I Am Woman

Every year comes with some low points. Heck, not every day can be all roses and sunshine, right? For me the biggest lowlight of the year was having surgery. Not just any surgery. A hysterectomy. At the age of 33. Surgery sucks enough on its own but this one came with a lot of emotional baggage that I just wasn’t prepared for.

When I went to see the doctor in October I wasn’t surprised to hear him say the words. I was prepared for it; I knew we were heading there. I thought I’d be happy to have it done. I’d finally be rid of the pain and issues that I’ve been dealing with for years. However, I cried the entire way home. When I got home I walked past my children, went up to my room, crawled into bed, pulled the covers up and cried some more.

The surgical scheduler called me a few days later. She asked me if I was aware that there was going to be a wait to do the procedure laproscopically. I said no, he told me November. She said no, we are into December. December 22 was the first available date. I just laughed at her. She couldn’t seriously think that I was going to schedule surgery 3 days before Christmas.

To shorten the story a bit, after she talked to the doctor and they got a doctor from another practice to agree, they got me scheduled for November 3. Which was great but that was only a week away. I had a week to make arrangements for the kids, get my pre-admission testing done, get my pre-op appointment and make arrangements at work for my husband. Talk about inciting a little stress.
As I moved through the process of the pre-admission testing, the nurse taking my history and I didn’t hit it off. She was trying to bully me into a signing a consent form that I wasn’t having any part of and it was adding to my frustration and nervousness. I just wanted to jump across the desk and yell at her “have you seen the procedure I’m having and how old I am??? Maybe you should be asking me things like are you handling this okay!!!

Jumping ahead a bit….surgery went well, I was glad to get home when they discharged me the next day. Recovery wasn’t any fun and progressed much slower than it should have. (in fact I still don’t have the thumbs up from the doc yet and have to go back AGAIN next week).

Throughout the whole process the thing that surprised me most was that nobody (not even my husband) bothered to ask me how I felt about all of this emotionally. I have shed so many tears and I’m still shedding the occasional tear. I’m only 33 and I should still be able to have children for years to come. It doesn’t matter that my husband and I had decided not to have anymore children. The fact is I should still have the ability to have them. I’ve had other organs removed. In fact I’ve had several surgeries in the past few years. However, this is the only one that has made me question who I am and affected my self perception as a woman.

Today is a new day and the start of a new year. I am hopeful for a healthy year for us all and many good things to come.

To see my highlight of 2009 see here to see my last post.