The Meaning of life and other lies

OK, so while I'm waiting for the Benadryl to kick in (you didn't think I was actually over this whole allergy-thing, did you?) I thought I'd reflect on the past few weeks since I had surgery.

My counselor (therapist) says that everything changes after surgery.  At first I didn't believe him; I mean, I'm me, I still live in the northern part of a major metro area, I still drive the same pickup, and I still co-own the same clinic.  I still love organic meats and fruit/veggie smoothies.  I still love eclectic music of various kinds.  My family and friends were still, well, THEM.

But in a way, my counselor was right.  Things HAD changed.  Let's chronicle a couple, shall we?

I learned that I like my work, but that it stresses me out.  I shit you not--I saw my first patient since before my absence, and wow.  Did. I. Feel. Like. An. Airhead.  Asking around those who'd had hysterectomies before me, they said, "oh yeah.  You'll be fine around the house but when it comes time to do your regular work, you'll feel cloudy."  Well, I figured that was code for, "milk it, baby." 

But they weren't lying!  Yessir, I can sure change out a House MD DVD from the box set (Seasons 1 through 5, if you must know) and I can apply Super Antioxidant cream to my incisions but boy howdy, don't ask me an upper-level question involving patient care where I have to consider biochemistry.  Yeah....no.  I don't think on my feet these days.  You might say I think on my butt.

I learned that I'm a total and complete glutton for getting my hair combed...with someone else's fingers.  Oh my goodness, can we say sublime?  Yes, C, even if you were just doing your thing, it was probably the single bestest therapeutic modality we could utilize.  Don't tell Erchonia, but it even beat out their laser.

It didn't take long to find myself in the frustrating position of being able to do everything a little bit, but nothing completely.  For example, when changing out the bathroom trash, I could get the new bag open and into the trash can; I could not situate it properly, like getting the edge of the bag around the lip of the can.  Nope.  Psych!

I was surprised that I could take stairs as easily and quickly as I did.  But when they say "no lifting", they mean it!  Anything more than a half-gallon of almond milk was too much for me.

I learned the hard way not to laugh during the first few weeks.  As in, the Yellow Puddle Hard Way.  That obviously meant a moratorium on belching and watching Family Guy.

My appetite has changed, too.  I don't eat like a horse anymore.  I don't have to; I'm not feeding fibroid parasites anymore.

But I'm not sure that even the above is what my counselor had in mind when he said everything changes.  He's not just talking about my new ironing-board belly, either (although I wish that was the extent of the changes!)  I think he's referring more toward deep stuff like the meaning of life.

I woke up.  But there's always a possibility that one might not.   Hell, just read Robin Cook's "Coma".  While I was surprisingly OK with dying if that's what came to pass, I was vehemently against the idea of living like a vegetable should something go catastrophically awry.  So I voiced my contingency Plan B in no uncertain terms.

Everything else?  Is somewhat the same.  Work is different.  The clinic doesn't yet feel like half-mine again.  I feel funny asking my front desk person to do anything for me, even though we're the ones that sign the paychecks.  Everything ran so smoothly without me.

My marriage?  That's the same, too.  We watched TV in the evenings before and we are again.  We didn't have much physical or affectionate contact before, and we don't now.  But I feel differently about it now.  I felt somewhat ambivalent about that before, mostly because I had given up on the idea after more than a decade of attempted heart-to-heart talks.  But now I'm not so ambivalent.  I've now tasted physical touch again, and I realize I crave it, like any other human being.  Those two weeks were enough to awaken something.  We need to be touched.  We'd trade food or other basic needs in order to get touched.  So, something will eventually have to give.

My friendships?  One is much deeper now, at least from my end.  I mean, it was pretty depth-enhanced before, but now I've found the abyss, in a very good way.  Sort of in an Honorary Family Member sort of way.

For now, I live in my mental anticlimactic cloud, my brain scrounging for whatever dopamine it can find leftover from this month's psychological party.  And I dutifully make regular appearance in my counselor's office.  The Silver Lining Moment is: I'm tiny now :)

They don't have going-away parties for uteruses

But in hindsight, I sure as hell might have. You see, I wasn't ever going to make use of that particular organ anyway, so it was just taking up space without even paying any rent. Not that I'm implying that I rent out my body.

Okay, moving on. Back to the uterus. It's gone. See ya. Ciao. Sayonara. And you know what? Good riddance. My uterus is one particular body part that Mother Nature boldly assigned to me without ever consulting me first. Because if She had, she would've known that I was vehemently against the idea of ever making use of it. Waste of space, if you ask me.

Moving on again. The surgery was monumental. I squeaked by with the DaVinci (high-tech robotic assistance) by the skin of not only my teeth, but possibly someone else's, too. It almost didn't happen that way, because (as happens with many ladies), the gravity of the situation often isn't 100% apparent until the surgeon actually goes in and looks around for him-/herself. And as "luck" would have it, the situation is often worse--not better--than originally thought.

I'm thanking my lucky stars right now that there was never any known endometriosis. I'm crossing my fingers that things stay that way. I'm also thanking my lucky stars that the gas pain has, for the most part, cleared out and that I have no more insomnia than usual. In case you're wondering about that gas pain, we're not leading up to any fart jokes here. Oh how I wish we were! No, this was many shades worse; abdominal gas refers to the idea that each hysterectomy patient is essentially a balloon to be inflated during the procedure. It does make things easier in the long run. It just sucks for a while, especially since there is no other relief than to let it dissipate (absorb) back into the body on its own. Yay. (Which means, though, that it DOES get better with time and without any effort on your part. <--Silver Lining Moment)

Waking up from surgery was kind of like waking up in a body prison in which nothing worked right, my vision was blurry, I couldn't talk properly. and I couldn't take a deep enough breath due to the pain of the abdominal gas (see Silver Lining Moment above).

I'm surprisingly mobile considering what I've been through but not nearly as flexible and ambulatory as I had come to take for granted in normal life. I must be careful and deliberate with each movement and stay focused on the movement I'm trying to make lest I hurt myself, but other than that, I'm okay as long as I don't overdo it.

Yeah, overdoing it. That's a subjective term, tricky, because it means different things for different ladies. Suffice it to say that I won't be swinging from tree branches or shot-putting bowling balls down the alley any time soon. Those parts of my life are perpetually paused for a little while. (Although the tree branch swinging does sound fun.)

So bye-bye uterus. Off you go to the path lab so that they can (hopefully) tell me all those fibroid tumors are benign and I can go about my daily life, one achy but cherished step at a time.