Post 12 – Laughing and crying over tampons!
Over a month past since my hysterectomy and I was feeling much better! The incision was healing nicely and my energy levels were up. I couldn’t exercise or do any kind of physical activity so I decided to go through my closet and get rid of some old clothes. Once finished, I went through the kids closets. It didn’t take long before I was done and looking for something else to do. I was bored! I wasn’t painting because I couldn’t stay on my feet too long. I tried working on my book, but that also proved to be challenging. I had 27 chapters and was looking to wrap it up with 30. Only problem was, I didn’t have an ending. The ideas weren’t coming, so the book writing was at a standstill.
What else could I do?
What else could I do besides read, watch tv and purge? I stood, in the middle of the upstairs hallway, staring into the bathroom. Maybe I could clear out the medicine cabinet?
I found a small empty box, marched into the bathroom, opened the medicine cabinet and swept everything off the shelf into the box. I returned to the bedroom, sat on the bed with the box and went through the items one by one. Some items were expired so I threw them out. Then, I amalgamated all the band-aids from the three half-empty band-aid boxes into one. Next came the tampons. I counted four in total, three unopened and one open box with two tampons remaining. I didn’t need them anymore. Should I throw them out? Should I give them to friends? Seems kind of weird to be offering boxes of tampons to friends.
Am I supposed to wrap a colourful bow around a box of tampons and say: “Here you go! A small gift for you…because you’re such a good friend!”
“Want a box of tampons?”
That’s weird!
Staring at the two loose tampons, a memory popped into my mind and I started to laugh out loud.
Not long ago my son yelled down to me from the upstairs bathroom: “Mom! Come here!”
I was in the kitchen preparing supper. “Come down if you want to talk to me!” I shouted.
He pranced downstairs into the kitchen with two tampons stuck up each one of his nostrils.
I burst into laughter.
“What are these?” he asked, with an innocent smile on his face.
“They’re tampons! They’re….for mommies!”
What else could I say?
Curious, my other son came into the kitchen, observing me as I laughed. He ran upstairs, grabbed the box of tampons and brought it down. He too wanted to make me laugh. Mimicking my older son, he stuffed two tampons up his nostrils. The boys laughed together, and at each other.
“No, no! Those aren’t toys!” I said still laughing. “Put them back where you found them!”
They grabbed the tampons and ran off, giggling all the way upstairs.
Later that same week I discovered the kids hadn’t put the tampons away like I asked them. I found tampons scattered throughout the house in the most bizarre places. My younger son liked to hide things, usually his toys. Turns out, tampons were also fun to hide. I found one in his tiny wallet where he usually stored lego pieces. Then I found another in his bed under the pillow. That’s one of his favourite hiding spots. He once hid popcorn under his pillow, like a squirrel hiding his reserves. I found a tampon in my shoe, relieved it wasn’t a mouse (when I felt the tampon string with my toes I thought it was a mouse’s tail…eek!), and another inside my glove, in one of the fingers.
Sitting at the edge of my bed, remembering these moments made me smile. After a while, I started feeling sad. Rubbing my lower abdomen, I thought about my hysterectomy.
The organ where my children had developed from a tiny seedling into a perfect baby, was now gone! I no longer had a uterus! I was “uterus-less”! My emotions were stirring and I didn’t know how to stop them. The more I thought about it, the hollower I felt. Suddenly, I started to cry. I felt such a deep loss that my heart started to ache.
Why was I feeling such intense sorrow?
The crying eventually stopped but the sadness remained for a few weeks. I searched the internet for something that could help me understand why I was feeling so down. Was it common for women to feel a sense of loss after a hysterectomy? Surely, I wasn’t the first woman to feel this way! After a few hours of searching the internet, I found next to nothing! I figured it was one of those topics that has yet to be discussed, like prenatal depression, which I also experienced (that’s PREnatal not POSTpartum depression). Again, with prenatal depression I found limited resources. Postpartum depression is now widely recognized, but it took a long time before it became an open and ongoing discussion.
Hopefully, opening up about my feelings will help other women who have experienced the same sense of loss after a hysterectomy. Know you are not alone! I believe there is still so much to learn about a woman’s body, especially when it comes to hormones and emotions. The first step is talking about it, no matter how embarrassing or silly it may sound.