enough, coordinated enough. Unlike Maggie, who possessed the grace of a natural athlete, or Colleen, who could be as poised as a beauty pageant contestant, Shannon was perpetually at odds with her body. This disharmony was never more apparent than when she had her period.
    One episode burned into memory took place in the family car with me, Mom, and Shannon, who was thirteen. We’d been to the mall, though the purpose of the excursion and my reason for being there are forgotten. What remains is the tension in the station wagon as we drove home, the shopping trip scrapped because Shannon got hysterical. Mom had barely stepped foot into JCPenney when Shannon started sobbing and could barely walk because of cramps. My mother, who had precious little free time to shop, couldn’t very well drag her bawling daughter through