by Carolyn Myers
DES to HRT
Synthetic estrogen and me
Hormone replacement therapy
Can help come pharmaceutically?
The year is 1949, my mother isn't feeling fine
so she goes to the clinic
to check on her uterus and what's in it,
and it's me, a baby,
but my mother is almost 43.
And she starts to cry cause it's such a surprise,
But the doctor says, "You can wipe those eyes, this pregnancy will go easy,
you'll see,'cause there's a new drug therapy;
it's called DES
that almost spells "yes"
so just try it.
Hell, you don't even have to buy to try
I'm such a swell guy that the pharmacy and me
to make an example of generosity, we'll give you a sample,
for free."
So mom takes this DES
which turns out to be chemical mess,
a real miscarriage of medicine.
The medical establishment tried to hide it,
like thalidomide it
was not so grandiose
But extensively reaching,
it would also prove to exceed their grasp.
DES – Diethylstilbestrol, synthetic estrogen,
the chemists got there first
and they did their worst.
When I got my period, they started preaching.
"Oh, she just wants the sympathy,
there's nothing wrong that we can see—"
though they never looked—
"We've closed the book on this kid.
Shut your flap shut your lid,
all girls go through it
and they don't boohoo it.
Shut up."
And sometimes the blood came like rain
and sometimes there was nothing but cramps and pain
but I thought, "You know how we have this word 'blue'
but do we see it
the same when we name it,
me and you?
And does asparagus always taste the same
only to some it's disgust
and to some heaven made plain?
And so, is it the same with pain?
It's just one of those days to hear you tell,
while for me,
I'm stuck in a realm of hell."
According to Teen Magazine,
right then everything should have been so keen.
It was time for a makeover,
the doctors recommended we let the drugs take over.
In 1964, if a young lady felt that life was a chore
in Southern California the land of endless summer,
what a bummer.
The land of endless two piece bathing suits
but her skin's broken out
so she doesn't look cute.
No wonder she is so symptomatic,
her low threshold of pain so melodramatic.
The doctor said, "Well, shoot,
and fee fi fo fum,
there's help to come with Ortho Novum—"
synthetic estrogen—
"Yes, the first birth control pill
will also fix your skin, and it's in.
Don't worry, you might feel a little ill,
but when you swell up fat,
we can also fix that,
and make you lean and mean with amphetamines."
So I looked better than I could, girls,
but I had these mood swings.
In 1972, I was twenty two.
I went organic, off both estrogen and speed
and I started to panic
when I started to bleed on my own,
because the blood was
a flood and then it was gone,
it just was no more.
But luckily there was an open door.
The Berkeley Women's Health Collective
where we gals found out
that this blast from the past
was not something we oughta've been better at
but in fact a weird team sport
that we'd actually lettered at,
we were DES Daughters!
And our blues,
both emotional and cervical,
were for a short time, news.
We were a class action law suit,
but we were also a point that was moot,
because DES was long gone.
And, Ortho Novum was no longer hormonally strong.
I had a few really bad years,
some painful procedures,
diagnoses of fear.
But I was one of the lucky ones,
I could birth my own babies,
which made my symptoms be done.
And it wasn't until 1999
when menopause came on the line,
and I started to feel oh not so fine,
that it all came back like a repressed memory:
"My Adolescence in a Satanic Cult with the High Priests of Pain"—
who masqueraded during the day
as not very talented suburban doctors.
But, now, remember to breathe.
Here comes some ease.
The hour is late,
but finally I participate,
in a new world I helped to create.
For this doctor is a she like me,
no longer is gynecology
the practice specialty
of He-who-must-not-be-questioned.
And she is listing options
and she wants to know how I feel.
I feel like I want to hold her hand
and shyly let her understand,
in fifty years on this earth
she is the first, the very first
who wanted to sit and listen to me.
And when she suggests I might want to think about HRT,
that's "hormone replacement therapy"—
synthetic estrogen —
I try to stay in the warm mutual present
not tumble back into a past
in which I was alone, outcast.
But as soon as I recognize the truth
of safety here I start feel.
Aye, there's the rub in Achille's heel.
I feel fear and hate and the shame of pain.
In horror I realize I may show through
and be that younger one who leaks hot red tears
from those bygone years,
who knows pain in
gooey seeping rages of diary pages
that no sanitary pat on the back can contain.
I say, "Yes I see, Hormone replacement Therapy,
HRT, HRT, find out what it means to me."
She repeats to me.
She is clear and thorough and kind,
I am trying to pay her mind,
To understand about good moods
and good bones
and protection from heart diseases
and the return of my good mind
which daily teases me,
and which I greatly miss
as I forget three out of every five items
on the list
these days.
Listen, I am no fool.
I was at the school
which had the very last polio epidemic
in 1958,
I am happy to relate I do not balk
at praising Jonas Salk.
I rejoice at the advances in medical science.
I am glad women dance longer
and can have the reliance
of hardly any deaths in the birth bed,
of pap smears and mammograms,
and birth control on demand.
We millions of women
passing the age of menopause
know we are a new population swell
in the cosmos.
If we are not the bomb,
we are at least the boom,
so baby, make some room.
But let us take a count,
so there will be no lingering doubt.
There are 50 million women in the USA,
In their climacteric years today,
That means around age 50,
and each one has a medical history,
maybe not one just like me,
but often with much complexity.
If we were each to take our HRT
to age 80
which is our life expectancy.
that would be 1.5 billion woman-years
of hormone replacement therapy—
that's synthetic estrogen consumption—
Never before has a drug regimen
been proposed for women or for men
on such a scale.
So forgive us if we rant and rail.
Forgive us if we appear to dither
as our ovaries start to wither.
I am sitting with Her, my doctor,
we regard each other,
mother to mother,
woman to woman;
we see we are part of real big plan
with lots of potential gains and costs.
And standing by this gate,
if we hesitate,
it surely does not follow
that we choose to be lost.