Diary - February 5, 2023

The last few days have been ok, but mostly filled with a mixture of anger, anxiety, and intermittent bouts of crying.

I feel like I should back up a little and explain why I need surgery and why it relates to my rape and sexual abuse. Because the sexual abuse was particularly violent during the second period of victimization, I developed cervical dysplasia and an immense amount of scar tissue. As I got older the scar tissue started to add to the buildup of the lining of my uterus. Many women know that thick linings of the uterus make for very heavy menstrual cycles and our perpetual torture of monthly cycles until the oh-so-fun beginnings of menopause.

These monster periods caused me to lose copious amounts of blood every month, and about six months ago I was diagnosed with critical anemia. I actually had zero iron in my body. I was sent to an oncologist/hematologist and at first I thought she was trying to joke with me about having no iron in my body, but then she showed me the lab work and there was in fact a "0" next to the iron (FE) on my bloodwork results. Because I had no iron in my blood, my cells were not creating its own iron and my hemoglobin dropped drastically. I was constantly out of breath, dizzy, and fatigued. My heart also developed this fun little thing where it would actually stop, stutter, stop, and then restart so hard that I thought one of those aliens that come shooting out of people's bodies in sci-fi movies would bust out at any moment. So, I went through six weeks of infusion therapy where each week for an hour, I would get hooked up to an IV and pumped full of iron. Eventually my blood started making its own iron enzymes and hemoglobin, and my levels went up. It looked pretty good for about a month and during that time, my husband and I attempted to try to get pregnant at least one more time before we got too old. That's when the periods seemed to actually get worse.

I saw my gynecologist and she explained that 1) my cycles would continue to get worse until I was in full menopause, 2) the only way to lighten the periods was by surgical ablation, and 3) a person should not get pregnant after this operation. Apparently after an ablation, the lining of the uterus is substantially reduced, making periods much, much lighter with minimal blood loss, but the lining would now be too thin for an egg to implant and become a baby. I asked about surrogacy because I have an amazing little cousin who has offered multiple times to be our surrogate, but the doctor told me it would have to be a donor egg because mine are too old. Oh, and if that didn't make me feel crappy enough being told your too ancient to have a baby at 42, there are pre-cancerous cells in my fallopian tubes, so getting my tubes tied would be the only option to make sure I didn't accidentally get pregnant. Cancer runs on both sides of my family, with my mother being the most recent person to kick cancer's ass by defeating breast cancer, but that fact of family history, combined with the fact that I have never given birth (this is related to a hormonal thing, apparently, that can trigger the cancer as I get older), this exponentially raises the odds of developing ovarian cancer. I'm literally left with no options other than to have this surgery. Not having it would mean that I would continue to lose half my body weight in blood each month, and that would put me right back where I started by needing artificial iron pumped into my body for the rest of my life, on top of the high probability of developing ovarian cancer without losing the tubes.

Now can you see why I'm so pissed off?? My rapist got to go live his life, never facing any repercussions from what he did to me (other victims, yes, but not for me) and has children of his own, and I'm stuck here having to make an incredibly difficult decision to have a surgery that I don't want so that I can have at least some semblance of a normal and healthy life, but without my dream of being a biological mother. I'm so angry that I will never feel a human life within my body, made from pure love between two soulmates. I'll never get to feel a kick of teeny feet. I'll never experience the joy of getting to give my husband a child to pass on his name. There's so much rage inside that I don't know what to do with myself sometimes.

Great, I'm angry crying again and can barely see the screen. I feel like my soul is shattering and I'm not sure if I'll be able to put it back together again. I've had to do that so many times in my life already that the damn thing probably looks like a Monet.