Hysteria

Dear Girl,
A year ago I lay in this bed; dreading sleep, dreading the business of getting up, dreading the business of  going to the hospital, where a surgeon would cut me open and take out whole pieces of me. I don't think I have felt whole, since.

When my doctor came into my room to see me, hours after the surgery was over, she told me what they'd found. How it was bigger than expected. How she was sure I would feel better, now. How the size of the growth was just further evidence that I'd made the right choice in opting for surgery. I asked her if I could see the growth. She gave me a surprised look, and said she hadn't thought to keep it for me. The growth, along with my uterus and fallopian tubes and cervix, had become medical waste. Packed in plastic bags marked "HAZMAT," no doubt, and disposed in the way such things are. Burned? Dumped at an illegal site? I have no idea. I know this, though: they are lost forever. 

I almost wish they'd saved those pieces in a glass jar for me. Even the growth. If I had such a jar, full of all of my old pieces, I could hold it up to the light, and get a good look at who I was, once upon a time.

As it stands, Dear One, I am like an unfinished jigsaw puzzle. No wonder I'm so tired and melancholy. It's all I can do to write you this pitiful letter. 

I would have liked to have seen those pieces...to have given them a proper farewell. I never imagined I'd miss them. 

Four Inches

The scar is just over four inches across. Just above the pubic area, under my lower-most bits of belly fat. It hurts like hell. My understanding is that they opened up this wound and discovered a much bigger mass than they expected. Almost certainly nothing but a benign - if painful - fibroid tumor. But, still. They were expecting a tangerine. They got a grapefruit. From the four inch incision they removed my uterus (which housed the tumor), my cervix, and my fallopian tubes. My healthy and productive ovaries remain in tact. Of course, getting to this meant cutting through not only skin, but fat and muscle and I-don't-know-what-else. Which is why this hurts so much, even a week later, and will keep hurting, I hear, for several weeks.

Imagine someone kicking the shit out of you with his steel-toe Doc Martins. Now imagine that guy is giving you this ass-kicking not from the curb or some street corner, but from the inside out. Yes. Imagine this steel-toe-booted thug is living in your abdominal cavity, and kicking the ever-living shit out of you from inside your own body. That's what it feels like. That little bastard is lucky to have such excellent cover. If anyone tried to pull this shit on me from the outside, I'm pretty sure I'd murder them. Instead, I just keep taking pain-killers that do little more than take the edge off, and brace myself before doing anything drastic. Like breathing. Or sitting. Or standing. So, yeah....I brace myself for everything. This morning, a sneeze made me see stars and call out for my mother, who hasn't been alive since 2010.

I expected the physical pain (although I have to admit I never imagined it being quite THIS intense and unrelenting) but the other pain comes as a surprise to me. The uterus they cut out of me never housed anything more than a fibroid. Babies never sprung from it. George Washington did NOT sleep here. I'm sad about this, and a little guilty. Not that I was in any position ten days ago to do anything about it: I am 47 years old and perimenopausal. Still, the finality of this is really difficult to deal with. I keep thinking about my mother and my grandmother, both of whom seemed made for motherhood. They were both really fucking good at it, too. Growing up under their auspices, I learned to value motherhood above all other callings. Somehow, though, I never felt it would be right to try and tackle it myself, even though I love children, and have always wanted them. Now, long after it's too late to double back and rethink the choices I've made, I'm filled with both sadness and guilt. Sadness for obvious reasons. Guilt? I feel as if I've let the fine women who came before me down. They set such a great example, but I never picked up the proverbial ball and ran with it. They shared so much with me, in a way that one can only share with one's flesh and blood. I don't have a daughter to pass it all along to. It's ridiculous that I should find this painful: I've never even WANTED a daughter, but a son.  Now, though, at 47, and medically barren, I feel sad about not having brought another generation of girls into my direct line. In fact, my direct line will end, forever, with me. I can't help but think this would make both my mother and my grandmother a little sad; that they gave me so much, and I haven't made provisions for it all to keep going forward. And, now, through the decision to get this surgery (which will improve my quality of life, but was in no way an emergency procedure that saved my life in any way, as far as I know) I've made it all very final. My brain knows that they would understand. That, in fact, they DO understand, wherever they are, now, both part of everything.  My gut, though, my aching gut keeps wanting to apologize and tell the best women I've ever known that I've meant no disrespect by making such different choices. I'm not even completely happy with some of those choices, but they're irrevocable, and I have no choice but to make peace with them.

A couple of days ago, a doctor who is not my regular physician had occasion to look at my scar.  "How beautiful!" She exclaimed, "That's a lovely bit of work and a gorgeous scar. And it's healing so well and so quickly. You and your surgeon could be the poster children for tidy surgery and optimal healing! You're barely going to see this, when the healing is complete."

I'll see it.  Always. All four inches of it.

One Week

One week. Seven full days. 168 hours, give or take. That's how much longer I'll have my uterus.  Now, I am not one of those women whose identity is all wrapped up in her reproductive organs. I've never understood it when women say the idea of losing their uterus makes them feel as if they'd somehow be less of a woman. In point of fact, my stupid uterus has given me nothing but grief since I was 12 years old. I will not miss the intense and debilitating pain, the long, drawn-out episodes of heavy, uncontrollable bleeding, the endometriosis. I certainly will not miss the tumor that has called my uterus home for the last six months, and which has caused a whole, new set of horrible symptoms. I will not miss menstrual pads, or inevitable accidents, or the business of having to keep spare clothing in a desk drawer at work. I will not miss anemia. I won't miss any of that and, yet, the idea that this entire chunk of my body will be gone in just about a week's time is somehow disconcerting. I think it's because I never got my money's worth. I feel as if I paid my union dues, but never got the benefits of membership. I'm referring, of course, to the fact that I never had kids. It sort of pisses me off. I mean, it makes me sad but, mostly? It pisses me the fuck off. Not that I ever made an effort to have kids, or that I'd be having one, now, if I could - I'm way past the age that I believe people should be having babies, even if they're physically capable of conceiving. Even though I've always loved kids and wanted some, I have never had the urge to incubate a baby, let alone push one out. I'll have to live with this decision, which isn't too difficult: everyone has some regrets in life. It seems to me, though, a collosal failure in human evolution that all of this: the monthly agony of cramps and soreness  and bleeding and bad skin and crazy mood swings...that all of it has yet to become optional. At 47, as I'm about to have all of the plumbing removed, I can't help but look back and think of what a huge waste it's been. Perhaps a baby or two would have made all of that ugliness worth it. As it stands, it all just adds up to a whole chunk of my life revolving around the grief caused by an organ that, at the end of the day, never gave me anything back. In fact, while I know there are women who mourn the loss of their uterus, I'm a little disconcerted by the fact that this option wasn't presented to me ten or twenty years ago.  I'm just going to say it: my uterus sucks. It's done me no favors, and caused me a whole mess of trouble. I don't want it. I never wanted it. I never even got to fill out a questionaire and choose it as an option - it came standard. This is how nature works, I know, but it pisses me off. It pisses me off, too, that my medical team is prepping me for what sounds to me like a long, slow recovery that will involve a fair amount of pain. Hasn't this motherucker caused me enough trouble, already? Even its absence can't help but stick it to me.

Fine. Be that way. Your days are still numbered. You have a week.