Wednesday, July 07, 2004

My Uterus, Myself.

I haven't smoked in five days. I am quitting. Really trying to. I'm going insane. I'm on hormones. No nicotine, a sweet child (whom I see as a ball of knotted hair and razors for a voice right now) on summer break, estrogen, and bloody bleeding.

Maybe I should go back a week or so.

Or a lifetime or so.

I've had fibroid trouble since puberty. I almsot died after having Jenna via c-section when I had to return for emergency surgery 8 weeks later due to the massive degeneration of my fibroids and hemmoraging. 6 hour surgery. Transfusion. 10 days in the hospital.

So, I'm still a little traumatized seven years later.

The bleeding has been back in full force the last couple of months. This month was so bad I'll spare you the details. The doctor is trying the pill again, along with some other tricks, but the trick is I'm 42, and I cannot, absolutely not, smoke on the pill. My last obgyn wouldn't even try the pill until I had quit for three months. This time, we didn't have that kind of time. So I quit five days ago when I started the hormones.

So, I've abandoned nicotine and started this hormone thing all in five days time. My head is spinning. My house is spinning. I walk around a lot. In a daze. Anything not to smoke. I really do have to quit. For more reasons than this.

I'm heading toward surgery--sooner or later (I'm hoping later)--since I'm getting more anemic from all of this bleeding. I went through hell to keep my uterus, but I'm beginning to accept that maybe it's time. Getting close to time.

But shit. Why am I so tied up with what my reproductive organs mean to me as a woman. I wept at the doctor's yesterday, and the sweet blood-taking lady aske what I was most afraid of. I said, surgery. And besides that, if hysterectomy becomes the ultimate answer, I feel like I will lose my womanhood, my woman-ness, my motherness, my tie to my child, the tug I feel RIGHT there when she's hurting or happy, I feel like I'll lose all of that.

And I know that's silly, but I know I'm hormonal, and I feel like a mess, and that's what it's like sometimes being a woman in your 40s.

sigh.

God, I want a cigarette.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

That hormone pills your doc provide you will mess you up.

It sounds like you have fibroid tumor and you need to stop taking it right now and look into conservative surgery for myoma (fibroid tumors).

I can provide solutions upon your request.

The least you can do for now is to stop taking hormone pills. Those damage you more than it cures.

What to do with teenagers when roller skating gets old? SkyZone!

As the mother of a teenage daughter, figuring out activities that give ME a break, are nearby, don't involve computers and cell phones...