So, in the end, I went in to apply for disability, right?

I had very little choice in the matter. The problem I was having– and a very odd one, at that– was getting so bad that I could no longer function, at least not as an assembly line worker.

I was alarmed at first when I noticed the lump that seemed to be slowly forming on my abdomen. In the very beginning, I thought it was all my imagination, but slowly, day by day, it grow larger and larger minutely, until I had to acknowledge its presence. By the time I went to see a doctor, it was the size of a golf ball. The doctor filled out a work order, and the following week I checked into the hospital as an outpatient to have the lump tested. By now the lump had swollen beyond the size of a golf ball, and was nearly the size of a tennis ball. By the time the test results were returned to the doctor to his review and my scheduled follow-up visit, the lump had exceeded the size of softball. At that appointment, despite the distressing rate at which the lump was growing, my doctor assured me that there was nothing to worry about. The mass (for here he called it just that– “the mass”: an infinitely more disturbing word than “the lump”) was nothing more than a fibroid tumor. He went on to explain that fibroid tumors, although they can become frighteningly large, were virtually never cancerous. The problem could be cured by a simple surgery.

I thought that “simple surgery” sounded too much like an oxymoron, but kept my mouth shut as he wrote out a referral for my to see a specialist. By the time that appointment came, the lump– and here, even to me, the word now seemed inappropriate; it was actually more of a hump– was fast approaching the size of a soccer ball. For several days already I had been suffering back pain from the sheer weight tugging downward from my stomach. The specialist gave me a prescription for muscle relaxants for my back, and wrote out a work order to have more tests. Those tests turned out to be the exact same tests my family doctor had ordered previously, only now the growth had grown to a size so large it could not longer be described in terms of sporting equipment. At work, where I was already tolerating a endless series of pregnancy jokes, I was having a hard time performing my job, what with backaches at first and then with difficulties with my breathing due to the sheer size of the growth. My supervisor suggested that I go on medical leave until I could have the surgery, and that was just what I did. I ended up staying at home, trying to find a comfortable position on the sofa so I could watch cable television all day, which, at first, was a welcomed change of pace from my regular routine.