Apparently a hysterectomy is such routine surgery that it’s stupid of me to be worrying about the possibility of something going wrong. I love how everybody is so casual about the whole thing. One of the doctors laughed when I expressed concern about losing my life. He dismissed my concerns with a comment about the surgery not being the kind of surgery that requires making your peace with Jesus. It seems a little on the callous side to me to take a person’s fears so lightly and be so dismissive of their concerns over undergoing surgery, however routine the procedure might be. For everybody else it will be nothing more than an unfortunate occurrence if something does go wrong. I’ll just be one of the rare cases of a life being lost during a routine hysterectomy. So everybody can shake their head at me and get exasperated with me for trying to look at every possible alternative to surgery. But this is my life we’re talking about, and I’m not willing to take a casual attitude in coming to a decision about getting a hysterectomy. Being assured by doctors that it’s routine surgery that hundreds of thousands of women get every year does not obliterate my fears and concerns. I want to weigh all of my options and take whatever amount of time I need to come to the decision that is in my best interest and the best interest of my son.
I’m sure I am not the only person struggling with the decision about whether or not to go ahead with the recommended hysterectomy to get rid of my fibroids. Yes, I am afraid; but I don’t want to not do it because of fear. I want to not do it because I believe firmly without any doubt that it is not the right choice for me. Yesterday I felt certain that it was not the right choice. Today, I am reminding myself that I ended up in the emergency room because I injured myself working out. And the injury happened because the fibroids got in the way while I was doing squats. I started bleeding suddenly in the middle of doing a squat. And I bled for 11 days thereafter. Part of me wants to take that as a sign that things have reached the point where surgical intervention is necessary. But the other part of me knows that there was a reason the fibroids grew out of control between August – December 2014. That part of me believes the damage can be repaired. I don’t want to be irresponsible and pay with my life to prove that I can get my stomach back to resembling something reasonably normal. But I am the one who has lived in this body for over four decades. I know the mentality is that we’re supposed to trust doctors no matter what. But I’m being asked to trust a bunch of people who have said to me that they don’t really know what’s going on. They don’t know what’s what. They just know that they see a large mass. They can’t tell me anything about it. They can’t firmly tell me it’s doing something life threatening. They only believe that it must be threatening my life because it’s so big how could it not be threatening my life. But it’s just a guess. And the only way they can know anything for certain is to cut me open to explore my insides and make on the spot decisions about what to do based on what they find when they go in.
Other doctors told me the same back in November 2010(might be off on the year but I feel pretty sure it was 2010). They said removal was urgent. By 2012 I had gone from looking about ready to give birth to not looking pregnant at all on some days and only a few months on others. So this is not a case of believing without seeing for me. I know my stomach can go down because I’ve gotten it down before and I kept it at a manageable size for at least 2 years. Then I went back to my bad habits and made some critical mistakes with my food choices. And here I am trying to figure out, do I take the risk and get a hysterectomy in February or do I try to attack this thing again the way I attacked it starting back in November 2010? Is it in fact the case that I urgently need surgery now, or do I have enough time to play with that I can work to regain control over my situation? Obviously if my life is for a fact in immediate danger the surgery will have to happen.
