Alice Munroe (ex_barebones985) wrote in the_colony, @ 2010-11-21 17:12:00 |
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Entry tags: | ^ week 23, alice munroe, louisa may smith, | alice and louisa may |
WEEK 23: SUNDAY
Characters: Alice Munroe and Louisa May Smith
Location: Louisa May’s trailer
Summary: Alice has a few questions about surgery. Namely birth control related.
Rating: PG-13
Once breakfast was done and Leo had gone off to do more chores, Alice found her schedule wide open. This wasn’t necessarily a good thing, as it also gave her mind space to wander. She needed to pack for the next day’s trip, and help load firewood into the truck, but instead she found her feet taking her outside toward the garage.
The huge trailer looked almost alien in the wide space, silver and smooth like an space ship or a gigantic metal sculpture. Alice had seen it when they’d first brought it in, but it still looked strange and different. She’d certainly expected something else entirely. The door was currently hanging ajar and faint noises could be heard, leading her to believe someone was inside, and she had a pretty good idea who. Tentatively she knocked on the frame.
“Louisa?”
Louisa May was in the middle of thoroughly cleaning every surface of the trailer in a way that only a doctor could -- within an inch of its life. Tom mentioned that he’d had people clean it up a bit before hauling it over, but that certainly did not mean she was anywhere close to satisfied. She looked a bit frazzled -- her hair sticking up here and there from behind a bandanna, she was dressed in her worn set of overalls and a giant plaid shirt that used to belong to her father, and she was wearing a set of thick rubber gloves. She turned around upon hearing her name.
“What is it? Molly okay?” She dropped her scrub-brush and begun stripping off her gloves in anticipation of a potential emergency, the first thought that entered her mind.
“What?” Alice replied, then immediately remembered. “Oh. Yeah, no, yeah. Molly’s fine. I, uh...” When presented with Molly’s illness and recovery progress, suddenly Alice felt like she was an unwanted annoyance. She chewed her lip, frowning at herself briefly. “I had a question. About something. Surgery, actually. Hypothetical.” She paused, really taking in the scene for a moment and licking her lower lip before continuing. “I can come back later. You look busy.”
Her heart rate dropped back to normal, and Louisa May let loose with a small smile of relief. “No, no, come on in out of the cold.” She gestured to the couch against the back wall. “Take a seat in my office.” She fumbled around before finding a stool she’d squirreled away under the sink, and sat down facing Alice.
“Now, what sorta question did you have?”
Alice chewed her lip again, her eyes averted once she was sitting and her hands twisting awkwardly in her lap. She and Louisa May were still trying to find even ground after their haphazard bygones-be-bygones talk during the Christmas dinner, and it felt even stranger bringing her current thoughts up with the woman... but she was the only one who would know the answers, and the only one who could help.
“Is it possible to do light surgery procedures now? I mean, with someone properly numbed or delirioused or whatever the term might be? It wouldn’t be like... a life-threatening corrective surgery, but like--” she floundered. “--like if I had endometriosis or something.”
“Whatever we talk about here is completely confidential, just so you know,” Louisa May replied, her eyebrows drawing together. She was having a difficult time pinning down exactly what the other woman needed. “Have you had trouble with endometriosis before? Do you have concerns that you might have it?”
“N-...no,” Alice said slowly, frowning and still not looking at her. “It’s more a question of if that kind of light surgery is possible.” She chewed her lip again, sighed quietly at herself, and closed her eyes for a moment. Stop being a pansy, she told herself, forcing her eyes open and up at the doctor again. “I was thinking about getting tied.”
“Oh. Ohhh.” Louisa May sat back on her stool. “Well, unless it’s life threatening, it’s probably fairly risky to have pretty much any sort of surgery right now -- blood loss, potential trouble with proper anesthesia, and chance of infection would all make me cautious about trying unless there were really no other options.” She paused, holding up a finger. “That isn’t to say there aren’t other less invasive methods, though. Something like an IUD, or an interuterine system, like... oh... Mirena? That’ll do you for five years, which is a start.”
Alice’s frown turned less anxious and more introspective. “I thought those were dangerous, too? I mean, I remember hearing about them being kinda dangerous from back in school about high risks for blood clotting and whatever.”
“Well... any birth control has some risk, especially if you’re a smoker, or are over forty, or if you’ve had a family history of strokes. But I can certainly monitor you, and if it has too many negative side effects, we can remove the device right away.”
Louisa May looked around the trailer. The area they were currently sitting in was to become a temporary exam room, and although she would do surgery if she had to, she really didn’t want to risk it under these conditions when birth control would get the job done -- and be potentially reversible if the situation changed. Not that she’d say that out loud to Alice -- but permanent procedures like that were ripe for potential regret.
Alice rubbed the back of her neck, eyes angled at her knees in thought. If it only lasted five years, that was an improvement from never again. Of course, that was assuming Jed would ever be willing to have a family with her. She closed her eyes for a moment, then set her jaw and brought her gaze up to Louisa May’s.
“That’d work, I guess. I mean, I don’t have any of those factors, so if I’m low risk it should be fine. Where would we find this stuff?” She was tempted to go out and get them herself.
“Wasn’t looking for anything along those lines in the GP’s office, but it might be worth another visit to see if they don’t have some in stock. Other than that, there’s a Planned Parenthood in Medford we could check on too.” She made a mental note to write Alice detailed instructions as to how to remove any device she ended up using -- five years was a long time, and lord knew where they’d all be by then.
Alice nodded in answer, the anxiety easing out of her expression. “Yeah, okay. I’ll find a way to work that into the next raid when I get back.”
“I’ll let you know what to look for,” Louisa May replied.
The younger woman stood, running her hands over non-existant wrinkles on the front of her jeans. “‘Kay. Guess I’ll leave you to the rest of your cleaning.”
Louisa May stood up as well. “Nice talkin’ with you,” she replied. “You ever want to talk some more, you just stop on by.”
It was that statement that stopped Alice in her tracks. Not only did Louisa May seem content with their current interaction, but she seemed okay with the possibility of more happening in the future. She was inviting them. Alice took a halting step, frowned at herself, and turned back again. “Actually, one more question: what can I take for hormonal imbalance aside from possibly-expired pills?”
“Well, those methods we were talking about would help with your basic estrogen levels. Are you on medication for anything else?”
Alice gave a weak smile she didn’t quite feel. “I was mostly healthy before.” The smile faded. “I’ve just noticed my moods are kinda... worse. Than I’m used to. Since...” She made a vague gesture with her hand. “Before you knew me. And It’s causing some problems overall for me.”
“Well, evening out your estrogen can sometimes help with mood swings,” Louisa May replied. “If that doesn’t help matters, we can try other options. I’m gonna have to do some research, see when things are gonna expire on me. So don’t take any pills without talking to me first. And if you’re worried about your mood, my advice as a doctor would be to try and avoid alcohol.”
Alice immediately began to object, but Louisa May raised a hand. “I don’t know anything about what you currently do, but it does tend to exacerbate matters, so if you don’t drink, don’t start, and if you do, I’d just cut back a little. That’s all.”
The younger woman pressed her lips into a thin line, her brow crinkling in frustration. She rarely drank unless she was really upset or to help loosen her up, but the drive to drink had increased over the last few days. She’d only barely resisted, mostly with the hope that things would be better once she and Jed were back from their trip. As an alternative, she’d found herself sleeping a lot more, but blamed it on the cold weather. Maybe it is just the weather that’s upsetting me, she thought. It wasn’t cold and dark like this in Vegas.
“Okay.”
“Okay,” Louisa May echoed. “First step, we see how the Mirena sits with you. Then, if you’re still feeling under the weather, we take it from there. But please let me know if you feel worse, in the mean time? Just think of it as keeping me in the loop.”
Alice shifted on her feet uncomfortably, one hand settling on her upper arm and her eyes focused on the ground again. She hated admitting how she was really feeling; to her, it felt more like weakness even acknowledging that something was wrong. What made things worse was that she was having to discuss it with Louisa May who, while certainly a doctor, hadn’t been all that willing to openly talk to her after their first meeting and the sequential let’s-all-pretend-that-didn’t-happen mini-tour. She gave a weak nod, but otherwise remained quiet.
Louisa May could see the other woman’s discomfort, and she certainly didn’t want to scare Alice away. She shrugged, hoping to dispel some of the tension in the trailer. “You’d tell me if you got a stuffy nose. This is a symptom like anything else. And just like a cold, once we sort out what’s going on, we can figure out how to make it better.”
“Okay,” Alice agreed, nodding a little more firmly. “Thank you. We’ll talk later.”
“Right,” Louisa May replied, extending her hand, which the other woman shook. “Nice talking with you.”