Need prayers and support for a health concern

I'm not linking this to my prior thread because this is a new topic. I have wondered about posting here because technically this is not a MLC issue involving my marriage and XH--but this is the board where I know the most people and I guess in a way it relates because I'm going through a lot of the emotional upset I went through back when XH dropped the bomb and everything went south so fast like it does for all of us.

Basically I can't put off a hysterectomy anymore and I have surgery on April 11th. I've been symptomatic since last summer and my quality of life physically has really gone down considerably. I attributed a lot of the physical pain to what I thought were continued emotional anxieties tied to my divorce and loss of my mate. But the reality is that the physical pain is very real. In a way, I knew this day was coming--I have had problems with my "girly parts" for about 10 years--and I was trying to wait it out till menopause in hopes the problems would go away, or, better yet, wait till I had a significant other again who could help me when I needed to deal with the pre-surgery anxiety and the post-surgery pain and getting back on my feet.

Well I made the decision the other day that I have to face this without a partner. There's no one on the horizon and waiting any longer is only going to further jeopardize my health. I mean I know I'm not "alone"--I have family and friends who will help. But I do FEEL alone emotionally, much like I did back when XH dropped the bomb and I couldn't find another human being in the immediate vicinity who had any understanding of what I was going through, which is why I came here.

I joined an online group for people going through hysterectomy and it has helped to see that many have it worse than me--I'm astounded that there are women who have no one to help at all, and I know I am lucky to have my family and my coworkers are being great about taking my classes so I can miss the last month of the semester, and I'll have no loss of income. So again I know I am lucky.

But that doesnt' change my anxiety level now, and what I'd like to ask is if you guys could send me some prayers and support to help me calm myself down in the next two weeks. I think once I'm knocked out on the table I'll be fine :-) It's just the time right now feels way too much like those first couple of weeks when BD happened and it's more than a bit unsettling to relive those feelings of despair and anxiety. I think the other online group will help, but I have no shared history with the posters there.

I'm bothered that I feel so wrapped up in the "not having a mate" to go through with this. I don't know why I feel like that puts me at a disadvantage--I think that even though I'm a pretty hardcore feminist that I do desire to have a man "take care" of me in bad times. And so maybe what I'm really feeling here is some sense of sadness that the XH isn't here to help.

There is a part of me that thinks I am being forced to face this without a partner because it's a life lesson for me personally. There is no reason I can't do it--but I have to go through it to prove it to myself.

However like I said I am worried about my mental state leading up to it, and I think prayers of support would make me feel less anxious, so I thank you in advance for any you can send.

Are you having a FULL or partial?

Funny you think you need a mate and those with mates want to get rid of them after this surgery.

I have no real advice but have lived through this with my ex mate.

Sending (((((HUGS)))))

You can do this!

Antonia,
Sending you hugs today. Right now you have a lot of things going through your mind, but in a month or so, you'll be glad you made the decision to have the surgery. You'll be amazed at how much you will feel and not have that pain reminding you each and every time it crops up that something has to be done.

I'm keeping you in my thoughts and prayers.

Antonia, I hear ya it is so hard going through these big life moments without a partner. I think job is totally right in a month you will feel so proud of yourself for taking the next steps forward and taking care of yourself.

Dont forget to treat yourself the next few weeks before the surgery. Take it easy, Get a manicure or massage. Keep posting on these boards. Reach out to the support system you have. Dont try to do it alone.

Big hugs and love

It's a full, open surgery, too much going on to have a choice otherwise. It's the longest recovery obviously but safest for my health.

Thanks for the support :-) I'm sure in the end I'll be happy I did it; it's just that now I'm a wreck. My family is helping but being almost too smothering and it's making me have all these flashbacks to when XH left.

Antonia,
You've made a big decision and it's for a good reason. You need to be healthy and live life without pain. You have all of your feline girls depending on you too! And they will be your constant support afterwards, as well.

Please remember that it's normal to feel anxiety around surgery. And it's also understandable that you feel extra sad about losing your partner at times like these.
But like so many other women - many of whom still have a 'partner', but get little in the way of emotional support from them - ultimately, we have to get through these things on our own terms.

I know you realise all this - but just wanted to let you know that i understand how you must be feeling.

I am thinking of you, and sending huge waves of support and strength to you.

I know how much love and motivation to keep going that I get from my beautiful dogs, so I'm hoping that you can get just as much from your lovely girls.
Pet them and feel their warmth and love for you... they will always calm you down.

Thanks so much for the support and kindness NLW! Ha I'm a little scared one of them is going to jump on me! But I already figured I need a pillow in front of me for awhile so I can be with them. I need to update my signature--I now have 7 feline girls and 1 feline boy. My boy is the littlest of them all and he is just such a joy. He's a bit of a momma's boy, and I have a feeling he'll be a big part of my recovery.

Thanks again NLW!

Antonia

Sending mucho hugs your way and a ton of prayers.

You are one of the strongest women I know. Self sufficient, honest, loving, smart....chit...I remember when you were re-doing the yard and you were out cutting down trees. You are an amazing author and person.

I cannot imagine how scary this must be.

So....I have two pieces of advice...

1) Close your eyes and keep remembering JUST HOW STRONG and AMAZING YOU ARE.

2) Let me know how else I can help. I am up for a road trip...just sayin...

You know how to reach me.

((((hugs))))

Oh...btw, love the new hair color!

Thanks so much Eric! I really appreciate your support! I'm a bit nervous but after the past 2 days when I got hit hard with pain I am 100% sure I'm doing the right thing and I just want this over with so I can get to recovering!

Hugs

Prayers with you

Peace

May God bless you and keep you. . . . and bring you peace.

Hey Antonia,
Just wanted to say I'm thinking of you.
Hope everything is going OK.
Keep us updated when you can.
Best, NLW

AnotniaB, I may be new here but I've had several family members go through this. I will keep you in my thoughts and prayers and know that this forum is full of love and caring and as far as I can say the support here is amazing. Take care of yourself above all.

Wishing you a speedy recovery and on to a fuller and happier life w/o pain.

Please take care of yourself.

Antonia - was thinking of all the wonderful people I've met on this board and of course I thought of you.

I'm just wondering how you've been and how you're doing.

Hope you are well.

Tad

Hi everyone--I stopped in and read about Tad's new job (yeah!!!) and then saw my old thread and the notes above so I thought I'd post. I got through my surgery fine and was home on the 3rd day. I was cleared for normal activity at 6 weeks though it took longer to be able to lift heavy things. I still have weird twinges sometimes and my incision is numb but that's normal, and I am not having any kind of side effects from the surgery. It ended being supracervical and I don't need hormone supplements so that worked out great for me. I'm of course immensely glad I had it done.

It was nice to have my family help out so much and other than that I paid for things I needed done and one of my friends did a shopping trip before she went to England for the summer and she helped out a lot. I am back to all normal things now.

One of the problems that cropped up is that when I was laid up a long time/inactive, my back and knee started to be very problematic, so I had to get xrays for my back (knee is Monday) and I'm in PT for that. It explains a lot. I have had slippage of my bottom vertebrae and it's been that way for years. So my back pain now all makes sense, and the PT is great. I joked with my therapist thank God for it because it's my only social life.

What the truth is is that it is the only thing keeping me from delving into depression badly as I seem to every summer. It's just that the summer holds most of my good memories of me and XH which are so far back I can hardly "feel" them anymore, and it also holds all the bad memories as all our problems occurred in summer months and all the anniversaries of ILYBINILWU and "I'm leaving you for OW" occurred in summer.

I think that with working on my physical health I'm not going to get sidetracked as badly as the past few summers where I had weeks at a time in depression-land, but I am having smaller segments of it and I'm not happy about it.

Of course I have a lot of work to do in summer as far as writing and so I can't be too big a slacker about that, and I "NEED" this time off from classes (I still teach one online class) to prep for fall as I have 2 new classes then. But when I'm depressed I can't do anything it seems.

I felt kind of bummed yesterday and so I went out and ended up meeting by chance a lot of acquaintances in the area for drinks, but when I came home I just got really bummed and probably had one drink too many and got a hangover today, so today is quite bad. I noticed that when it's summer I think I just can't have much alcohol. It tends to make me very sad and dwell.

Sometimes I think that I really fill my life with tons of stuff and don't continue to grieve and then when there is time I grieve HARD. I think it's just that it's now 4 years after everything and I want the pain of it all to be over and I'm afraid that it never really will be over.

XH is so in my head right now that it's driving me nuts. It's exhausting.

Back in November I did National Novel Writing Month to challenge myself, and I wrote an entire novel. The novel is entirely inspired by my story with XH. I took a myth that seemed to resonate with my story and I rewrote the myth and there is so much that is "real" behind the "fictional story". It was so easy to write some days I couldn't believe it. It just flowed. I have plans to write more for the character I based on me. I can see at least another novel if not a trilogy. It haunts me, this story. Some days it helps me and I feel very empowered when I think of new things to add. But other days it eats at me because I feel conflicted about whether I should be sinking energy into it or not. Right now it needs a very heavy revision/edit, and I know the work involved with something like that, and I don't "want" to do it. And yet I also feel like if I don't make myself do it, I'll never get out of the past in my own head. Another part of me worries that I'll put forth the effort and it won't help me at all.

Anyway that's where I'm at right now...having a bad day and feeling like I will never stop feeling guilty for not being in a better place "by now". I told my psychiatrist that I really thought that getting that surgery and goiing through it alone would "fix" me and it just hasn't. I think so many times I motivate myself to do things by saying "you will be so much stronger for this later" and yet so many issues still remain.

XH is still with OW and they bought a very nice house a few months back, the kind of house we always wanted, in a wonderful town by the beach. They are still not engaged. I find that very odd as they are now together longer than he and I were before we got married. I haven't spoken to him since over a year ago on an email. The desire to contact him is so terrible right now but it is pointless.

Anyway I think that brings things up to speed. Thanks agaiin everyone for the support during surgery. It made a difference.

Hi Antonia!!!

Thank you for the update!

This is going to sound silly, but you've been on my mind a lot the past 2-3 weeks. Can't explain why. I even tried looking you up on FB to send a message to see how you were doing, but no luck. I'm glad you stopped by and posted.

I'm glad that your surgery went well.

Wow, I can't tell you how much I can relate to just about everything you posted.....even down to the writing. I've actually been thinking about rewriting the book that I wrote just because I wasn't really happy with it and there were so many grammatical/punctuation errors in it. Maybe I will someday. I have started a sequel to it, but have kind of hit a road block.

I also know what you are saying about the summer months. I'm the same way except for me, it is fall. That's when we met, fell in love, all the good memories but.....it is also the time of year that I got the bomb. (October.)

I'm also coming up on 4 years and thought that I would be "better" or "over it" by now. Yes, like you, I am better, but not where I want to be or think I should be. Some days are better than others, but of course, you know that too.

I too sometimes (not sure why) have a desire to contact XW, but like you said, what's the point? It makes me angry at myself sometimes for even wanting to contact her. Hell, she is married. I think it is the fact that he/she was such a big part of our lives. Even though they dropped us like hot potatoes and were so darn mean, they were still a big part of life.

Don't feel "guilty" about not being better by now. You're not the only one.

Atleast you have your writing to keep you busy and to keep your mind of off things. I'd like to read some of your writing sometime. I'm a big-time reader. I haven't read too horribly much since this all started (except for these boards) but need to pick it up again. I've read just about everything by Stephen King.

Anyways, thanks for the update. Take care and don't be a stranger.

Tad

I'm glad you returned to post an update and that your surgery went well. It's going to take some time before you are up and about 100%, so try not to push too hard to do the things that you were doing pre-surgery. Your body is still healing from within.

Take care of yourself.

Thanks job and Tad! It is a comfort to know that other people feel like I do about the ex and MLC and everything. It's 4 years and I guess I get disappointed in myself that I'm not some sort of pre-determined level of 'over it'...but frankly I'm the type of person who sets up goals for herself and beats herself up when she doesn't attain them. The other day in PT I was trying to do this transverse abdominus exercise and I just could not get it right with the breathing and I kept saying to the therapist "I know I'm doing it wrong and it's driving me nuts because I can't do it right no matter what you say" and she said "you are so hard on yourself, let's just try something else. It's no big deal." Eventually I got it and she said my form was better than just about anything she'd seen. Well that's kind of me in a nutshell. If something is important to me I want to be better than good at it. I want perfection. It's not possible, but I still strive. (this doesn't count for things I don't care about which I am the biggest slacker in the world about ;-) But getting past what happened has always been this goal I've had and most of the time I feel really great--those are typically the times I'm not on the boards! And then other times I feel like I'm yanked back in time to that first year--temporarily.

I guess that I need to learn to live with this. I was talking to a board member on email and she said that we needed to live with the idea that we will always be people who feel some bit of sorrow for what has happened, not that it will stop us from living our lives and not that we can't have moments of real joy and happiness, but that we just have to accept that things are changed and sometimes we are saddened by that.

I told my mom that last night because even though I'm 45 my mom still has a big effect on me and I still feel occasionally like I need to defend myself to her if I'm not where she thinks I should be. She makes pointed comments at times like "Well for months you never even mentioned XH but rarely and you seemed really past him and everything and now, well, now you're mentioning him all the time, and you're having this depression..." and it's like she's saying there is something wrong with me, or that I've somehow failed at "getting over it". So I told her what the board member said and just sort of indicated look, we are all people who went through something that you do not understand and you never truly will. We can't get over this kind of a loss and have it never bubble up again.

I love my mother and she means well. She's been a real help to me since BD. But in so many ways she doesn't get it. She seems concerned that writing my novel is hurting me. She said "maybe it's drawing you back into the past." I feel on some level like my book is my way of trying to explain to others what it is like to be one of us. Our story is not one many people relate to...the loss of someone who not only leaves your life but does a 180 on you in terms of the way he/she treats you. I think that's part of the reason I have felt compelled to tell it. Most of my book actually deals with the LBS as she struggles to gain her ground and take care of herself when she is at the end of her rope. Again--not the usual plot.

It's funny in coming back here in reading posts and such I feel a bit stronger about this novel. I am so grateful that there are people here. I don't know what I'd have done if this forum hadn't existed and it's still the place I go to when things are at the worst, so thank you everyone. I don't recognize a lot of the names/stories on here now but if anyone needs anything from me, let me know :-)

Quote:

we are all people who went through something that you do not understand and you never truly will. We can't get over this kind of a loss and have it never bubble up again.

Wow Antonia. I think you hit what I've been feeling.

I think there will always be just a pinch of sorrow there. Sometimes it will pop it's head out and other times it lays silent but....it is always there.

And you're right. Only people that have been through this would understand.

Quote:

Our story is not one many people relate to...the loss of someone who not only leaves your life but does a 180 on you in terms of the way he/she treats you.

Yep. There's a big difference between being one of "us" and being someone who ammicably (sp?) divorced or someone that left a marriage because the spouse was always abusive. I think the 180 that the MLCer does is the kicker. You not only have to deal with the end of your marriage but also the lies, name calling, accussations, the affair, rewriting of history, the hateful spew...

We are in a club that nobody else can truly understand.

Tad

Antonia! Very nice to hear from you!!!

Looking forward to the book, too

Know something? It seems that we all go through longer and longer periods of not mentioning the ex and the events, both past and present. But it seems we later open that old dusty set of memories and revisit them. Kind of like a MLCr does, no?

AJ