Why I’ve Been Quiet (Do not read if squeamish!)

Sometimes life throws you challenges and sometimes it’s not easy coping when they come. As many of you know from reading my book and my blog, my life has not been a smooth running life, like many reading this I imagine. Life has given me many opportunities to accept what is, to embrace my reality and to find a tenderness in what takes place.

Earlier this year I had my first experience of love. Lover love, not just family or friendship love, but the romantic love that bursts through the heart. I could look back on it and say it wasn’t love because it passed on through me, real love never vanishes or goes away, it is deep within us all and in everything around us, in a sense God/Life/The Universe is that deep all pervading love. My love was probably more personality love, but also had a deep depth of universal love thrown in because my heart simply flowered and opened.

What opening my heart did for me was it allowed joy to overflow inside me, I have not had a lot of joy in my life, not a lot of ‘happy’ in the inner sense, but this was joy. My inner child had been hidden for pretty much my whole life and so meeting the man I fell for allowed that inner child out. But there were downsides to love, in that I wanted to feel that feeling so much that I kept overlooking relationship issues that were not going away, and overlooked my partners criticisms of me, not realising it was more criticism than appreciation of who I was.

I still love him, in fact I miss him greatly. I know it probably would not work because if I’m honest, I feel possibly my feelings were always stronger than his were for me. Yes I added to his life, but I never felt that he longed for me in the way I longed for him. I could be wrong, but this was just the impression I got in the final days of our relationship. I keep asking myself what do I miss? Is it him that I miss or what we did together, but for me, I honestly can say that I miss him. I don’t miss the criticism or the stuff that felt dismissive of me, but I do miss the strong arms he had, the hugs, the kisses, the love making and the way he made me laugh and smile. I miss his way of looking at the world, but I had to look at the benefits and the negatives and it was the hardest decision ever, letting him go. And moreso, I secretly hoped, in my human wishful way, that he would fight for us, fight for me, that I was important enough in his world he actually would work on loving me for who I am, not who he wanted me to be, but it never happened and that made me very sad.

We were only together 3 months and at a personality level I feel robbed! I know spiritually and emotionally that there were immense gifts in the relationship, but yes, I feel robbed. I am sure when I realise why this happened and what was important for this to take place the way it did, I won’t feel so robbed. I feel that I was gifted a small amount of joy and POOF! It was all gone and that pisses me off.

I am grieving still, grieving probably for what could have been and probably what could not have been, but wishful thinking had me believe it was possible.

The week we had our break-up experience, I cried for 7 days non-stop. I do not remember ever crying so much over a lover. I had a boyfriend for 2 years in my younger years and yes I was in heartbreak, but back then I was not open hearted. I did not risk loving or embracing my experience, I was very young and in love with the idea of love – I was not in love.  So I was surprised at how much I cried. I could not stop crying and I wonder today if I was crying for far more than this one loss. I am sure all will become clear over time.

Operation Trauma

A few days after my break-up I had to go through a very challenging experience, and it is one thing I am grateful for related to my relationship. During the early days of our relationship I had to go to the sexual health clinic in my area and get emergency contraception. I chose the copper coil. At the time they also did a lot of tests on me. I was tested for every sexual disease you can think of and also had a pregnancy test and a smear test. I thought nothing of any of them. My std (sexually transmitted disease) results came back clear. I wasn’t pregnant but I received a letter which stated that I had abnormal cells on my cervix. It wasn’t clear at the time how abnormal they were, so I was booked in for something called a COLPOSCOPY.

Colposcopy

A colposcopy is where you go into the gynaecology room and you lay back on this chair where your legs are put into leg rests so that you can part them and the gynaecologist can see into the vagina and take a good look at your cervix. My first experience of this was scary. It was not particularly painful but just overwhelming. I would have taken a friend with me if had known. On the first experience they take a magnifying glass/camera and look into the cervix for the abnormal cells and they take a biopsy of the cells so they can be sent off to the lab to see what is going on there. This was all carried out quickly.

This took part during my relationship and the results came back around 5 weeks later.

Unfortunately I opened the dreaded letter no woman wants to see and my letter told me I had abnormal cells of CIN3 which is otherwise known as severe dysplasia and pre-cancer. It is not certain they would turn into cancer, but as a precaution they booked me in for a removal of the cells which were across the outside of my cervix.

I read the info and discovered I would be having my coil removed, the first time a contraception has been okay for me, well I think okay.

The Operation

I split with my partner properly a couple of days before the operation, finalising it on the evening before. It was all very stressful to have it all happening at the same time, heartbreak and massive anxiety about the operation. Fortunately I have a very good friend called Michael who was an absolutely Godsend through the whole experience.

On Wednesday the 13th of May I went to the hospital for the operation. I was very scared, I had never ever had an operation before and rarely spent time in a hospital. Mike came in with me and listened to the Doctor who was very lovely, kind, compassionate and just what I needed. I cried before going in and told Mike to stay in the waiting area. I lay on the same bed as above and a lovely nurse, very grandmotherly held my hand. The procedure itself wasn’t as bad as expected but it was uncomfortable for me. I had some cramping as my cervix is quite high so he had to pull it down to remove the cells. He removed the cells using a loop diathermy. A loop diathermy is a loop of electrical wire through which a current is passed so that it glows hot and is used to burn off the abnormal cells and to seal the wound as it goes. I was given an injection to numb the cervix which apparently had adrenalin in which explains why I was feeling quite overwhelmed when it was over. I was quite anxious as it is. I understand some people can be given a mild sedative if over anxious, best to ask your gyno.

Afterwards I was a little dizzy from the adrenalin so had to sit in the recovery room for a bit with Mike and we got a lift from my landlord as I was fairly wobbly on my legs from the injection. I rested for a short while and thought I would be okay having a gentle walk into town, but on that day I started bleeding and from 6pm Friday the 15th until the early hours of Saturday morning I didn’t stop bleeding.

Bloody Hell!

There is something eerily surreal about being pushed down hospital corridors on a trolley bed at night, feels very haunting.

After attending a healing circle I realised there was something wrong, the bleeding was not normal, not like it said in the information pamphlets. It was not light bleeding or a light period; it was excessively heavy and I had large blood clots were coming out of me and it was very frightening to me. A friend recommended I called 111 and I did and they had an ambulance out to me in 10 minutes. This was amazing considering it was a Friday night, a busy time for A&E.

The gyno doctor tried for 4 hours to stop the bleeding, in the meantime I had a lot of anxiety and pain as she was in and out of my vagina regularly. I was taken to a room in the ‘Women’s Centre’ where there was better equipment than in A&E, as she needed to see better into my cervix. I was there for some time and eventually my blood pressure dropped to 50/30 and my pulse rate hit 30 and I nearly passed out and did vomit. This is when she got the consultant involved who decided it was best that I had surgery as nothing was stopping the bleeding.  As I am allergic to the drug Suxamethonium, the anaesthetist had an extensive conversation with me about alternatives. The drug I am allergic to is what they use to relax the muscles before they intubate (put a tube down your throat) to give the gas that puts people to sleep, but as I couldn’t have that, I had an injection into my spine to numb my body from the waist down.

I was frightened – very frightened.  I have never been in hospital really, never mind had an emergency operation and been awake during it, but the staff were brilliant. I was taken into the theatre where they prepared me and the injection was put into my spine and I was moved into position. They put a curtain across my legs of sorts so I could not see what was going on. My lower body was numb and they played some music to relax me.

After around an hour it was finished. They had burned away some of the excess blood vessels (sounds worse than it felt), given me stitches where the blood vessels had burst due to infection and placed something called a pack inside me, a bit like a large tampon to quell the bleeding and put pressure on the wounds.

Once it was finished I was given a pain killer, not sure what it was, but whatever it was caused a reaction or I had a reaction to the end of the operation. My body was shaking like crazy and my teeth were chattering. My blood pressure dropped again and I vomitted again. I am a squeamish woman at the best of times so I was amazed I managed to go through all this, go me! I am obviously stronger than I think.

I was then taken into the recovery centre from around 4.30am until 7.30 am while the numbness wore off and had a blood pressure monitoring me every few minutes and had a saline drip and some antibiotics being given intravenously. As the numbness wore off pain began, not really intense but enough to not allow me any rest at all, so a nurse started to give me some morphine. However, my body seems to not like anything like this and my blood pressure dropped again, I went dizzy and vomited again. OH WHAT FUN! LOL not.

I was given oxygen to calm me down which did help and eventually I was taken to a ward. I spent a full day in the ward, mostly in extreme discomfort as the pack they had inside me put major pressure on my womb. And also having a cathatar fitted because they did not want me to have to go to the toilet on my own yet was not comfortable at all.

So with the best will in the world I can honestly say that it all sucked big time! BUT I am proud of myself for going through it all and not taking many pain killers and being awake the whole time. It made me realise even more what an amazing man my best friend Mike is. He held my hand the entire time and he let me squeeze it hard as I was in pain when they kept going in and out of my vagina with foreign objects. And actually he was the one who noticed my blood pressure drop the first time as the nurse had left the room and I screamed for help and he got the nurse and other doctors in.

While it was not life or death, it felt life or death to me. Sitting in a pool of my own blood was scary business.

So What Now?

Well, I have to recover as I have bout of painful thrush right now, hopefully it will clear up very soon as unable to sit down. I also have some major healing all over to experience and receive. I am a strong woman, but this tested my emotional resolve big time.

I experienced a broken heart and an extreme loss of blood. So releasing on a major level here. I am sure the spiritual awareness of it all will come about soon.

But for now, I will allow myself sadness, self-reflection and absorb the trauma I have gone through and know I will be okay.

 

Latest Posts

• The Shock Of The New
• Memorial Jewellery: Finding Comfort in Grief After Losing a Loved One
• How To Embrace Uncertainty
• Are You Lying To Yourself About Your Desires?
• Hate Anxiety? Love It Instead