Raging Pelvises and Ice Cream

“Black women don’t feel pain.”

“If there was anything I hated, it was investigating the organs of the female pelvis.”

- J. Marion Sims, “Father of Gynecology”

In Columbia, South Carolina, there is a statue of J. Marion Sims, honoring his work in gynecology. He practiced in Montgomery, Alabama (where two-thirds of the population was Black and enslaved at the time). But he was born, raised and educated in South Carolina, a state where more than 40% of all Africans trafficked for slavery entered.

It is the birthplace of my mother, my grandmother, my great-grandmother and my 2nd great grandmother, who was enslaved. A land my mother fled at the age of 17, after watching my grandfather, a sharecropper, being degraded by white men, and the constant oppression of walking through back doors of pediatrician offices, and waiting until every white child was serviced before she was even acknowledged.

In 1961 Mississippi, a hysterectomy was performed on civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer without her consent. She was 44 years old. The act was part of a systemic tool of violence where over 8,000 Black women in Mississippi and South Carolina were given hysterectomies without their knowledge. This happened from the 1920s to the mid-1980s.

Fannie Lou Hamer thought she was getting a cyst removed.

At age 45, I was told a hysterectomy was my best option after finally being referred to a pelvic urogynecology specialist. She gave it to me straight. After 15 years of constant pain and agony, my condition was too far gone.

On July 6, 2023, I lost my womb

Eugenics is blatant. Coercion is quiet.

2002: Coerced into birth control pills. It will help with your heavy periods/Why are my periods heavy? /It happens in some women. /Why?...

2022: My 14-year-old daughter is offered birth control pills by a pediatric gynecologist to deal with her harsh periods. We decline.

2008: Coerced into C-section—15 hours of natural labor. At the 8th hour, they were already talking surgery. You are not dilated enough after all this time. / Can we wait? /Yes, but…/I don’t want drugs. I want to do this naturally/you’re still not dilated. It’s been 12 hours. You should consider/No, let’s keep going.
Every half hour – You should consider…At this rate, you will not fully dilate. Continuing labor will just be more painful for you/Okay. Is it safe? /Yes, of course. This is a routine surgery.

Coerced into compliance. This is just the way things are.

Coerced into silence.

2009: There were grilled peaches and ice cream. My cousin placed sliced peaches on my parents’ outdoor grill and cooked them until they gave a slight char. Memorial Day weekend eats. She gave it to me on a little round dessert paper plate. One hearty scoop of vanilla ice cream to melt into the charred peach rounds. A big piece of Heaven.

Just the act of being served while my aunt held my seven-month-old daughter was a delight. Three generations in one space. Spoon in hand, I cut a small piece of peach, vanilla starting to melt into a drizzle on top. In my mouth quickly. Damn it was good. One more little scoop.

In less than a minute, my plate was almost clean until it came back up. Bubbling in my gut. Rising into my chest. Into my throat. Water is drowning my mouth, encasing my tongue. I race to the bathroom to release what cannot be held. There would be many other instances of dairy drama. Digestive drama. The case of trying to eat eggs before I’d had toast. Eating slowly. Small bites. Swearing off ice cream, my favorite treat, forever. After having a baby, my life, my health became a mystery. My body became a stranger.

This would be the start of 15 more years of chronic pain, the retiring of foods only after dire consequences. Back and forth to my gynecologist begging and pleading for answers. I can’t eat. There’s pelvic pain on my cesarean scar. Pain in my pelvis. I’m throwing up. Pain.

Immense pain. No answers.

2010: My doctor decides to perform an exploratory laparoscopy to understand what was going on.

Laparoscopy: a surgical procedure used to examine the organs in the belly (abdomen). It can also examine a woman's pelvic organs. uses a thin lighted tube that has a video camera. The tube is called a laparoscope. According to the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, laparoscopy is used to diagnose pelvic pain, endometriosis, fibroids, cysts and many other reproductive diagnoses.

“It was a mess in there.”

My gynecologist’s words to my mother and then boyfriend (now husband) as they sat on edge in the waiting room. My uterus was attached to my bowels and bladder. They’d fused together due to scar tissue.

Why did I have scar tissue?

“Oh, it can happen when you have a c-section.”

“No one told me that before I had the c-section.”

“Oh yeah, it’s possible.”

“Was there a way to prevent it?”

“No, not really,” he says. “It just happens to some people.”

I still can’t eat ice cream.

These dramatic ups and downs of my raging pelvis. At no point did I think this would lead to hysterectomy.

2013: During my second pregnancy, the doctors explained the risks in depth for an aging woman like me, 35 years old. Nine months of ear infections, dehydration, pink eye, and daily dismissed pelvic pain. With a response from doctors:

“Your baby is fine. She’s just sucking the life out of you.” Awesome medical advisement.

I finally “convinced’ my doctor to put me on bed rest, six weeks before my scheduled c- section. Three weeks later, the pain is so severe, they push up my c-section. But the local anesthesia fails. I am completely sedated.

My daughter is born to doctors.
They tell me what time she was born.
I am forced to believe them.

May 2013: Ten days after my daughter is born, my body breaks out into hives. I am now allergic to ibuprofen.

2016: Increased and consistent abdominal pain uncovers an umbilical hernia. I have another surgery to repair it. It does not relieve my pain.

May 9th, 2024, 6:48 p.m. I am watching NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt as I always do weeknights after comparing America news to Al Jazeera or Democracy Now. They ran a story on the link between cancers and relaxers that were targeted toward Black women. He spoke with five Black women who seemed significantly older than me. All of these women had contracted some type of cancer and had spent most of their formative years wearing relaxers.
One woman with very curly full hair that looked almost like a crochet style was asked why she got a relaxer.

“To get a job,” she said. “Back then coming out of college I had a big afro. that really wasn't accepted back then.”

Coerced into conformity.

The reporter asked the five women to raise their hands if they had a hysterectomy. All five women raised their hands. ALL OF THEM. Eeriness went through my body in that moment.
The reflections on my own womb snatching less than a year ago. My sister sister’s hysterectomy. My friend Chris’ hysterectomy. My god sister’s hysterectomy: her battle with almost every cancer that a woman can have.

My mother’s hysterectomy at 31 years old. Now, at 71, she cannot remember why it was recommended. But it was 1984. I can only imagine it went something like: “well you’ve had three children already. This can alleviate the pain you’re experiencing.

For my sister, cousins and friends, there were years of back and forth to doctors, dismissal of their pain as bearable and normal, or imagination. Birth control pills pushed, and recommendations of liver-damaging amounts of ibuprofen, scar tissue scraping procedures. It never scrapes away the emotional tissue. The loss felt. The physical emptiness when a take full deep body breath.

We lost so much. For me it was my sanity, my sense of sexuality.

A 2009 study revealed that Black women are more than three times more likely to experience hysterectomy than white women.

I do not know if my hysterectomy was a result of my body or years of lack of information, neglect, and dismissal. But I know that I was forced to the edge, to the extremes of my womanhood. With pain pushing me over into healing, or in the very least, physical contentment. Screaming for help on gurneys. Screaming to be heard. Being told to tough it out.

As if my pain didn’t exist.
As if my womb didn’t matter.
As if our wombs don’t matter.
Fannie Lou Hamer’s didn’t.
My mother’s didn’t.
Mine did not.

October 5, 2023: Three months post -op- Reality

I looked

under the table

Picked up

my left titty

Shifted it to the right

and peaked

Nothing

Opened

the closet door

Ruffled through

Unnecessary

plastic bags

That didn’t ask

to be there

Couldn’t find it

Closed my eyes

Spun around three times

That only made

The space within

walls feel bigger

Maybe

If I close my eyes

Breathe deep

Say a chant

or two

I can teleport

Four months back

Go snatch my snatch back

Written by Latrina Kelly-James