Choices at Sixteen - to keep my organs or not?

I had to choose whether or not to have a hysterectomy at 16.  That's right, folks, 16.

In honor of Fertility Awareness Week, I'd like to share my history.

It began when I was 15.  The nausea was so bad I would be huddled in a ball, crying.  The shooting pain was so intense that I would double over and scream.  We didn't know what was wrong.  Everyone around me thought I was exaggerating.  But, one day, my mom was passing by my room with a laundry basket and she saw me cry out and grab my stomach.  "You really are in pain, aren't you?".  Well, yes.  And off to the doctor's we went.  We were referred to having an ultrasound.

Have you ever had an ultrasound?  It's really cool.  They squirt cold goo on your belly and then place a wand over it, just rubbing your stomach.  Shades of white, black and gray appear on the monitor.  I remember the technician marking off places around circles.  And again. And again, again, again.  When I came out and saw my mother, I was so excited to tell her they found something!! Lots of somethings!!  She tried to play it down as a mistake on my part.  I know that she was terrified that the "something" could be horrendous.  Me, in my naivete, assumed that whatever it was could be fixed.  The next day we received a phone call.  Multiple ovarian cysts - the smallest, the size of a dime and the largest, the size of a golf ball.  I was put on birth control pills as a remedy to shrink the cysts.

And they shrank. I had some awkward gynecological appointments with a very kind, gentle OBGYN to monitor them.  But what didn't change was the pain and nausea.  And it was getting worse.  I ached all over and was exhausted.  I was put on anti nausea medication 24/7 as well as naproxen.  And when "that time of the month" came - watch out!! Pain.  Excruciating, as if a knife was ripping me through, Pain.  There were other details that would make some of my gentlemen readers blush and squirm, but suffice to say that there was physical evidence that all was not well, either.

On one appointment, my doctor and my mother had a long conversation.  She had the grace to have him include me in the conversation.  It was thought that I might have endometriosis.  Endometriosis is where the lining of the uterus, for whatever reason, also grows on the outside of the uterus, unchecked.  He couldn't feel anything, but he could take a look through surgery.  And as long as we were doing exploratory surgery, he would also take care of the problem.  There were three solutions.  One, have a complete hysterectomy.   The second, an oophorectomy - the removal of my ovaries so I would no longer cycle.   Each would leave me permanently infertile and unable to bear children.  He did mention that there was a third option, but I would likely need surgery again and be in pain on and off the rest of my life as I continued to battle this, and that was something that at the time was relatively new.  Laparoscopy.   It's standard procedure nowadays, but it was a new treatment for endometriosis almost 25 years ago.

I thought about the kids I had babysat.  How much joy I found in them.  I knew I wanted kids.  I had to make a decision.  At 16, some kids are planning how to avoid being a parent.  I was planning on being a parent.  My daughter was conceived in my heart that day.  She came twenty years later after attempting for almost two years to conceive physically, but my wanting and waiting to be a mother started that day in the doctor's office as we chose a course of action as we watched my symptoms progress.

I had a difficult time a few months later with my cycle. My mom called the doctor and I was put into surgery within a few days.  Endometriosis is listed in stages, like cancer.  I had advanced Stage IV endometriosis. I had tissue growing on the outside of my uterus, my Fallopian tubes and ovaries, over my pelvic bones, climbing up my rib cage, circling in back and covering my kidneys.  My doctor did the best he could to laser all of it off.  As further treatment, I continued on birth control pills and had a shot each month of a medication that was (at the time) used off label to inhibit the regrowth of tissue.

That medication?  Lupron.  The same medication I am now injecting each evening in order to have another child.  I feel a certain symmetry with that.  In some ways, it began my path to treating my uterine and fertility issues. It is interesting to me that the Lupron is here again, at the end of this long road, almost twenty five years later.  Full circle.