Or I won’t be soon, anyway.
My gynecologist wants to remove my uterus. I wasn’t expecting to hear that. I thought she would say “oh yes we can get rid of these fibroids and everything will be right as rain.”
But she can’t get rid of them and everything is not rain nor right. The only way to get rid of these invaders is apparently to take the entire organ out of my body.
I understand the benefit and the need and I understand this is a common procedure, in fact the second most performed surgery on women, after c-sections. or so they say. (The medical establishment is a patriarchy like anywhere else so of course they want to crush me, crush us all, take away the center of our reproductive system as often as they can. Especially when you get to be the god awful useless age of OVER 40.)
Knowing it is common doesn’t make me feel any better.
Listen. I hate my period. It’s horrible. Wretched. Painful. Unreliable, but also constant. it often ruins my day, my week, my month. Interferes with my extracurriculars. causes me considerable anguish.
But you take my uterus and now that period is gone. My 30+ year best friend. MY period. As shit as it is, it’s still mine.
For years my cycle seemed to sync with the moon. Bleeding during new moon, ovulating during the full. And ovulation is usually when I feel the most sexual and seductive and alluring. I love that full moon calling out to me, bringing down my eggs. It made me feel powerful and vital. Silly, I know, but it’s how I felt.
And now they want to take that all away from me. The good and the bad. The pain and the power. And I’m left an empty cavity.
The cozy safe place my sons called home for 9 months. Where I cooked them up real nice and sweet. Holding them in and protecting them, creating our universe together. And now that womb will be yanked out and dumped in a garbage bin. Just like that.
I’m not having any more kids and periods are a lousy deal. But I never imagined not having an uterus. I’m still many years away from menopause, she says, so my periods are not going to get easier or better, they’ll get worse. The fibroids will get bigger.
I have so many questions but of course I didn’t think to ask most of them to the doctor during the appointment. I was just so stunned. My biggest concern is sex and I asked about that. How my sexual experiences would be affected. How the vagina will be now. Since I’m keeping my ovaries she said very little would change and in fact this procedure can often help women like me as it tightens up some of the areas that became loose during vaginal births.
But how can she know that for sure? She can’t. And I don’t want sex to change. I don’t want my level of desire to change. Or how I orgasm. What I like. How it feels. How wet I get. I don’t want to lose anything. I want to keep all the sensations and experiences and body parts and I don’t want to do it, okay? I don’t want to have a hysterectomy!
I’m being stupid right? Who cares. Who cares about my dumb old uterus.
But I’m really struggling with this, it is making me very anxious and troubled and emotional, I keep crying about it, like I’ve been handed some sort of death sentence. I don’t want to be dramatic about this but I am what I am and this is my world.
