Managing Sucks

I ride waves.  All day.  Sometimes they are gentle and sometimes they roll in without warning and hit me while I have drifted peacefully off.  Actually, there are no waves.  It's like craters.  Walking along, walking along, "Whoa!  Where did that come from?"

I hurt.  I have cramps.  My legs and back are sore and my breasts burn like I am weaning a baby without a slow-down period.

All of this is something I am okay with.  Because it has an end date.

December 17th.  On that date I say goodbye to my uterus.

Knowing that I am about to tell somebody I am going to have a hysterectomy, or giving people what they would consider unpleasant news of any kind, feels to me like walking up to them with a hammer.  Will they use this hammer to hit themselves?   Will they see me hitting myself?  Will they ignore the hammer and see me?  It's not your hammer.  It's my hammer.  I didn't hit you with it, I just carried here.  I didn't give it to you.  I showed it to you.  I own it.

I don't need anyone else's opinion on this, at all.  I don't want it.  I am not interested.  It's my decision.  Maybe that analogy sucks, in your opinion.  It works for me.

I advocated for this.  I can't manage what my uterus wants to give me.  I can't manage how it treats me.  I can't manage it anymore.  I am done.  It brings me down, wears on me - the uncertainty, the threat of disaster, the juggling of medications.  I will come to the end of this while bleeding, while on lovely mood altering medication, while dealing with the side effects of hormone fluctuation, pain and everything else that gets thrown in.   It needs to end.  It's too much.  The bleeding, the side effects , the fear.   It's not like the rest of my life waited to happen while this was going on.  I made a choice to end this "managing" business.  I want to do better than that.  I deserve better than that.

Six years ago the unusual bleeding started.  I was told, at first, it was because I spotted when I ovulated.  Then I was told all kinds of other reasons.  I was deferred and the symptoms were treated but the reasons why were not investigated, not made important.  I didn't make them important until it was almost too late.

I ended up, as I have described previously, in emergency.

The deferring didn't end there.  It continued right up until the point, not so long ago, where I shouted, "Enough!" and took control.  I will not wait for the storm any longer.