Day 2 - 11/16/2011

It has been 2 days since we learned that you have Multiple Myeloma, a deadly, incurable, aggressive blood cancer that is going to eventually take you from us. 

2 days. 

The processing of such information is far different than I had thought. I’ve had friends that have gone through this before and I often wondered what they felt and how they dealt with it, not ever expecting to find out… certainly without any hope that I would. 

2 days. 

I was stoic at first. I heard the diagnosis. I felt it on the surface of my skin. Like the tiny sticky feet of a fly barely registering on your naked foot until it creates a tiny tickle that you simply flick away. A brush off with little thought. 

2 days. 

8 hours in it began to penetrate the surface, slowly sinking further in, infecting my feelings and emotions. Google was my worst enemy and best friend at the same time. The more I researched the harder my heart beat and the more I had to find out. It sunk further in and my first break happened. While discussing how to handle the medication and side effects with my husband, I uttered the words “you’re going to have to help me because this is going to be hard…” and I couldn’t finish. I choked on my lost words and the first of many tears began. Still a surface infection I was able to cut it off and regain my composer. That was the first day.

2 days. 

The second day started like all others. My first thought wasn’t that you had cancer or that a clock had begun silently ticking. I wasn’t consumed with dread and fear or worry and sadness… In fact all I really wanted was to go back to bed. We got together like always at 3 and it became very real again. We discussed things nobody ever wants to discuss. Side effects and pain, limitations and worries… we both had our brave faces on, smiling and making small jokes like it wasn’t a big deal… but the heaviness on our hearts simmering below the surface was telling a different story. We made plans for doctor appointments and I assured you that there was nothing to worry about, I’d take care of the paper work and memorize everything so you wouldn’t have to. 

2 days.

I could feel it seeping in further by that night. The first real trickles of fear started to drip like melting icicles down the back of my neck. I could hear the first distant ticks of the clock that had begun counting down. You are dying. We are all dying but not all of us have been given a window in which to expect it. We don’t all know that there is a specific cause inside our bodies, breaking it down like a parasitic monster eating everything good until nothing is left. We don’t have to take medicine that will damage our insides and destroy the good and bad just to wind our clock a little further. I once thought that knowing when someone was going to die had to be easier than the unexpected thief in the night deaths.

I was wrong. 

2 days. 

Everything has now become a countdown. Time is a fickle wench and I hate her. I hate the hyper awareness. I hate the tick tock sound emitting from my clock. I hate the numbers flashing at me announcing that yet another second has passed. I hate when the sun sets but hate it more when it rises again because now we’re 2 days in on a death sentence and no amount of time could ever be enough.

I can feel it now. Day 2 broke through the layers of bravado and what was surface pain is starting to sneak through to my core. I feel it scratching at my heart… indescribable pain and grief reaching its painful fingers through my ribcage, stretching out towards my heart trying to get its never-ending grip wrapped completely around it until I’m suffocating completely by that pain I often wondered about but never wanted to experience. 

Tomorrow is a new day. Tomorrow I will feel new things. Tomorrow won’t be better though, because right now that only means it’s one day closer to a day I can’t prepare for. I want to tell you all of these things because you’re my rock, the one I go to with some of my hardest emotional issues because you are always rational and calming. You give me the hope I need to get through the hard times. You can’t be breaking because you’re Clark Kent, a super-hero like no other, and the thought of you failing breaks me in ways I didn’t think possible. 

Today I’m sorry. I’m sorry you’re sick. I’m sorry I can’t fix you. I’m sorry for every single wasted second in our lives. I’m sorry that there’s an end. I’m sorry that eventually my brave face will fade and I will simply cry because I can’t and won’t ever pretend that losing you is going to be easy. The mere thought of it causes my heart to seize up and my throat to close. I’m sorry in advance that my broken heart will be visibly worn on my sleeve. It will be like that because of how much I love you and for that… I’m not sorry. 

2 days down. Not enough to go.

Life after a hysterectomy

In a woman’s world there are few words that are unmentionables, especially as moms, we’ve seen it all, heard it all, and experienced it all. One word however has the crushing ability to send the strongest of women into a cowering state of fear and uncertainty.

Hysterectomy.

There, I said it. I don’t know when or why this word began to strike fear into the hearts of women, but it does. We’ve somehow given our uterus, ovaries and fallopian tubes ALL the power when it comes to how we define ourselves as women. Our entire being is centered on those 3 rather small cogs of a much larger machine. Yes they play a huge part in our lives, they are the key ingredients (for a woman obviously) in making little people, they inform us when we haven’t, if we’re going to, and if there is something lurking in there that shouldn’t. They are important, but they aren’t the end-all of our existence. In fact, for some of us, they are the very worst part of being a woman. They are the life crippling, tear inducing, soul crushing, and pain producing monsters that keep us from living a normal life.

Why then, when the word hysterectomy is introduced, do we fall into this pit of sadness with seemingly no end in sight?
Because somewhere along the way, someone taught us to believe that without those 3 things, we’re no longer *real* women.

Let me lay this to rest for you right now. Since my hysterectomy, I’ve NEVER felt better, more alive, more womanly or freer. I was terrified, deeply depressed and agonizing over the surgery, its implications, what impact it would have on everything… so focused in fact that I didn’t even consider the other possibility; delight. I am delighted. I am happy. I am overjoyed in fact, to be without a part of my body that aside from (barely) helping me bring two precious babies into this world caused me nothing but pain and misery.
Nobody ever even suggested that my LIFE would be better. Sure they said the pain would stop, that certain aspects of my life would improve, but never said that I would come out on the other side of a hysterectomy with a 100% improvement applied to every single corner of my life. I spent almost every waking second prior to the surgery thinking about my pain, feeling my pain, planning around my pain, pain pain pain pain! It was a real…. Pain. I haven’t felt that pain for 5 months, it’s just gone, disappeared, wiped off the face of the earth, never to be seen or heard from again. Have you any idea how freeing that is?? No, of course not, and I hadn’t a clue either which is why I am still so caught off guard by how happy I am.

I don’t swim in a pool of sadness and what ifs like I *knew* I would. I don’t cry whenever I hear about birth announcements or pregnancies. Sure I feel a little melancholy, but it isn’t crippling or crushing like the pain I had was. I’m just grateful I have my children and relieved I’ll never go through the agony of years past, ever again.

A hysterectomy isn’t a bad thing. It’s not a sad thing. If it’s anything, it’s your friend. It doesn’t take away from you; it gives you back your life. For the first time in my adult life I feel like I’m finally able to be the woman I was meant to be and that couldn’t have happened without the surgery. I wasn’t me, I was a version of myself bound by pain, bound by complications, bound by limitations that wouldn’t otherwise exist if those 3 cog pieces didn’t.

So to anyone facing this reality I say this: embrace it, accept it, don’t fear it, don’t hate it, rather love it and all the possibilities it will offer you. I promise you there isn’t just life after a hysterectomy, there is a GREAT life full of hope, promise, freedom and happiness. You’re not a lesser woman, you’re a better, stronger, pain free woman with zero limitations. You don’t need a uterus to be complete, sometimes to become whole we have to be dissected, reassembled and have things taken away. It isn’t about the parts you have, it’s about what those parts do to you as a person, if they hurt you and take away from your quality of life, then removing them is the only way you’ll experience your true self. I promise when you come face to face with that person in the mirror, you’ll never feel better about being down a couple of cogs.