Female castration; or, yet another thing women aren't qualified to decide for themselves.

The United States performs more than 600,000 hysterectomies per year. That's a staggering figure when you consider that the primary reasoning behind most hysterectomy operations is treatment of uterine leiomyoma, or fibroid tumors. Why would so many women choose to have a full or partial hysterectomy when there are other options available for treating fibroids (some of them with exciting increases in success levels)? I suspect that we have no idea we're making the choice at all.

It's a somewhat precarious position, this one I'm in right here. I have every right to elect whatever procedure I want or none at all in the treatment (or lack thereof) of my body. It's difficult to address the stickiness and confusion of what having or not having a uterus, ovaries, fallopian tubes, etc. might entail psychologically without lapsing philosophic. If you don't have a uterus, rock the emptiness, I'm not looking for a war on the Naming of Parts. A woman is no less a woman lacking an arm or a leg or an ovary. But the freedom to make that decision can only really exist if there are options presented.

I recently underwent an abdominal myomectomy (surgical removal of fibroids) for a very rare case of cervical fibroids, and I had to game the patriarchal system, if you will, to obtain this surgery. My first doctor (the one who initially discovered the fibroid tumor) suggested that I was a lost cause. It was her official medical opinion that I was going to end up with a hysterectomy if not by choice, then by some emergency surgical fallout response that was destined to occur should I try a less-invasive approach. She never even gave me the names of those approaches. I was bleeding to death, I was vulnerable, and I trusted her. Luckily my powerful tendencies against confrontation had me in a new city less than two weeks later, and those toward both apathy and sloth had me in a new doctor's office shortly thereafter. Dr. William Parker asserts in her book A Gynecologist's Second Opinion, that "If you're only getting one option, it's likely that your doctor doesn't know how to do the others." Hurrah for this charmed existence, right?

So how did I get someone to attempt the impossible? To treat my impossible condition, in the shadow of my inevitable hysterectomy, we're doomed, blah blah blah, "don't worry honey you'll still be beautiful"? How did I avoid my apparent destiny as one of this year's 600,000? I went to a man; a man who specializes in keeping me fertile. I don't know if I want kids, and it's not even relevant, as far as I'm concerned. This guy, though, cannot fathom a world or mindset in which I wouldn't want kids. He lives and breathes to ensure that I maintain my ability to do the only thing I was put here to do, apparently, and that is incubate. I suspect he's not all that rare, I stumbled into him myself. Sometimes when we spoke it was all he could talk about, always drawing the conversation back to how I'll be able to carry a child, and maybe even have a vaginal birth, sweetie! Ugh.

So here's comes the guilt. Because what did I do? Did I tell him that I'm more than a baby incubator? That I have spent almost zero hours total over my lifetime thus far thinking about how badly I wish to conceive? That I've already had two abortions and he can go ahead and do away with this condescending implication that all I could ever possibly want is to serve God's greater purpose for me as a pregnant chef? No. I played that part like I was born for it. It's the only time I've ever lied about the abortions, too. The fact is, when someone is cutting me open, I want us to share the same goal: fixing me, regardless of the principle. Prepare your slings and arrows, because I would do it again if I had to. Is this speaking to how far (or not) I will push my feminist viewpoint? Should I be ashamed? Am I not as feminist as I thought? Maybe. Or maybe we all have a line somewhere that we just decide not to cross when we're selecting our battles. My line is pretty visible now: you will know me by the scar across my abdomen.

I was lost, but now am I found?

Somehow I (for apparently large values of t) temporarily lost this blog during the whole Blogspot/Google mashup. I was resurrected in admittedly lacklustre fashion, but we can still be exciting, Internets! I know we can!

I saw that eight people commented on my prior post, and when I saw that I nearly cried. That could be because I'm an emotional wreck due to my feminine health trainwreck status, but I'd prefer to attribute it to genuine glee that I'm not alone in the world. The feminist cloud I skate through is not some mad genius figment of an overactive imagination, even on my bad days.

Forthcoming: some insight into what I feel is a devastating state of our health industry specifically as it related to both birth and hysterectomy.