Those who know me know that I have some sort of medical weirdness (thank you Sarah for pinning that term as an actual phrase) going on in my uterus named Igor. For those who are praying people, good-vibe senders, or just those wonderful Native American Soul Dancers you can send some thoughts my way on September 19th. I’ll be having surgery to remove Igor and hopefully solve lots of problems. I’m blessed with good people and friends in my life: within 5 hours of knowing the surgery date I had five people offer to stay the night with me in the hospital (AND the suggestion of a group hospital sleep over).
For those who are curious, but don’t want to flat out ask me, you can click below to find out what Igor actually is and what’s been going on. I won’t be offended if you’d rather just not know. Either way, I appreciate all thoughts, prayers, and the kindness my twitter and tumblr people show me.
Igor is a fairly large, likely non-cancerous tumor in my uterus that’s approximately 5.5 inches in diameter. I’ve know about it for about a year and have just been trying to maintain the symptoms, predominately excessively heavy menses and pain. Starting around May or June things just started to get worse. The normal things I was dealing with intensified, but I also started having severe anemia, chest pains, headaches, nausea, exhaustion, and I haven’t slept through the night in almost a year because Igor is setting on top of my bladder. I just put that last one together. Now that I’m finally going to have it removed, I’m not trying to convince myself that these things are normal.
I’ve never had surgery and I never thought I would be giddy about it…but I am very excited about this. On Wednesday the symptoms popped up again and I realized that for the first time in a year instead of fretting about what was happening or when it would stop, and I could finally think “three more weeks, three more weeks”
There are a lot of things that have been on my mind about this surgery. One of the biggest unknowns is whether or not the surgeons will be able to save my uterus. This is not a devastating thing for me. I am thankful that natural-born children haven’t really ever been part of how I see my life playing out, because it would be if that were something that were especially important to me. I am concerned, however, at how I will actually process this. I’m trying to brace myself for waking up from surgery with or without a uterus and to be emotionally okay with either outcome. I’m not sure if I can really predict how I will respond, though.
I suppose the biggest thing I feel like I’m going to have to deal with if I loose it is smiling and just being vague when people say things like “But don’t you want children…” or reference how my impending maternity will affect my life and career. Now, I’ve always been a little frustrated with this assumption that all women everywhere want to go through the childbearing process. This will be a different frustration, though, because people do not want to hear about my uterus unless there is a fetus inside of it, and I will likely just have to placate that person rather than going into an explanation about how I don’t have the ability. Plus I have a habit of over sharing when I’m nervous.
Still, I feel good about it, especially if what I’m most worried about is what other people think, say, or do….I’m must be doing pretty well myself.
Thanks for any thoughts and prayers and hopefully once this is gone I’ll stop talking about my uterus so much. 🙂
Becca Kello 