¤¤¤ Warning — if you are of the male persuasion, you may want to click elsewhere, unless you don’t mind reading about uteruses and their miraculous functions. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. ¤¤¤

When I said in my first post of 2010 that I plan to be more honest and personal in my blogging this year, I wasn’t entirely sure I was going to tackle the topic of my dysfunctional uterus. First of all, I was raised to not discuss any sort of private bodily function, particularly in a public forum. (Sorry, Mom, Grandma, Aunt Judy and any other female relative I might be offending.) Secondly, this whole thing has been so painful to me, both physically and emotionally, that I’ve wanted to bury it deep, never to be discussed or thought about, if at all possible.

But me being me, and, mostly, me being a writer, that’s not going to happen. Unless I can manage to trick my brain into focusing on a book, movie or game instead, until I’m so tired, I fall into bed already half asleep, I think about everything, in excruciating detail. However, I’ve discovered that stuffing negative feelings into tiny recesses of one’s emotional closet rather than dealing with them is not only unhealthy, but can manifest itself in some very ugly ways (more on that another time). I also suspect that some of my readers have been or are going through a similar situation, so I’m hoping for commiseration.

OK, lads, I’ve given you ample time to move on, so now I’m going to expound on why I hate my uterus.

I didn’t start out hating it. My uterus sputtered into working order when I was 12 and beyond a few incidents involving unpleasant cramping, I didn’t suffer from any PMS symptoms to speak of.

Next, it housed my four children, totaling around 27 months of habitation. Everything remained fine and dandy.

And then the stabbing pain and abnormal bleeding started several years ago. I went to see my ob-gyn for an annual check-up and told him of my new woes. He proceeded to knead my uterus both inside and out (at least, that’s what it felt like) as I nearly arched off the examination table in agony.

“A bit tender?” he asked needlessly.

Um, yeah, you could say that.

He gave me a pamphlet explaining my condition. Adenomyosis, he said. Evidently it’s a disease in which the tissue that normally lines the uterus begins growing inside the muscle walls as well, most common after having had children.

For now, he explained, he could put me on birth control pills to hopefully stem the irregular and heavy bleeding, as well as the cramping, but “you’ll probably need to have a hysterectomy eventually,”  he told me. I filed that in my brain for future reference.

Meanwhile, after several months of The Pill, which always leaves me with nasty side effects (I think I’ve been on almost every brand there is), my doctor convinced me to have the Mirena IUD put in place to do the same thing as the pills, only with much less effort or worry. Great! I thought. I can handle 5 years of not having to deal with this stuff.

Alas, less than a year and a half after placement of the IUD, complications began to occur.

Next: My uterus turns against me.

Tags: adenomyosis, birth control pills, children, family, family planning, hysterectomy, IUD, Mirena, mom, parenting, uterus