A time of grieving. And a time of healing. Often, people don't think of how intertwined these times are. Or how, most importantly, these ideas are.
I guess that is why it is so easy to miss how, sometimes, they are one and the same.
A special welcome to anyone who is new to The Grieving Room. We meet every Monday evening. Whether your loss is recent or many years ago, whether you have lost a person or a pet, or even if the person you are "mourning" is still alive ("pre-grief" can be a very lonely and confusing time) you can come to this diary and process your grieving in whatever way works for you. Share whatever you need to share. We can't solve each other's problems, but we can be a sounding board and a place of connection.
I posted yesterday a diary about the loss of my mother in 2005, and grief I continue to feel 4 1/2 years after her death. Yet posting that diary was part of my healing, for it had sat in a drawer, begun right after her death in 2005, and finished (other than a few minor changes) on Mothers' Day, 2006. I was originally intending that diary to be my contribution for today's Grieving Room, having signed up for it a couple of months ago. I confess that I signed up for the Grieving Room for today because I figured that the public commitment of having to post would leave me no choice but to face my emotional terror at publishing the diary about my mom.
But what I had not contemplated much was the healing that I would receive, simply by posting it. Reading the kind words written by those who saw it, I do in fact feel just a bit more healed, a bit less raw emotionally, than I do whenever I think of her. I've shared of her to folks that I know would understand, even if not agree, with at least some of the many things I love about her, good and bad.
Today, though, I want to take a few minutes to talk about a different kind of grief I am experiencing. My decision to share as part of a grieving diary is that I am hoping to heal from it, by sharing my grief with others.
Today's (far smaller) grieving diary is about the rapidly upcoming even if not yet firmly scheduled, death of my uterus. Sometime in the next 60 days, there will be an empty space where once, three children nestled, and grew, and thrived, until they were systematically expelled to make it or break in the real world.
And I feel a deep sense of loss. I literally feel a hole that is not even there, yet.
I cannot say that I did not know this day might come, someday. I have had fibroids since my 20's. But as is the case with most women, they are not an inconvenience of any kind. They are just....there.
But then things changed, even as I didn't know why they were changing.
Suffice it to say I am no longer a Spring Chicken. Indeed, for the last 18 months I have been in that phase of a woman's life known as Perimenopause. That period of time which can last between 2 and 10 years, where slowly yet inexorably, a woman's estrogen levels reduce, and reduce and ultimately get to the place where they no longer will produce ovulation, soon thereafter to no longer result in menstruation. For many women, menopause (which medically is defined as the point where your period stops permanently, contrary to our common understanding which treats it as a process) is indeed a time of mourning. Mourning for lost identity. Mourning for lost womanhood, feminity, desireability, or even mourning just for one's dramatically diminished sex drive.
But in my case, I can't wait for my body's natural process of ending my periods on whatever date of menopause I was destined to have. Because my uterus is already being slowly killed, by strangulation of a million fibroids. (Well, not quite a million. Just 5 or 7, some larger than my uterus itself.) Enough fibroids where I have been told (and seen myself, thanks to the miracle of modern technology called transvaginal ultrasound) that my uterus is now "a bag of rocks".
This would not be an issue. This happens to many women. But for me, what has happened takes it out the realm of truly normal.
You see, I have two unique problems. First, my fibroids being larger than my uterus itself are pushing against organs, moving them out of the way, compressing them. I couldn't understand why I was losing weight (which I have been without trying for about 6 months) yet my waistline was getting bigger and bigger and bigger. Having ruled out gastroenterological problems, this was all that was left. And sure enough, my intestines are squished. My bladder is squished. Everything is squished.
And, at times, quite painful.
But that alone would not be enough to justify the death of my uterus. Nope, what justifies it is that I also have a prolapsed uterus which is compromising my bladder functions and has been for a couple of years. I dare not sneeze or cough for fear of the outcome. It has, suffice it to say, made life increasingly difficult. And expensive, when it comes to dry cleaning my suits for work. And embarassing, at times.
But even that would still not be enough. Nope, the kicker was the reasons for me finding out at the age of 47 that I was in fact perimenopausal (since I would not have expected it or predicted it otherwise given the rather lengthy fertility periods women in my family have demonstrated on both sides.)
The way I found out I was perimenopausal was that I am one of those women who in perimenopause experiences what is called flooding. There is no point me describing flooding for you - the symptoms, effects and its dramatic impact on both your iron levels and life are described pretty well by this chick here. This has been going on for 2 years, and until we finally figured out what was going on led to some very very frightening days, where I felt sometimes that I was in danger of literally bleeding out, and I would be found dead on the carpet.
Having turned white from the loss of blood. (No easy feat, and it probably would have been closer to grey..........)
I still would not need to deal with this through killing my uterus, however, if I had not been called at work in the middle of the day two weeks ago after having routine blood work from a check up and been told that unless I had good reason, the doctor on call at my medical center was putting me in the hospital right then and there for a transfusion.
I had hemoglobin and hematocrit levels about 25% of what they are normally supposed to be.
Fast forward to today. I avoided the transfusion because I did have a good reason. But in the abundance of caution, they decided to get a really good look inside. That's when we did the ultrasound, and the bag of rocks, which I had not seen in a few years, was displayed in all its lumpy, misshapen, and quite sore glory.
And I have been told that it has to go as the most likely source of the anemia. More importantly, I need it to go. For more than 2 years, my life has been controlled by The Red Sea (who knew that all those high school period jokes about the Red Sea actually would come back to haunt me.)
It feels so strange, and wrong, that instead of the natural process of menopause, and my uterus just not working any more, I can't complete that cycle not unless I want to be walking around woozy, leaky, sore and stressed for what could be another 6 or 7 years. And I can't handle that, either. I'm old, and I'm tired.
Yet when I think about it, what is big deal surgery to take out what my eldest daughter -- who herself plans never to have children yet has been flooding me with articles about "natural alternatives" to hysterectomy ever since she found out -- calls my babymaker, I feel so sad. I feel like all those other women before me, confused about who I will be, what my worth will be, when I no longer CAN have a baby not because the natural time has come, but because I will no longer have a place for one to grow.
I have been a womanist for many years. I KNOW intellectually that it doesn't matter. That it doesn't define me being a woman any more than the fact that I wear dresses, in the end. Yet I still am struggling.
And yes, grieving. I wasn't ready for menopause, to be sure. But I'm not sure I can ever get truly ready for this, either. It just feels so final.
Yet it is what I need to do for my health. Every doctor I have seen, young and old, male and female, has said that at this point.
So do I grieve, or do I heal? In this strange turn of events, I find that I am struggling learning how to do both.