"REDRUM" — The Meat Tree! Bleeding on Tamoxifen.

POV: Your uterus hears “spooky season” and decides to recreate The Shining without consulting wardrobe. Three pairs of trousers entered the Overlook Hotel. None survived. 🩸🚪🪓#REDRUM #TheMeMo #TamoxifenTales #HalloweenSplatterEdition

Trick or treat?

When you are suddenly bleeding on Tamoxifen...

After eight silent months on tamoxifen, my uterus woke up.

Not gradually. Not with a polite cramp or a tasteful spot of blood.

It woke up hungry.

Within six hours, three pairs of trousers had died violent deaths. I stopped moving. Movement was dangerous now. Standing released things. Sitting displaced things. Sneezing had become an extreme sport.

Every time I felt the slightest internal shift, I imagined the elevator doors of the Overlook Hotel sliding open.

First came the silence.

Then the pressure.

Then the blood.

So much blood.

I am currently waiting for my vagina to spell REDRUM on the bathroom wall.

Apparently, the MeMo had not finished with me. It had merely been standing at the end of a long hotel corridor, holding a tampon in one hand and an axe in the other.

Come bleed with us, Dani.

Forever… and ever… and ever.

Because I am taking tamoxifen as post-breast-cancer therapy, unexpected bleeding on Tamoxifen is considered a red flag.

In my case, it was less of a red flag and more of a red rag soaked in enough blood to be entered into evidence.

So I called the gynaecology clinic.

They did not appear particularly concerned.

My appointment is in six weeks.

Six weeks.

By then, I may have bled through the bathroom floor, flooded the ground level and established a small but thriving menstrual ecosystem beneath the house.

Meanwhile, my uterus feels as if it is constructing the Upside Down. Something is growing in the darkness. Something fleshy. Something with roots.

Last year, my gynecologists' told me I have vleesbomen—the Dutch word for fibroids.

Literally translated: meat trees!

Not harmless little fibroids.

Meat.

Trees.

So somewhere inside me stands an enchanted meat forest, dripping blood and preparing for spooky season. Tim Burton could not have designed it better.

No period for eight months. Tamoxifen. Menopause. Previous polyps. Meat trees.

And now the Overlook Hotel elevator has opened in my underwear.

So much for wondering what to wear for Halloween.

Apparently, I’m going as The Menopause: Splatter Edition.

So this year, I will not need fake blood for Halloween. I will not need prosthetics, stage makeup or a costume.

I shall simply stand very still in a white nightgown and wait.

Sooner or later, the elevator doors will open.

And when they do, I’ll be ready.

With spare trousers.