I want to talk to you about my uterus..
We're allowed to talk about the diarrhea we suffer from, the gas causing an endless stream of farts strong enough to propel one around the house. I can whine about my heart, my agita, my head, my sex life. Activities performed by the vagina are OK too. We can talk about sex, vaginal infections but no one ever really talks about the what happens to the vagina as we age.
When I was wee I bled like a lamb sliced for slaughter. My very first period had me over the toilet vomiting for my own death. Making it worse was the fact that I was wee eons before the invention of a sanitary napkin held nicely in place by a sticky strip. Tampons were around, but if you were Catholic (like me), or of some other like mind, you were forbidden to use tampons because their were perceived as possibly leaving your hymen no longer intact or giving you ideas about all the other things you might want to put in your vagina. They were little penises in some people's mind's… give a girl a little starter penis and the next thing you know she's on the corner begging for harder and bigger tampons.
I bled so badly that my mother had to stay at home from work and me from school. It came out in chunks and each chunk that had to pass through my cervix caused me to throw up. And each one of those clots once it passed through unleashed about a 1/4 cup of blood that had been backed up.
It was years before I realized that it was the clots passing that were causing me the cramps and vomiting. I am sure that once I made that connection there was a significant part of me that understood that childbirth would be ultimately worse. All my bleeding was supposed to get better as I aged and mind you I began menstruation at 9.
If you look at this picture to the right, they have the mannequins hips cocked in an attempt to make this all sexy. There is nothing sexy about having a wad of material between your legs that with each drop of blood becomes saturated to the point of leaking all over the place. You could feel when you were at risk of suddenly going from OK to needing a mop and bucket. Sometimes just standing up in an attempt to not bleed through to the back of your clothes simply sent the blood running down your leg and into your shoe.
My mother used torn sheets folded over. She was a light bleeder. A bleeder like all those tampon commercials are made for. Bitches that bleed so little they skip through the countryside not even aware they are bleeding. Me, I bled through mattresses. My bleeding never got better, it only changed and got worse.
My menstruation changed in that the cramping subsided. Instead of morphine based suppositories I could get by with an OTC pain reliever. This may sound like a great thing but the removal of cramping meant that I no longer had warning that I needed to visit the bathroom to change my sanitary napkin. There was once a time I was sitting at my desk at work when a coworker cam in and rushed to my side asking if I was in harm's way. She pointed to the floor and below my chair, indeed, was an alarming pool of blood. I had soaked through my chair completely unaware. Then there was the time I woke from sleep and returned from the bathroom to learn that I had soaked through my entire mattress, straight through to the other side. It was this last episode that I decided enough is enough. Orgasms brought on bleeding and I was now anemic most of the time from the loss of blood. I had bled for a month once! My mattress looked like murders had taken place on their surface and all of my underwear was long beyond every looking sexy. Women usually have sexy underwear and period underwear. Since I was never not bleeding all my underwear was ready for seepage control.
The saddest thing about this narrative is that no one tells you, no one told me until later, how important the size of your uterus can be to the strength of your orgasms. I had: I just went blind and I see God type of orgasms. My orgasms curled my toes, flushed my entire body, brought on weeping and for a moment in space and time, I died and went to heaven.
I learned to masturbate from a book. I went home and taught myself how to orgasm and what I learned changed my life. I am very tuned in to my body. I know what works and what doesn't. It is not that I no longer have orgasms its that they are not the same. They went from Times Square to an Afternoon at Metropolitan Museum of Art.
After my hysterectomy, I returned to my gynecologist and asked her what happened. My first visit she assured me everything would go back into place. Months later when I returned again it was then that she said: If the uterus is larger than typical it plays a larger role in the orgasm. Frightened I asked her: Was mine large? And she replied: Very much so. When she performed the surgery I begged her to allow me to have my uterus after its removal so I could see what the heck had given me such a hard time all these years. She wasn't able to do so but she did present me with this picture, which I am forever grateful for.
I do not miss bleeding. I do not regret having a hysterectomy, but I do feel sad that I didn't have at least another ten years of eye-rolling orgasms. Other women have often chastised me for not having had a less radical surgery - they are likely to do it to you too- and instead had just the fibroid removed. Well my fibroid's where huge, multiple and there is likelihood they will just come back. I didn't want to deal with this ever again. And any decision I made - or that you make- is no one business but yours.
(What you are looking at in the picture to the left: the top pear shaped two halves are my uterus sliced open. The big tennis ball plaque looking thing, upper right, is a fibroid tumor. Its other part, looking like rabbit ears is on the upper left. There is another smaller fibroid at the base of the uterus near where the cervix would be. The three disk shaped pieces at the bottom are slices off my uterus that are done so the pathologist can see if there is anything else going on (cancer, etc.) other than the reason for the hysterectomy itself.
As I have aged it is my vagina that has changed the most. There are times when the Sahara and my vagina are equal in dryness. I am a born again virgin when I engage in sex and I bleed. Sometimes it has felt as if my lover had donned barbed wire for a condom and entered me with shards of glass. Other times I am lubricated as though olive oil springs from my loins. All of these textures, these sensations are for the most part due to hormonal changes, and will ebb and flow. I think the best thing about sex at 58, for me, is that I am no longer wandering around wondering what other people think of my behaviour. I am taken and go to bed expecting to be satisfied and to have fun. This is far from where I began. I also engage with men whom are my age and at this age we have an eagerness and a humour that can never be had in the prime of life. I do not orgasm as frequently as I did years ago but I am not enjoying myself less. Something changes as you get older. The companionship and intimacy takes first place with the orgasm happy to be second in line. Or third.
Sex does become better with age and getting older is only lonesome if we do it alone something we shouldn't be doing when having sex.
We're allowed to talk about the diarrhea we suffer from, the gas causing an endless stream of farts strong enough to propel one around the house. I can whine about my heart, my agita, my head, my sex life. Activities performed by the vagina are OK too. We can talk about sex, vaginal infections but no one ever really talks about the what happens to the vagina as we age.
When I was wee I bled like a lamb sliced for slaughter. My very first period had me over the toilet vomiting for my own death. Making it worse was the fact that I was wee eons before the invention of a sanitary napkin held nicely in place by a sticky strip. Tampons were around, but if you were Catholic (like me), or of some other like mind, you were forbidden to use tampons because their were perceived as possibly leaving your hymen no longer intact or giving you ideas about all the other things you might want to put in your vagina. They were little penises in some people's mind's… give a girl a little starter penis and the next thing you know she's on the corner begging for harder and bigger tampons.
I bled so badly that my mother had to stay at home from work and me from school. It came out in chunks and each chunk that had to pass through my cervix caused me to throw up. And each one of those clots once it passed through unleashed about a 1/4 cup of blood that had been backed up.
 |
| Sanitary Napkin Belt |
If you look at this picture to the right, they have the mannequins hips cocked in an attempt to make this all sexy. There is nothing sexy about having a wad of material between your legs that with each drop of blood becomes saturated to the point of leaking all over the place. You could feel when you were at risk of suddenly going from OK to needing a mop and bucket. Sometimes just standing up in an attempt to not bleed through to the back of your clothes simply sent the blood running down your leg and into your shoe.
My mother used torn sheets folded over. She was a light bleeder. A bleeder like all those tampon commercials are made for. Bitches that bleed so little they skip through the countryside not even aware they are bleeding. Me, I bled through mattresses. My bleeding never got better, it only changed and got worse.
My menstruation changed in that the cramping subsided. Instead of morphine based suppositories I could get by with an OTC pain reliever. This may sound like a great thing but the removal of cramping meant that I no longer had warning that I needed to visit the bathroom to change my sanitary napkin. There was once a time I was sitting at my desk at work when a coworker cam in and rushed to my side asking if I was in harm's way. She pointed to the floor and below my chair, indeed, was an alarming pool of blood. I had soaked through my chair completely unaware. Then there was the time I woke from sleep and returned from the bathroom to learn that I had soaked through my entire mattress, straight through to the other side. It was this last episode that I decided enough is enough. Orgasms brought on bleeding and I was now anemic most of the time from the loss of blood. I had bled for a month once! My mattress looked like murders had taken place on their surface and all of my underwear was long beyond every looking sexy. Women usually have sexy underwear and period underwear. Since I was never not bleeding all my underwear was ready for seepage control.
The saddest thing about this narrative is that no one tells you, no one told me until later, how important the size of your uterus can be to the strength of your orgasms. I had: I just went blind and I see God type of orgasms. My orgasms curled my toes, flushed my entire body, brought on weeping and for a moment in space and time, I died and went to heaven.
I learned to masturbate from a book. I went home and taught myself how to orgasm and what I learned changed my life. I am very tuned in to my body. I know what works and what doesn't. It is not that I no longer have orgasms its that they are not the same. They went from Times Square to an Afternoon at Metropolitan Museum of Art.
After my hysterectomy, I returned to my gynecologist and asked her what happened. My first visit she assured me everything would go back into place. Months later when I returned again it was then that she said: If the uterus is larger than typical it plays a larger role in the orgasm. Frightened I asked her: Was mine large? And she replied: Very much so. When she performed the surgery I begged her to allow me to have my uterus after its removal so I could see what the heck had given me such a hard time all these years. She wasn't able to do so but she did present me with this picture, which I am forever grateful for.
 |
| Moira's Uterus |
I do not miss bleeding. I do not regret having a hysterectomy, but I do feel sad that I didn't have at least another ten years of eye-rolling orgasms. Other women have often chastised me for not having had a less radical surgery - they are likely to do it to you too- and instead had just the fibroid removed. Well my fibroid's where huge, multiple and there is likelihood they will just come back. I didn't want to deal with this ever again. And any decision I made - or that you make- is no one business but yours.
(What you are looking at in the picture to the left: the top pear shaped two halves are my uterus sliced open. The big tennis ball plaque looking thing, upper right, is a fibroid tumor. Its other part, looking like rabbit ears is on the upper left. There is another smaller fibroid at the base of the uterus near where the cervix would be. The three disk shaped pieces at the bottom are slices off my uterus that are done so the pathologist can see if there is anything else going on (cancer, etc.) other than the reason for the hysterectomy itself.
As I have aged it is my vagina that has changed the most. There are times when the Sahara and my vagina are equal in dryness. I am a born again virgin when I engage in sex and I bleed. Sometimes it has felt as if my lover had donned barbed wire for a condom and entered me with shards of glass. Other times I am lubricated as though olive oil springs from my loins. All of these textures, these sensations are for the most part due to hormonal changes, and will ebb and flow. I think the best thing about sex at 58, for me, is that I am no longer wandering around wondering what other people think of my behaviour. I am taken and go to bed expecting to be satisfied and to have fun. This is far from where I began. I also engage with men whom are my age and at this age we have an eagerness and a humour that can never be had in the prime of life. I do not orgasm as frequently as I did years ago but I am not enjoying myself less. Something changes as you get older. The companionship and intimacy takes first place with the orgasm happy to be second in line. Or third.
Sex does become better with age and getting older is only lonesome if we do it alone something we shouldn't be doing when having sex.
Comments