endometrial ablation

It seems like there's no time for anything...no time to clean the house, shop, cook, to study... you get the idea right??? Did you hear the one about the nurse?? (credit to Deb T) a nurse washed up on shore, how did they know she was a nurse??? her bladder was full her stomach was empty and her ass was chewed up...it's soooo true, there is just no time for anything, not even for the most basic of bodily functions, which brings me to the endometrial ablation.

you know I got my period on my 13th birthday, it was late all the neighborhood girls had theirs already and my mother was ready to take me to the endocrinologist. To my horror my mother called everyone we knew to announce that I was "a woman now" Of course I wasn't, I was an embarrassed adolescent trying to figure out how to ride my bicycle with one of my mothers super plus overnight pads under my shorts, serious overkill for the scant brown trickle between my legs.

My period always lasted for 10 days and on a 28 day cycle that barely gave my privates time to breathe, but what can you do, that's life. I tried to embrace my period, really I did. I read a book called "her blood is gold" and "when God was a woman" but I live in a world where I literally don't have time to eat or pee, changing rags hourly during peri menopause was difficult to work into my schedule. I could go into a few gross stories of "flooding disasters" which women all over could relate to, but I just can't get my fingers to type the words.

so after awhile I learned to use tampons, with the super plus pads, to buy myself time between changes, then I tried hormones, then a D&C..none of which came close to solving the problem. because of my age I declined to use birth control pills, I want a stroke cause I'm inconvenienced by my period?? Which brought me to the "ablation". What does ablation mean anyway??? Sounds like to destroy, decimate, obliterate...I will have to look it up to see if I'm right, such an ugly word...

I think of the poor innocent lining of my uterus, fluffing up ready to receive life, month after month faithfully for the past 27 years, though I've only asked it to do so once. The lovely thought of the connection to all my ancestors through the blood in my veins, and my womb. I picture how it was in there like a fertile valley lush with life, and I blew it all away, scalded it, sterilized it, because it inconvenienced me, and I feel guilty. I wonder if the ablation works, and I never bleed again, how disconnected will it feel to be "PMS" and not bleed?

I was terrified of it though too, of the thought of bleeding for another 15 years, terrified at the possibility of having another child, especially that, being a single mother has been an experience I cannot repeat and live through, and I'd always feel like a single mother because I don't think I would ever feel secure enough in a relationship. So I feel like I have made the right decision now incase I meet a man in the future and feel the primal burning desire to "give him a child". I can't.

I had my period for 27 years, 12 times a year, minus the 9 or ten months I was pregnant, that's somewhere around 314 times. At 10 days a period that's 3,140 days bleeding, 75,360 hours bleeding. Countless boxes of super plus tampons, countless rolls or toilet paper to wrap them. 3,140 days of wearing black pants just in case, of trying to discretely check my ass in the car window before going into anyplace. A long time.

I'm not sure how I'll end up feeling about the whole experience in the long run, but right now I'm left with sort of a sad empty feeling, like saying goodbye to an old friend, but it's a friend who I sent away.