THE TIGER AND THE CAGE

A poet chronicles her lifelong struggle with uterine issues and the medical system that never took her seriously.

Bolden’s health problems began early: The third time she got her period, she remembers, her cramping was so intense that it caused her to faint and vomit, sometimes simultaneously. In the following decades, she underwent eight laparoscopic surgeries to relieve her chronic pain, the last of which resulted in an accidentally punctured small bowel, which dangerously exposed her to sepsis. She also lost feeling in her legs and one of her arms due to a herniated disc, a condition she may have acquired from years of taking Lupron, a drug that was once used to treat advanced prostate cancer as well as endometriosis. As Bolden’s health deteriorated, she felt pressure to try to fall in love, get married, and have a child before having a hysterectomy, which became the only viable solution to ending her chronic pain. This process was complicated by the fact that Bolden had never experienced any kind of sexual attraction and suspected that she was asexual. Her struggles were compounded by a medical system staffed with doctors who never really listened to her or took her condition seriously. “Every time a doctor questions what you say, what you experience, what you know, marrow-deep, of your own body. It has its weight, and that weight is fear,” she writes. “It is difficult to trust in your experience of the body when the people you trust to take care of that body deny that your experience is true.” The author’s lyrical descriptions and emotional honesty render this harrowing story hard to put down, and her critique of the medical establishment is both sharp and fair. At times, her forays into stories outside of her personal experience—such as a group of “hysterical” women who were viciously exploited in France in the 18th century—can be distracting.

A well-written, deeply researched, and searingly frank memoir about reproductive health.