So You've Decided to Have a Hysterectomy
This is not what I expected...
“We can just scrape off all the endometriosis and see if that helps with the pain, but it’s probably inside the walls of your uterus, too. The only way to get it all is to do a hysterectomy.”
My breath caught in my throat at the word hysterectomy.
Though an estimated one in nine women will have a hysterectomy at some point, this is not what I was expecting. I’d been having pain — cramps, really — every month just before my period started, and they’d gotten increasingly worse. They didn’t respond to any of the over-the-counter medication I threw at them, and I spent a lot of those several days each month on the couch with the heating pad. I thought I might need a procedure but evicting my uterus hadn’t occurred to me.
I told my gynecologist I’d have to think about it, hustled past reception and dove into the safety of my car. As I made the 30-minute drive home, I thought…
I don’t want a hysterectomy.
Why not?
Well, it just seems so major, so drastic.
But it’s the best bet to take care of the pain and, side bonus, no more periods!
I know, but I don’t want to.
Why?
Cuz.
Yes, I have progressed past talking to myself. These days, when there’s a big decision to be made, I have full-on conversations with all the versions of me in my head – the child, the rational adult, my lizard brain.
It was habit.
I was used to protecting my uterus. It has required a lot of unique care over the years to get it to house babies, and it seemed wrong to just yank it out. Besides, what would fill that space? Would my other organs slosh around without it? What would my ovaries be attached to; would they just float around in there, maybe migrate into my chest or left leg? (Spoiler: No, they are attached to my pelvis with ligaments.)
Sidebar: If you like ovarian humor, check out this McSweeney’s article, Thank You for Calling the Perimenopause Hotline. I giggle every time I think the phrase “pelvis chickens.” You’re welcome.
Then, I remembered an article I read about a comedian (whose name I have now forgotten) who said there was no reason not to have a hysterectomy if you’re not planning on having (more) kids. “Take it out,” she said. “You’re not using it anymore.”
It occurred to me that at 46, my uterus was much like an appendix.
It was just sitting in there, making trouble and threatening to get infected. It wasn’t doing anything for me. It had been a problem child most of my adult life, and it was starting to make me miserable yet again. I could try medication or something else that would likely not fix my pain to the extent I’d like. OR I could have a hysterectomy, throw out my box of tampons and not worry about getting screened for uterine cancer ever again. When you put it that way, it sounded like a no-brainer.
But I forgot to tell Jason. Or anyone else for that matter.
I mean, I mentioned it to him, and I told my mom in a brief conversation. But I pretty much put it on my calendar for three months down the road and then put it out of my head. Until a couple of weeks out when I realized I had accidentally scheduled meetings and social events later the same week of the surgery. Maybe it was my brain’s way of coping with something I couldn’t really wrap my head around — ignore it, and it’ll go away — but it wasn’t until several days before that I began to get freaked out that they were going to remove an organ from my body.
My boss was weirded out that I didn’t tell her until like a week before. She is the kind of person you can tell these kinds of things. I found myself telling friends — close friends — just the day before it happened: “Oh, yeah, I’d love to go to lunch, but I’m having my uterus out tomorrow.” Jason wondered out loud at one point, “Why have you not talked about this at all?”
I didn’t know. Apparently, I am not as emotionally self-aware as I thought I was. My best guess is… avoidance.
So it happened. I had a hysterectomy.
The day of, we got up before it was light, and Jason and I drove to the hospital. The surgery went swimmingly, and I was headed home on pain meds by 1pm. I slept on and off on the couch the rest of the day. After that, physically, I felt pretty good. The sore throat from being intubated faded quickly. The four laparoscopic incisions in a wonky horseshoe shape across my abdomen looked gruesome but were only a little sore. The biggest thing was my digestion, which is still not fully recovered. (Apparently, this is normal.) But all in all, everyone was amazed at how well I was doing. Physically.
Then, two days after the surgery, I cried.
I was sad, I was lonely on the couch all by myself, and I was bored. I am not accustomed to wanting people to talk to me and keep me company; I usually have more conversation in this house full of four people than I know what to do with. The last time I was bored was 1996, so it took me a while to figure out why I felt so morose.
A week after surgery, I was deeply depressed for 24 hours before setting upon a perky and productive twelve hours. The next day, I took a four-hour nap. I had post-surgical temporary bipolar disorder.
I had anticipated physical pain and fatigue after the hysterectomy. I did not consider that the wild mood swings of my earlier adult life would return for an encore. Turns out depression is a common side effect of surgery, but I didn’t know that.
What I Didn’t Feel
Eventually, I started googling “hysterectomy” and “depression” together instead of just focusing on endometriosis stats. I came across some things written by women who’d had hysterectomies, and two weeks post-op, I didn’t identify with any of it. I didn’t feel sad about not being able to have any more babies, but I get that this is a thing you can mourn even if you weren’t planning on having any more kids. I didn’t feel like less of a woman. I also didn’t feel gleeful and like “it was the best thing I’ve ever done for myself,” as a lot of people said.
I felt sad.
Chemically sad. The kind of depression you wake up with and can’t attach to any identifiable source. It’s just there, and then, throughout the day, it tries to glom onto any event that will feed it. Last week, I cried once because I can’t get myself to finish editing my book, twice because the kids are growing up and once because I was watching a J Lo documentary that was just so damned sweet and empowering. I felt sad, and I felt ridiculous.
Today, I’m better.
I was finally able to do some exercise a couple of days ago — light walking — and that helped my mental game a lot. Then, I found my spare tampon stash in my purse while I was rifling around in it, looking for something else. They were squashed, having lived in my little emergency zipper pouch for so long, and the wrappers had come open. I THREW THEM AWAY, AND IT FELT AWESOME. I am finally getting a little bit of that “best thing I ever did” feeling. (I suspect the people who said that weren’t writing two weeks post-op.) I had my last period in mid-July, and it feels so damned great to know I’ll never have another one. I am recovering; I’m just extremely impatient about it.
Why I Wrote This
One of my caveats for sharing something I write is that it can’t just be self-indulgent nonsense; that’s what my journal is for. There has to be a point to sending it out in the digital universe for other people to read.
Here, I want to add my experience to the small pool of recorded hysterectomy anecdotes to provide a unique perspective. I know there are other people out there who had one, are thinking about having one or are living with someone who has had one. In those cases, other people’s stories can be an invaluable life raft.
So, if you have hysterectomy experience, let’s hear it via comments. I’m sure the stories are as varied as the people who will tell them.