Apparently as I sat pondering mortality, there was something brewing in my body that had the potential to call my own mortality into question. It all turns out in the end, but there was a day or two where I pondered what I needed to take care of "just in case". It's been a fucking rollercoaster.

While I've literally had bleeding problems since my period started, it took on a whole new meaning over the course of the past few months. It all came to a head during a trip we took this summer to Michigan. Bleeding had been heavier over for a month prior and along the way across the continent I had begun bleeding so badly that my only option was to sit in a bath tub and wait/hope for it to subside. We contemplated visiting a hospital in the states but - combined with the money we didn't want to pay for the visit (even with travel insurance) and the fact that I've been to ERs and doctors several times over the years for heavy bleeding with the only response being, "Is this normal for you?" and promptly being sent home because women's health is just confusing, I guess - we decided not to.

We got home and it all but stopped, then flared right back up again a few days later. I started to feel pretty unwell and made a doctor's appointment but their earliest was three weeks away and all I needed was a referral to an OBGYN and I didn't want to wait for however long until the referral could take me. I kept that appointment but went to a walk-in clinic in the meantime to at least see if I could get the referral.

Before I could even mention an OBGYN the walk in doc said he could refer me for testing, but I'd be better off going to the hospital because they could just do the testing there. We were the only people at the walk in clinic and I kind of think he preferred to go back and read or whatever it was he was doing rather than deal with me and then have to follow up with me later too. He instead gave me a referral to the hospital and off we went.

Even in the ER, no one was overly concerned because the bleeding at that very moment was manageable, so I was triaged at a pretty low priority. Then, even when I talked to the ER doc she was even pretty unconcerned since as before, women are just complex and crazy, and abnormal bleeding is normal.

There was a palpable shift in demeanor when she did the pelvic exam. It very tangibly went from, "All these bitches come in bleeding thinking they have something wrong with them..." to "Ummm...we're going to keep you overnight so the ER OBGYN can see you in the morning." In fact, when she said, "There's some sort of tissue..." my husband nearly got whiplash from turning his head so quick. I've been dealing with this type of stuff for nearly 20 years and there's never been anything found. All the reports come back normal. We joke in my house about how "normal" I am. If I'm not feeling well, my husband will say, "I wonder what kind of normal you have now." It's ridiculous.

After making sure I wasn't pregnant (seriously?) I was quickly scheduled for a surgery to biopsy/remove a uterine/cervical mass. It turned out to be a rare form of cancer, and it's pretty exceptional in a lot of ways.

First, it's typically found in elderly patients, aged 70-90, so it's odd to find it in a 35 year old. I'm incredibly lucky because it's also typically a localized cancer - and in my case it was. It hadn't spread, even to the ovaries. It was kind of just hanging, protruding into my uterus like a crappy pinata. But its pinata status is to my benefit - it appears that it was removed in its entirety with that initial surgery in the ER.

I work in a service adjacent to cancer care, and I can say that doctors never use the word "cured" with cancer. But with this type of cancer, because it's completely localized, once it's removed it is, for all intents and purposes, cured. They still have their 5 year survival and remission times to consider but this type truly is a special case. And, since it is cancer, and I had a ton of extra uterine lining (a breeding ground for cancer, go figure), the treatment plan is hysterectomy. The ovaries are optional, in a sense, if they're found to be clear, but my ovaries have betrayed me too and it's not really worth the risk of the cancer coming back there either. Plus, if cancer did find it's way to my terrible ovaries, I wouldn't want to have to have another surgery to get rid of them later, so I'm happy to be rid of them.

I'm about 3 weeks out from a total hysterectomy. My uterus was twice as big as it's supposed to be with all that extra lining, so even though there are less invasive options for hysterectomies nowadays, they had to slice me open.

Then, true to form for me, just as everything was going along nearly perfectly, my incision was infected, so they had to open up the staples and send someone to change the dressings every day. Also true to form, it really wasn't that bad. It was a superficial infection and it cleared up pretty quickly. Just bad enough to have to open it up and start again. The infection is gone and now I have a Wound Vac which speeds up the healing time significantly.

We had concerns that the forced menopause might just trade all the old issues for a set of new ones, but so far I seem to be pretty lucky. I think my hormones were so screwed up before that I might not know the difference anyway.

The worse part is having a ton of time to myself to sit and worry about everything that could be going wrong. I have no context for pain or comfort. The problems I had and the way I was dismissed by the medical community mean that I have no idea what a human being is supposed to feel like. So when I get an ache or a pain, is it normal surgery crap? Is it how humans feel regardless? Is it a serious sign and I need to go to the hospital? It's easy to get caught up in your head.

I keep trying to remember that I'm only 3 weeks out, that this was major surgery and that this healing part is temporary. It may up to a year until I'm nearing normal again (whatever that means - I was normal before and it wasn't normal) but even a year is temporary. Long, but temporary. I keep trying to remember all the ways that it really was a best case scenario for what it is.

And I really try not to get too angry at the fact that 20 years of being ignored by the medical community culminated in all of this. There's no sense in pondering what could have been because what could have been isn't what happened. I'm working on it.

4:03 p.m. - 2017-10-25