Hemorrhoids Are Good Luck Charms

I’ve always considered myself one who has variable luck. I’m not very lucky, but on the other hand I am very lucky.

I got to thinking about luck the other day when I won a contest on Mommy Shorts, which happens to be one of my favorite blogs. If you haven’t checked out Mommy Shorts, you should. It is packed full of humor and pathos.

Anyhow, I suggested a caption for this picture that included the word hemorrhoid in it. To my great delight, I won a gift card to the delicious Crumbs Bakeshop. This is highly fortuitous because I freaking love cupcakes. And I’m going to NYC in March. So I will not only be in my favorite city, but I will be stuffing myself with cupcakes!

Anyhow, all of this contest winning got me to thinking about luck, and about hemorrhoids. Why should one associate luck with hemorrhoids? After all, hemorrhoids are the trolls of the ass world.

Here’s why. For me, hemorrhoids have come to symbolize bad luck turning into good luck.

The first time I experienced a hemorrhoid was when I had cancer. Why should a person have to have hemorrhoids when they are bald, sickly and being pumped full of chemotherapy? Because. Just because.

Having cancer was unlucky. I had Ewings Sarcoma. Ewings is a childhood cancer. It most commonly strikes boys. Odd, and statistically odder, that a 30 year old woman about 30 days away from her wedding should get Ewings. Unlucky. Very unlucky.

The lucky part? I had the most kick-ass, funny, whip-smart oncologist ever, Dr. Anna Pavlick. The first time I met Dr. Pavlick, my parents had flown in from Florida to be with me and my then fiance (now husband).

We were all gathered in Dr. Pavlick’s little office and my dad opened up a tiny bottle of scotch he’d pilfered from the airplane. We passed around the bottle as the doc, or Pavy, as I came to call her, delivered the unlucky news.

What I loved about Pavy is that she gave it to me straight.

She said something like You have a shitty, aggressive cancer but it responds well to treatment so I’m going to hit you hard and you’re going to feel like you’ve been hit by a truck. For about a year. And you’ll probably be infertile by the end of treatment, so we need to get you to an infertility specialist right away.

But Pavy also had a soft side. When we went into the exam room and I was shaking from nerves, fear, anger, she put her hand on my leg and said softy Oh girl, how did you end up here?

I had an ally in Pavy. She didn’t see me as a diagnosis. And she didn’t gloss over my feelings.

Pavy was the best possible luck. She nicknamed me Chicken. She taught me everything I know about perseverance. And she cared about my hemorrhoids. Really. She did.

Pavy hooked me up with an excellent infertility specialist. In the month before chemo started and our wedding, my then fiance (now husband) shot me up with hella hormones, and we ended up with seven frozen embryos. Luck. Big time luck. We were parents before we were married.

Even luckier? After two surgeries, seven months of chemotherapy, a bald bride wedding, a deluxe honeymoon in the finest NYU hospital suite (compete with gold-plated bed pans, IV poles and generous helpings of anti-emetics) I was back on the road to health. And once I was healthy and had clear scans I was allowed to try to conceive naturally. And I did! Total luck in the form of three children, none of whom were ever frozen.

Which leads me back to hemorrhoids. Every time I’ve been pregnant I’ve had the most horrendous hemorrhoids. But being pregnant (under the right circumstances) is the best kind of luck. You see? Hemorrhoids + Pregnancy = Babies = Luck!

And let me tell you, hemorrhoids were the gold standard of my pregnancies. The size of my pregnancy hemorrhoids rivaled the size of a growing fetus.

At one point during one said pregnancy I had to go the E.R. to have a hemorrhoid lanced. Unlucky. And painful. But, I got the Hottest Intern Ever. Lucky. Or maybe not. At least I didn’t have to look at his gorgeous face when he was doing the, uh, lancing. But if it weren’t for that hemorrhoid I never would’ve met the Hottest Intern Ever. So there’s that.

I guess the fact is that when it comes to the big things, sometimes I am unlucky, but often the unluckyness turns to luck, which is awesome. And, more often than not, there is a hemorrhoid involved.

So, for me, when I won the cupcakes over at Mommy Shorts it was kind of momentous and amazing.

I have never, ever won anything in a contest or raffle before. And, now, I’ve actually won something without having huge hemorrhoids. (Though I did summon the word hemorrhoid for that contest, so clearly they are some sort of lucky charm for me.)

Some people have a lucky penny, I have a lucky hemorrhoid. And I’m okay with that. Especially when there are cupcakes involved.