31 August 2012
Have you ever gone to the doctor thinking you knew exactly what you wanted? Me, too. I do that often. This time was no exception. I went in with a quick fix mentality that could have me cruising 0-100 mph in no time flat. Give it a couple day and I should be good as new. Just get me in your schedule, please.
After all, my summer with the kids was coming to a close and the fall windup was getting tighter and tighter. 3 days is what I had time for. I was so full of myself.
Dear Doctor Bro sat across from me... looking at you with those intense, calm and serious eyes, nodding his head slightly, arm resting next to the computer keyboard. Listening. Listening with silence inbetween. Listening while he as about to say the word that would change my life. Hysterectomy.
I literally felt a sock in the gut. My breathing shallowed and my head spun. I only turned 40 a couple months ago and my body has been overtaken by some sort of alien. Different from when I had an actual human being growing in my womb. She kicked, flipped, and turned over keeping me up at night. Now, a new atrophying affect was knotting my intenstines, tightening my shoulders, raising my anxiety and stinging me with disbelief.
I was somewhere between fullness and emptiness; growing and atrophying; death and life; certainty and mystery. The beginning of my purple haze, a wilderness of sorts is reflected in the eyes of my children, the heart of my husband, the embrace of my parents and the traces of purple in the sunrise.
My journey begins here.
I typically don't invite strangers on such a journey, but I've learned there are few people who willingly bring up the dreaded word hysterectomy. Women and men, children and extended family, dear friends and distant neighbors are even impacted by the experience...but no one wants to say it too loudly or too boldly. I hear my mother's voice in the back of my head like an internal editor saying, "too much information...keep it to yourself." I won't.
I am here to share my journey of the first 40 days and 40 nights with you. Something has drawn us together under this full, blue moon circled with light and cradled in slow moving clouds overhead. We are here together. Don't be scared. We have much to learn from one another and after all, we are never truly alone, are we?
