Very Slowly, and Then All At Once

Reflections on life vis-a-vis my evicted uterus

When the sun rose over Dorchester on this day in November 2017, I was a different person. This is one of my favorite photos and a symbol of all that has changed for me since those days.

This time last year, I was bleeding to death.

The doctors don’t like it when I say it like that. They smile uncomfortably and air-quote me in their replies as if there was any possible outcome other than death for a body that was losing, at last count, 16 ounces of blood each day and rising.

It came out of nowhere. Outside of pregnancy, my period was like clockwork for years. Every 26 days, for four or five days, and done. Uncomfortable, sure, but also the most predictable thing about my life.

Then once in midsummer, it arrived late and never stopped.

If you saw me anytime between August of 2023 and February of 2024, chances are my eyes were flicking from one corner of the room to another, clocking the bathroom so I could go clean up after our conversation was over. It’s also possible I don’t remember our conversation at all.

I wouldn’t blame you for not knowing, for assuming life was proceeding as usual. I’m not one to take it easy on myself, even when I’m feeling subpar. (I type this sentence on my phone from a weightlifting class that’s about to start, as I battle a cold two days before a party we’re hosting and six days before a major holiday.) But maybe my general demeanor last year makes more sense to you now.

Throughout the bloodletting days, I was working as usual, both on my news business and at my consulting job, where I traveled to schools across my state and trained teachers on our education technology platform. There were some exceptionally bad days during that time. Days when I was timing my drives around bathroom trips and still leaking while driving in the car. Days when I surreptitiously measured the amount of blood that came out when I emptied my menstrual cup. Days when I texted my girlfriends on the way to the car before leaving one school for another with questions like, “How much blood leaves the body during an average period?” (The answer, by the way, is 2-3 tablespoons FOR THE WHOLE FIVEISH DAYS. On ONE DAY last September, I lost 10-15 times that much.) Days when I wondered if I should head to the closest urgent care rather than to the school that was expecting me.

Then there was that day I did end up in the emergency room, earning myself a D&E, an iron supplement, and some hormones—all of which helped for only a short time.

Hysterectomy wasn’t the first choice for this crunchy-granola, home-birthing, prefer-not-to-medicate mom, but things had suddenly become so intense that all other doors slammed shut. And once the decision had been made, the day couldn’t come soon enough. I canceled a much-awaited trip (losing thousands of dollars) and cleared my calendar, and for six weeks, all I could think of was the day I could collect the menstrual supplies I’d had to purchase to keep up with my revolting uterus and burn them in a pyre in the backyard.

Today, I am no longer bleeding to death. I’ll never have another period, or another pap test, though I do still have to contend with what my doctor refers to as middleshmirtz (the most apropos name I could imagine for that time around ovulation where I feel crampy in the front, achy in the back, and weepy all over).

Something I didn’t expect to be contending with, though, is the feeling that floods my body every time I walk into one of the places I visited at this time last year. I might not recall ever driving to a school, or entering the parking lot, but as soon as I walk in the front doors I know the closest bathroom to both the entrance and to the room where we meet for training. When I stand to speak to a group, I remember last year needing a chair in case I felt faint. The sinking in my gut comes out of nowhere, kind of like this illness—called adenomyosis, we confirmed after pathology came back—seemed to appear. And it gives me a near-irresistible urge to flee, though my logical brain knows there’s nothing to run from anymore.

Adenomyosis doesn’t come out of nowhere, though, as my bloodletting days would have me believe. It’s a slow process, which in my case was probably caused by all the placentas detaching from the wall of my uterus. It probably had something to do with the increase in cramps and flow I experienced after each pregnancy—changes that happened so slowly I barely noticed them. I don’t know what happened to tip the scales toward death, but the stage was set long before the bleeding started.

Knowing this doesn’t comfort me. Moreso, it makes me think that if this had happened 100 years ago, without the benefit of hormones and ultimately a partial hysterectomy, my husband would be raising our children on his own right now.

But also, it contextualizes so many things in the world. The political climate. The cancer which ultimately claimed the life of my dear friend, Leo at the tender age of 36. The way children grow to be the way they are, or how a relationship that once felt energizing and beautiful turns to a place of fear and bitterness. Millions of micro-events happen that inform the overall picture until one day something happens that is as shocking as it is inevitable. Looking back, there were signs. But none of them made sense until it was too late to change the course of things.

The coincidence doesn’t escape me that I wrote a book that was, in many ways, about this phenomenon. When We Were Mothers begins with someone bleeding to death in childbirth, in part because she and her caretakers don’t have access to the modern medical technology that can detect and prevent that kind of thing. And throughout the book, the reader is forced to reflect on the ultimate consequence of generations of decisions–different decisions, in many cases, that we think we would have made individually. But context and history have a part to play, as well.

Are we–we as individuals, we as a country, we as a people–already bleeding to death? Is this just one long march toward the inevitable? Or can some shocking yet inevitable event wake us up and compel us to change course for the better?