Here Lies Urethra Franklin

Pain was just the cure I needed

Pluto just wobbled into Aquarius— then changed its mind and went back to Capricorn, where it’s been for over a decade. Its movements aligned with an odd fever-like sickness that came on heavy, then disappeared, then cycled back. I felt weighted. Then energized. Then caught in a feeling of surrender.

Pluto was making a transition. Maybe it was just Covid.

Right in the middle of it I had this dream where I died. Told whoever was listening that I didn’t want to die yet, and was given the message that it’s “always like this at first.” Slowly, I accepted that I had to leave my body. I saw myself laying still, surrounded by light, as if on a sarcophagus.

Okay.

That’s fine planets.

Your ways are mysterious and hidden, despite the fact that I’m housed on one of you and at all times part of you. Our sun making life possible in every single way down here—the rhythm of my life: my days, hours—past, present and future. And yet, where I am within you is largely invisible to me. Only when things are particularly strange do I turn to you in a deeper way and wonder: WTF.

Which brings me to my vagina.

I have one. There’s a forty-eight-ish percent chance that you have one. Actual people came through mine. Days of birth. Noted in the stars. Sun signs, rising signs. If you’re in possession of a uterus, vagina, and all of those creation parts, you’re tied to the cycles. Days marked red on your calendar. Women’s wisdom some call it. But I’m just now getting to that.

Vagina. Could we give her an Egyption goddess name? Tefnut? (You do that math.) Or is it more like Dorian Gray, where we split into two, one of us holding the truths of the other.

I thought retirement of the lady parts would be wonderful. No more look-at-all-of-this-blood, no more weeks lost to recovering. No more products. No more pain. For years, there were signs of the end. It once disappeared for nine months, then—as if cued for birth—returned. Later, weeks after my son died, I got a period that was more like Moses parting the red sea. It was epic—five or six years later—I’m still thinking about it. I was so broken. So sad. Disassociated. Not about my period, but my son. Still, there I was, bleeding out.

In those years, I was already standing on a weak foundation physically, so periods would take me down, down, down. Another physical compromise that I had to make peace with. To accept. But that particular period was so full-on; the loss of my son so massive. When Moses arrived, I bowed my head in silence and prayed: Please, please make this stop.

It did.

I had one more shedding of the eggs twenty-eight days later.

Pluto. Mars. Jupiter. New Moon.

Mercy received.

A life for a life.

When menopause finally arrived, my vagina/Tefnut went to the desert for the ceremony and never came back.

Tefnut, being the goddess of moisture, became thirsty. Survival thirsty. A sensation arrived—the last bit of moisture in an oasis gone—relieved only by a quart of water. Of course, frequency increased. Then UTIs. But I didn’t put any of that together until two years ago, when a UTI came and never went away.

The first thing you’re told to do is to drink a bunch of water. To flush. Drink Cranberry. D-Mannose. I did those. Then antibiotics. I thought it was just another bump in the road. Because I was getting better—I thought. Recovering from a decade of diagnoses that pushed me into greater isolation and survival. I’d worked for two years on brain retraining and nervous system regulation. I’d regained energy, foods, and access to the world. (I got to do an enema in Italy) I was finally free—I thought. I’ll just take some meds and get better—I thought.

I didn’t know I was starting down the two-year path of becoming an expert in post-menopausal UTIs. I didn’t know that eighty percent of emergency room visits by women are for UTI—and— that over half of them will have a recurrent infection. I didn’t know about DNA sequencing lab tests, or that our doctor’s offices may not use them. I did not know that when a woman’s UTI’s doesn’t clear, the medical establishment basically shrugs, and sends you on your un-merry way. It took me six-months to give up on western medicine—two separate clinics—and start investigating on my own. In the meantime, I had nothing for the pain, nothing for the very present signs of infections.

So, I used the only real resource I had: I drank a shit-ton of water.

Which made me have to pee. Constantly. Pee to flush and pee to relieve the pain of having to pee. When I tell you I peed on every corner of this planet—it is not an exaggeration. I peed in a bucket I kept in my car. In Italy, I peed behind a few stalks of grass reeds as a bus full of writers patiently waited. I peed in every restaurant I could in Florence and Venice. Airports—a godsend. I peed in the ocean, so I could walk on the beach. I peed in the alleyways of La Jolla, Mission Beach, and Pacific Beach, California. I peed on every highway I was on, from the east coast to the west. I peed every twenty minutes during the night for five months. I peed in people’s hedges, in my hedges, on city park hedges. I peed in the parking lot of the Savannah International Airport twice— I would go inside, but by the time I got to the car, I was in pain again. There is nothing more frightening than being trapped in a car and needing to pee to relieve pain—which reminds me—I peed in the line of cars at the border crossing in Tijuana. I peed in public restrooms when I could find them. Port-a-potties, you betcha.

Peeing became a symbol of freedom. Because if I could pee, I could leave my house. During the height of the cataclysmic infection(s) I was in too much pain—a ten out of ten. Which no doctor cared about. One wanted me to take some mixture that turned your pee blue and created formaldehyde in the bladder—possibly causing lesions. (Thank you, Ruth Kriz) They tell you stay off of Google, but then they ignore your pain and are fine with formaldehyde. I seriously just needed a low-dose pain med.

Just say no to formaldehyde.

At one point, I got a Tramadol from a friend of a friend, and was so excited to have just a few hours of a break from the pain. A solution. Just as I was about to take it I heard my son’s voice, from the beyond, say, “What are you doing?” as clear as if he were in the room. So, I tested the pill with some fentanyl test strips (that I bought for a friend’s recreational cocaine use) and watched it test positive. Twice.

I almost took it anyway.

That’s how bad things were.

I was desperate during that time. Drinking about two gallons of water a day. To flush. So, the bathroom had to be close by. I’ve never been so in touch with my Urethra. (R.E.S.P.E.C.T.)

Icing Urethra (a memoir), and my bladder, was the only way I found any kind of relief. But wasn’t really relief at all. It was distraction. Those shitty doctors that I hadn’t fired yet, kept telling me I didn’t have anything wrong with me—my labs kept showing no signs of infection (probably because of all of the water and their shitty lab). I was fifty years old, and my “wisdom” didn’t count for shit.

“I know what a UTI feels like,” I said. “This is a bladder infection and system wide.”

They replied, “There is something else wrong with you and it is likely—lifelong.”

I’ll just leave that right there.

I didn’t take the Tramadol. I crushed it and threw it in the trash and hoped that no city raccoons, or crows, or people would become a stat. I couldn’t put my husband in the position of telling my daughter: “She died like your brother.”

Because I would’ve, maybe. I was doing just exactly what he did. Trying to self-medicate because the medical system has made closed-door decisions about what people deserve, about what they’re experiencing. About what is true and not true. About the science of pain. About what pain is. Was I exhibiting drug seeking behavior? Absolutely.

Capitalistically, opioids were for everyone, then it was a lie, then the “silent” pandemic—now it’s somehow Mexico’s fault. What are street drugs? Isn’t it about people seeking something on their own because they can’t access safe supply? I was doing the obvious thing, like so many others, because my doctor-gas-lighting-motherfuckers weren’t taking my pain seriously.

Asking a friend I trusted if they knew anyone who might have a pain med, was the obvious path. Pain does that. It pushes. It pleads. If a fifty-year old woman can be pushed to the streets because of a UTI, it is no wonder that so many people in pain feel totally on their own. It is because they are on their own.

***

Menopausal women often get more UTIs.

Would’ve been super cool if any of the multitude of doctors I’d seen during my thirties and forties would’ve told me that.

I found out about Ruth Kriz (no she doesn’t own a steakhouse), who’s a UTI guru. She reaffirmed my experience via podcasts. Eventually, I left my doctors behind, and turned to Chinese Medicine and four thousand years of their wisdom. I did Ozone saunas—which works great for anaerobic bacteria, but will actually feed aerobic bacteria. I had both. Still, I had some benefit, until I didn’t. While I was learning and experimenting and recovering from way, way, way too many antibiotics, I forced myself to leave the house—to live— and became a bathroom whisperer.

I could turn the shade from a lamp post into a refuge.

Once, I was standing on the boardwalk on Mission Beach when I heard a local tell another, “I just saw a homeless woman take a shit on the sidewalk.” I snapped up on my toes and look down the direction he pointed, through the streams of strollers, and bikes, and tourists, looking for her—my hero. Because there is a point in the game of trade-offs: I can be in extreme pain and hold it in, or I can just squat down and take care of myself.

There is nothing like the dignity of a bathroom. I just wish we could all get on board with that. But even that has capitalistic guidelines. Rules. Denials. Safeguards. Morals. Forcing people to do whatever they need to survive. I often got bathroom keys with my pleading eyes, but had I been disheveled and dirty, I know I would’ve been denied. Taking a shit on the sidewalk became, to me, the greatest act of self-actualization I had ever seen.

On my journey inward, I found pelvic floor therapy, where a strange, kind woman with petite hands, gently pressed on my vagina “Like a ripe tomato—never harder than that.” I learned that muscles were frozen and taught. Defensive. Like, a lifetime-of-protection-flexed. None shall pass. And all of that. I never knew I wanted someone to massage my girl, Tefnut, so fine, so sweet, and say, “Wow” in recognition of all the complexity she was holding. I felt so seen. “Why,” we discussed, “aren’t young girls introduced to the pelvic wand?”

My vagina was never Dorian Gray, but rather the metaphorical picture who weathered and aged under all of his sins. The men. The men when I was a little girl. The men when I was a teen. The men who were never men at all. Maybe, it is almost cliché, or totally cliché, but two years of the post-menopausal-infection-party, and I couldn’t help but consider all that she had been through. Unseen. Taking the hits. Rebounding, rather graciously. But me, the girl, the young woman, feeling the not-feeling. Not understanding what rape was. Grooming. Manipulation. Gaslighting. Not understanding what was happening as it was happening, and then assuming that’s what it was supposed to be. And my body, as always, the landscape of survival. Maybe it was just infections, you say. Infections are real, tangible. But also, maybe, when these lengthy-ass-body-challenges come and linger and linger and linger, it just takes that long to be with what pain is.

To feel the pain that is there, hidden from us even while we stand in the center of it.

There would be no parties for a while. There would be no compromises. There would be no dismissal of what was true. It was finally completely undeniable. Once I came to that idea and the feeling of all of my history in my body, it opened me up in a way that changed the trajectory of what “healing” really meant.

Healing is slow. Like a telescopic connection to something far, far away, made close by circling it again and again.

Pragmatically, for the bacteria colonizing my organs, it became a wholistic practice. Part “What else am I going to do” with a determination to live a life not bound by the fear, and part internet Google doctor. So of course, I turned to Reddit. I learned more on r/healthyhooha and r/UTI and r/womenshealth than I did from most of the doctors I spoke with. Each of us is so unique, what works for some may not work for others, but the idea that I wasn’t alone—sadly there are millions of women living with chronic UTIs—was incredibly helpful.

I found one doctor (after a year)—among five—who encouraged me and supported my process. Staying open to alternatives and doing the testing that was needed. Mainly, she taught me that the process to healthy urinary tract and vaginal health would be long. She surmised that I’d likely been living with infections for years. All those dried up desert sensations, all those UTIs in the decade before menopause, all of those antibiotics, and absolutely no one talking about biofilms. (Girl, you better google that shit.) That my years-long-infections had been a years-long-process.

I’ve taken it further. My body knew to hold on. My body knew that I was fighting another battle. My body knew, in the years before my son passed, that it needed to keep me alive while I tried to keep him alive. I lived in two worlds: exhaustion coupled with desperation, and being forced to move forward: parent my daughter as best I could, work/pay bills, self-medicate (so much ibuprofen) to get by. I went into fight and freeze. My body was shutting me down trying to conserve. I remember almost precisely when my body “knew” I was going to lose him, while the other I pushed on. My bladder, my body, held on to whatever it had to, for as long as it could, until after my son passed away. Two years into my overall recovery: wiring toward safety, wiring out of survival— it was if everything my body had held, unleashed.

That’s a lot of pain. Pains so big, that during my frantic years to save him, I got sicker and sicker and sicker. Maybe that is just an explanation. But if pain is energy, which it undoubtedly is, then it must go somewhere. The mind likes to make decisions, label, find explanations, but the body is our reservoir. All the things we cannot see—cannot know—because we are not ready.

When taken that way, how can there ever be a simple solution to fucking anything? A single antibiotic, a good therapist, the right supplement—would be wonderful if they took away the pain of it all—quickly. Addiction is such a beautiful example of this. Chronic illness of the chronic-stress-induced variety—the trauma induced fight, flight, freeze, and fawn variety—is deeper than a diagnosis. It’s just not what we want to hear. Inside of the emergency we want answers—will I live or won’t I? Can we cure this or can’t we? Black and white. Tell me what it is, so I can align with that and have an explanation. A pathway out. Hope.

But listen more closely…there is pain inside of that, right?

I did years of supplements. Gathered my diagnoses. Studied labs and biohacking. And you know, it got me through about a decade. But I never really got “well.” In fact, the more I tried to control my health through “choices” —the right ones, of course—the more reactive I became. Turns out, avoidance, explanations, diagnoses, labs—answers unto themselves—did not open up my life. They bound it. If that isn’t a definition of addiction, I don’t know what else to call it.

Control is mighty seductive.

Eventually, I had to turn inward, because there was nowhere else to turn. Going deeper. Being with what is. “What if,” I’ve had to ask myself, over and and over and over, “I don’t know what this is?” What if the solution is in the process of learning how I am in this world? How I feel. What I’m holding. What if my job, mentally, with all this brain power, isn’t to get an explanation, but to allow the body to be the guide? What if I befriended the pain? What if I nurtured the pain? As if it was an earnest, vulnerable child, who doesn’t need to know the big words to explain it. What would feel good, right now?

We resist changing our whole life because it’s hard. Quitting the jobs—impossible. Being lost in “I don’t know”—irrational. The headaches debilitate. The labs don’t lie. The body pains move, take hold, train us to be on guard, to be vigilant.

Sometimes, what’s happening eats us whole. Other times, it festers and waits.

This life will bring us to our knees. This life will have you buying pills from a “friend of a friend” because you want to survive. This life will have you playing I Spy for your future homeless encampment and making notes on a map for the safest places to pee.

Living life in the dark, looking up at the stars. Asking for mercy.

“What are you doing?” my son asked, the day I was craving relief. “What are you doing?”

Mercy received. (How can it be that he saved me, directly because he did not survive?)

In living, I had to learn to be with the pain—there would be no “pill” or correct diagnosis. Instead, in being with what is, I had to learn to take a piss just about anywhere. I had to take care of what I was carrying until it finally worked its way clear. I had to have faith that my body was on my side. That the pain would one day pass. That all of that holding had served its purpose and now there was change. It just wasn’t that romantic version of recovery I so longed for.

I guess this is the wisdom part.

Two years in and my vagina, and I do everything together—we’re very attuned to each other’s needs.

Coffee?

Just a little.

Wine?

Sure a few sips sound nice.

Pool?

Girl you better stop being crazy.

A long walk?

You got that lactic acid right?

“It took Pluto sixteen years to leave Capricorn behind, having entered the cardinal sign back in 2008, the planet of death, destruction and transformation, Pluto's dance with Capricorn has been brutally eye opening,” says Google AI.

Brutally. Eye. Opening.

Dear reader, I am a Capricorn.

Here lies Urethra Franklin.

May she rest in peace.