Truce Abby Weintraub I] How badly do you want it? “T can tell just by looking at you that you have PCOS, It stands for...” “I know what it stands for,” I interrupt quietly. Polycystic ovarian syndrome. It’s almost comforting by now, the familiaricy of these pronouncements. The well-worn territory of being told that all medical concerns are clearly related to the thing you can tell just by looking at me: that I’m fat. “The thing is, Tye been tested for it before, and. ..” I start, a tickle of frustration starting in my throat. Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t ery. 've been saying that to myself a lot lately. Every day, symptoms flood through my body like violent thunderstorms. Leaving bright clots like blobs of mercury on the sales floors at department stores as I run out, hoping nobody will notice until I’m gone. Knowing someone will have to clean up after me. Too ashamed to look back as I hail a cab I can’t really afford, soaking the upholstery, desperate for home. Don’t cry. There are no good solutions when you leave a trail of blood everywhere you go.Truce / Abby Weintravb 43 “It really doesn’t matter,” she stops me, waving a hand, lean- ing in, and lowering her voice conspiratorially. “Tests don’t mean anything. Just lose the weight, and you'll be better. Seriously. I can’t even tell you how many times I’ve seen this kind of thing, and the answer is always the same. It’s just a matter of how badly you want to feel better.” She sits back, her hands stretched out, as if gener- ously presenting the answer I've been seeking my whole life. “It’s up to you,” We stare at each other silently. Don’t ery, Don's fucking cry. | consider tucking my tail between my blood-stained thighs, tell- ing her I'll do my best. I consider announcing my medical rights, distributing fat liberation leaflets in the waiting room before burst- ing out onto 7th Avenue, alight with self-love and forward motion. Instead, I blink, shift and crackle in the gaping paper gown, look down, and bite my tongue hard as the hot tears start to come. “Listen,” she sighs, sitting on the metal stool and wheeling herself coolly to my side. Crossing one leg over the other, hook- ing the top foot behind the bottom calf, like the stripes of a candy cane. “I know it’s hard. I know losing weight is easier said than done. I lost ten pounds a few years ago, and it. . . well, it sucked!” She chuckles gently, shaking her head at the memory of skipped desserts. “And I’m telling you: You can do it. Really, you can do anything you set your mind to.” T look up incredulously. Do I laugh at the flimsy pep talle or explain that I’m not crying because I want to lose weight? Or because “it’s easier said than done”? Or because, as I fear she might think, her sympathy is so welcome and touching to me? I cry— the tears and snot sheeting down my cheeks now—because 1 know something is wrong. I know it in my bones, and nobody will help me, not this gynecologist, not others I’ve seen. Not the ER doc- tors who don’t even bother to conceal their rolled eyes and shared glances when I’m wheeled in, half-covered in my own menstrual blood, sobbing from the pain, who send me home, doubled over and barely conscious, and tell me I’m fine.44° Hot & Heavy With a blank, broken feeling settling over me, I nod, get dressed, and gather my things. “See you in a year!” she chirps behind me, but this is che last time I'll see any doctor for three years. And for those three years, !’ll carry a malignant tumor around with me, tucked into a uterine wall. Growing slowly, left in peace to stretch its little fingers toward other plush, overlooked organs. 2} Before | continue I don’t want to spoil the ending, but just so you know, this won't be a story of “beating” anything. Not cancer, not fatphobia, not years of internalized self-hatred, not medical negligence, not the odds. ‘This isn’t the story of how I learned to be fabulous or fierce, nor how I fought a battle and emerged victorious or beaten. Much as Td like there to be a narrative endpoint where my stories weave and seal together into a neat point, there isn’t. The best I can do—and it’s a full-time job even to do this—is attempt to balance medi- cal rhetoric and prognosis with moral and political fury, self-love, ° confusion, failure, and the shame that sneaks up and humps my leg relentlessly. That's all. Are you still wich me? 3} Citrus Fruit ond sporting equipment ‘The diagnosis started with easy concern and picked up enormous speed, like a penny dropped from a skyscraper, cracking the side- walk. below. I had ngeded a form filled out for grad school, and in the routine abdominal palpation, the doctor felt something. Proba- bly fibroids, the doctor had said, Then there were MRIs, CT scans, urgent phone calls from the doctor. For two misdiagnosed weeks, before mine was pronounced an “easier” cancer, I curled into the numbness of a rare, largely untreatable disease. When not staring out of my Brooklyn window at the first snowfalls of the season, I tapped. out Internet searches on my odds. Most likely, Google offered helpfully, I'd be dead within a year. I had spent the previous three years with my body fly- ing under the medical radar, hoping to avoid the “you're an