What I wrote two weeks before surgery

My uterus is being removed in less than two weeks. I’ve decided to try a “visualization” about its removal and what that means. I’ve never had a planned surgery, when my ankle broke there was nothing to decide. You lay there with a bone out of your body and it’s pretty much a done deal, you are going under the knife. This hysterectomy is different.

For the past 9 months a fibrous tumor has been changing the way my uterus behaved. All these years I’ve had regular periods, though never that pleasant, I’ve rather enjoyed having my periods. It was time when I could hold my head up and eat chocolate, a time when I knew that a month truly was complete, and my own personal “bitch” time with no apologies. Stay out of my way, I’ve got the curse, I’m on the rag, I’m fertile God damn it.

This year, my periods became increasingly painful, my husband would stand over the bed while I curled into the fetal position and chant “you’ve got to go to the doctor, make an appointment tomorrow”. The fact that I couldn’t uncurl to throw something at him finally made me call my gynecologist.

As I described the symptoms, bleeding for more than a week, increase pain my doctor nodded and said: “I’m sure you have a fibrous tumor”. She scheduled and ultrasound for the next morning. That night the pain was so bad I had began to vomit. Thank God, I’ve known this doctor for over 10 years, the minute I called she told me to “get to the hospital”, my husband was already dressed with car keys in hand as I awaited permission from my doctor to admit to the pain. In my family pain was a natural side effect of childhood. If I let my father see me cry I felt he had won. This has carried over to the point that if I think I might need to go to a doctor, I’m probably into pneumonia or I have a bone hanging out of me. People who love me watch me for these symptoms.

Now I sit here, a week out from my surgery, wanting to get it over with, and a little afraid. So, I’ve decided to do this visualization: I am picturing that tumor as a dumpster. You know the big dumpster that appears on your block when a neighbor is having their house re-roofed. You notice that the house is empty; they probably went to the beach while the roof is being worked on, and it’s the weekend and no workers are around. You’ve got a couple “big things” lying around the house, not enough to make up a load to take to the dump, but too big to put in your own garbage can. So, you look at the dumpster, and you realize “Damn, they didn’t lock it”.

I’m loading that dumpster tumor up with the pain from my childhood, I’m tossing in the broken ego that keeps tangling around my new and fragile one I’ve created over my grown life. I’m tossing in the nightmares that still lurk and occasionally attack my sleep, leaving me sweating and gasping for my waking life. I’m throwing in my inner critic who has pointed out that she doesn’t like this analogy. Finally, I’m tossing in the part of me that gives up on myself, the part of me that whispers “why bother” the side of me that wants to sit quietly so no one will notice who I really am. I do not need to protect myself that way anymore. I stand back, slightly hot and sweating from carrying these loads and sneaking them into this dumpster.

Then I run back to my house, keep the lights out and giggle at my renegade dumping ways. I’ll watch when they take that dumpster away, and I will breathe a sigh of relief, to have gotten rid of all that shit, and for once not had to pay a dime. I look around and breathe in the new clean space, and I will fill it with things of beauty.

I know there will be pain after the surgery. I know that my life will be profoundly different, but I feel that this will be in a good way. So, I will sit on my couch, take my pain killer, watch all the Jane Austin movie adaptations I just bought from Amazon, and giggle about that overloaded dumpster that got removed from my neighborhood. Good bye