{"id":410,"date":"2014-01-30T15:28:04","date_gmt":"2014-01-30T20:28:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/joeywrites.com\/?p=410"},"modified":"2014-01-30T15:28:05","modified_gmt":"2014-01-30T20:28:05","slug":"phantom-loss","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/joeywrites.com\/?p=410","title":{"rendered":"Phantom Loss"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cI don\u2019t need a uterus to have kids in my life,\u201d <\/em> I declared. \u201cI\u2019ve got 15 nieces and nephews; I\u2019ve got a roommate that is young enough to be my son, I run a charity event for non-profit that deals with foster kids and adoption. If I decide I want a child, I think I can figure something out.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

It\u2019s not the first time I\u2019ve said it in the past few weeks, but this time I was saying it to my HR contact at work. I\u2019m scheduled to have a hysterectomy at the end of the month, and am trying to work out how soon I can get back to work and off short-term disability. It\u2019s not so much that I\u2019m a workaholic, but I\u2019m not really interested in dropping to 70% of my current salary. <\/p>\n

\u201cDon\u2019t rush your recovery,\u201d<\/em> she cautioned. \u201cEven if you physically recover, there is an emotional toll that overcomes you once your uterus and ovaries are removed. A lot of women don\u2019t anticipate the grief of giving up motherhood as an option until it\u2019s already gone.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/em>I understood what she was saying, but deciding whether or not to have kids was a decision I had to make back 7 years ago and I feel like I did my grieving then.<\/p>\n

I had gone in for a routine check-up. The nurse practitioner was taking the normal vitals: height, weight, blood pressure. She took my blood pressure twice, actually, and then left the room \u2013 quickly returning with a crash cart and telling me to relax, which only made me more nervous. My blood pressure was 171\/118. I looked at them confused \u2013 I felt the way I always felt. But evidently this wasn\u2019t good.<\/p>\n

As the nurse practitioner prescribed the much-needed medication to get it back in to the safety zone, she asked me if I wanted to have children. Because this med and pregnancy could not mix. I cried. Not that I wanted to get pregnant, but that the choice was being taken away from me. My life was in a place where nothing was certain \u2013 everything was in flux, and I just broke down for a bit there in the doctor\u2019s office.<\/p>\n

Yes, ma\u2019am. I had already done my grieving. I was able to joke with the HR contact, convince her I was fine, and we got off the phone both laughing. <\/p>\n

Later that night, a voice on the TV caught my attention. This psychologist was talking on a news show about having a mastectomy. <\/p>\n

\u201cMy friends told me I would go through a mourning period, but I just brushed them off. My femininity was not defined by my breasts; I didn\u2019t need them to feel empowered. I had counseled people in the past through their post-surgical depression; I knew what would happen and knew I would be fine.<\/p>\n

And then I woke up, and my breast was gone, and I mourned.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

So now I wonder if maybe I\u2019m wrong. I really don\u2019t expect to be sad about it \u2013 I\u2019ve kind of gotten a Spartan attitude about my body parts \u2013 get rid of it if it\u2019s causing a fuss. On the other hand, not having my own children has allowed me to focus on so many other things I wouldn\u2019t have time for: rescue dogs, charity events, The Geeks, etc. <\/p>\n

But I don\u2019t mean to dismiss it all so quickly. I can understand that feeling of phantom loss like when a soldier loses his leg, but still feels the pain or like the leg is still there. I just can\u2019t focus on that. It\u2019s counter-productive to where I\u2019m heading.<\/p>\n

Forward march.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cI don\u2019t need a uterus to have kids in my life,\u201d I declared. \u201cI\u2019ve got 15 nieces and nephews; I\u2019ve got a roommate that is young enough to be my son, I run a charity event for non-profit that deals with foster kids and adoption. If I decide I want a child, I think I…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[152],"tags":[153,154,158,156,157,155],"class_list":["post-410","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-road-to-recovery","tag-hysterectomy","tag-mastectomy","tag-mourning","tag-phantom-loss","tag-pregnancy","tag-surgery"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2UnPK-6C","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/joeywrites.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/410","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/joeywrites.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/joeywrites.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joeywrites.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joeywrites.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=410"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/joeywrites.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/410\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/joeywrites.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joeywrites.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joeywrites.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}