Living With an Untimely Hysterectomy |
There are mornings when I wake up and the first thing, I feel is an absence. Not pain, not sadness exactly, but a hollow awareness of something that once was and no longer is a part of me, removed not by choice in the way one might choose a haircut or a change of lifestyle, but by medical necessity, by the uncompromising language of a body that had its own plans. A complete hysterectomy, performed before I had ever truly made peace with the idea, rearranged everything, my body, my sense of self, my relationship with womanhood, and my understanding of what it means to grieve something that was taken before you even realized how tightly you were holding it.
When the doctor first sat across from me and used the word “hysterectomy,” I heard it the way you hear words in a dream, clearly, but at a distance, as though they were meant for someone else. I was too young, I thought. This was something that happened to other women, older women, women who had already lived what I was still waiting to begin. However, the diagnosis was undeniable, fibroids too severe, bleeding too relentless, a uterus that had become less of a life-giving organ and more of a source of daily crisis. The surgery was not optional. It was urgent. And so, before I had fully absorbed what was happening, I was scheduled, prepared, and wheeled into an operating theater that smelled like antiseptic and finality. The morning of the surgery is not something I will ever forget. I remember sitting in the hospital bed, dressed in a thin gown that felt like a metaphor for how exposed and fragile I was. My hands would not stop trembling. I kept asking the nurses questions I already knew the answers to, just to hear a human voice, just to anchor myself to the room and prevent my mind from spiraling into every terrifying possibility at once. What if something went wrong on the table? What if I woke up feeling like a stranger in my own body? What if I did not wake up at all? Fear is a strange companion, it does not reason with you, it simply sits beside you and breathes loudly. I prayed quietly, gripped the hospital blanket, and told myself that survival was the only thing that mattered right now. Everything else could be grieved later. That morning, getting through was enough.
I did get through. The surgery was declared a success. But what no one quite prepares you for is the aftermath, not just the physical recovery, which is brutal in its own right, but the emotional reckoning that arrives in the weeks and months that follow.
Fear is a strange companion, it does not reason with you, it simply sits beside you and breathes loudly.
Fear is a strange companion, it does not reason with you, it simply sits beside you and breathes loudly.
Physically, the changes were immediate and disorienting. Since the surgery was complete, removing not just the uterus but the ovaries as well, my body was thrown into surgical menopause overnight. There was no gradual transition, no easing into it. One day I was who I had always been, and the next, my hormones had collapsed like a building with no foundation. The hot flashes came with a ferocity I had not anticipated, drenching me in sweat at random hours, making sleep feel like a battle I was perpetually losing. My joints ached. My energy, once reliable, became something I had to ration carefully. There were days when climbing a flight of stairs felt like a negotiation. Brain fog settled over my thoughts like a dull haze, making it difficult to concentrate, to remember, to feel sharp in the way I once had. My body, which I had always taken for granted as a given, had become something I was learning to navigate all over again. Emotionally, the landscape was even more complex. Grief does not always announce itself dramatically. Sometimes it creeps in quietly, in the middle of an ordinary Tuesday, when you walk past the baby aisle in a grocery store and feel a sudden, inexplicable tightening in your chest. I had not even been certain I wanted children, I had spent years ambivalent, undecided, carrying the question the way many women do, half-answered and set aside. Ambivalence and impossibility are entirely different things. To be undecided is a kind of freedom. To have the decision made for you, permanently, is a door not just closed but removed from its hinges entirely. I mourned a future I had never fully claimed. I mourned a version of myself that no longer had access to something she had not yet fully understood she wanted. And then came the relatives. If grief has a worst companion, it is the well-meaning but profoundly insensitive remark. Family members, aunties, cousins, neighbors, people who love you and simultaneously say things that cut to the bone without ever knowing it. “Such a pity, you’ll never know what it feels like to be a mother.” “Who will take care of you when you are old?”, “Have you considered adoption?” These comments arrived wrapped in concern but landed like accusations. As if my body’s medical reality was a personal failure. As if my worth as a woman was inextricably tied to a uterus I no longer possessed. There were family gatherings where someone would inevitably bring it up, a pregnancy announced, a baby placed in arms around the room, and then a glance in my direction loaded with pity so heavy it was almost physical. I learned to smile. I learned to excuse myself to the bathroom when the emotion became too large to quietly contain.
What I wish those relatives had understood is this, I did not choose this. Even if I had, my value as a human being, my capacity to love, to nurture, to contribute, to matter was never housed in my reproductive organs. A hysterectomy removes a uterus. It does not remove identity, purpose, tenderness, or strength. Living with this surgery has taught me things I could not have learned any other way. It has taught me to advocate fiercely for my own health, to ask hard questions, to not minimize my own pain to make others comfortable. It has taught me that womanhood is not a biological checklist but a living, breathing, evolving experience. It has taught me that grief and gratitude can occupy the same heart at the same time without contradiction. I am still learning about my body. I am still, on some mornings, making peace with the absence I wake up to. But I am here. I survived the trembling morning of that surgery. I survived the recovery, the hormonal upheaval, the careless words of people who meant well and understood too little. On the other side of all of it, I am discovering, slowly, who I am when I am no longer defined by what I have lost but by everything I have chosen to become.
The writer is a seasoned professional and a columnist. She can be reached at syedasalmatahir1976@gmail.com