Including the operation, I was in hospital for three days and two nights. The first night was the hardest of them all, partly because of the pain in the wounds and partly because I couldn’t rest due to the constant visits from the nurse who came every hour, to take my blood pressure and monitor my pulse, oxygen levels and temperature; to look after me. After each of her visits, I pressed the morphine button three times.

Being under the effects of the morphine made me feel a sensation of pain yet being comfortable at the same time. And in a short space of time, it became clear why you can become addicted to the pleasant sensation of tiredness that opiates produce. It’s like being awake and asleep at the same time, at ease. I remember breathing and feeling the breath in my entire body. I liked staying still after exhaling, like when I do my breathing exercises at home. Staying for a few moments without breathing in, fuelled this time by the oxygen mask. Simply being and feeling. And again. Until the nurse came back and, awakening from my nap, the pain worsened once more.

After this experience I have thought a lot about anaesthesia and the overwhelming number of operations and medical procedures that can be carried out in a safe and controlled way thanks to its use. I have also thought a lot about pain. Physical pain. How unaware we are of the biological wonder that our bodies are when everything is going well, when it all ticks along like a clock, and the mechanisms are balanced. We take that balance for granted. It involves, without a doubt, a dynamic and perfect balance that, although fragile, is blessed with a huge healing ability. Our biology is resilient, and I feel it is more and more important that we are conscious of that, that we can listen to ourselves, help ourselves and take the time to love ourselves.

The pain the operation had left me in was new. And temporary. I knew that it was only a matter of time, that each day it would be a bit less, that millions of women around the world had recovered from this type of operation and others similar. And I would too. The operation made me feel like a part of that community, of women with scars on their bellies, who have been opened up and had part of our female selvessurgically removed. An oppressed and misunderstood female self Not listened to. Or listened to too late. In my case I like to think that the oppression and misunderstanding are leaving along with the fibroids, and I feel grateful for that. This whole process is awakening a deeper, clearer, more beautiful, and more healthy awareness of myself. Reflecting on this, it makes me think about those other women who, through having surgery, have had to be separated from valuable parts of their biology. From their uteruses, their fallopian tubes, their ovaries or parts of their vaginas. I also think about the women who have partially or fully lost their breasts. At the end of the day, I only got removed something that was once never there. I imagine that for lots of those women, the surgical pain also brings an emotional pain, of greater duration and impact.

Out of the three women who I shared a room with, one also had a gynaecological operation. The two others had urological procedures. The woman who had the gynaecological operation was in her mid-fifties and had a total hysterectomy. She had a vertical scar closed with staples. She told me that when she had a C-section, she got a uterus infection that lasted for too long without being diagnosed or treated. Now they had removed everything, and she told me with a sense of relief, of an enormous weight being lifted off her shoulders.

Of the other two women, one was a lady around 70 years old who had had a kidney removed, and every time she moved she said “Oh, dear me!”, and she said it in an endearing way, that showed kindness towards herself. The other, a woman a bit older than me, had had the bladder and part of her urinary system removed due to cancer. I felt really sorry for this woman. She was in lots of pain and the catheter they had inserted for her to urinate kept leaking so the nurses came to fix it frequently. On one occasion, I heard her showing her scar to the hysterectomy woman saying: “Look, look how I have ended up. The doctors have told me that I probably won’t be able to have sex anymore” and she sobbed while finishing her sentence. My stomach wrenched while listening to her and I thought about how important our sexuality and our relationship with it is. This woman was losing part of her sexuality and the pain of confronting this loss because of the operation was undeniable.

The surgeon came to see me the day after the operation . She explained to me how they had done it. They had made three incisions into the wall of my uterus. The first was to remove the largest fibroid, when it was removed it pulled the rest with it in a single mass. To ensure that this was effectively what it had done, they had to make two more cuts to check that there wasn’t anything left where they assumed the rest of the fibroids would be. In the interior part of the uterus wall there were lots more smaller ones, of which they could only remove most, not all. She told me that she had taken photos of them and asked if I wanted to see the big ones. -Yes, please- I said enthusiastically. She got her phone out of her bag and showed me a photo of the mass of tissue stuck together, that could well have been the size of a fist. It was a compact mass and looked like a chicken breast. Afterwards, I read that fibroids generate from smooth muscle cell tissue in the wall of the uterus, and this made think that it made sense that they look like a chicken breast. It seemed incredible that that mass had been inside me, growing, for so many years. But there it was now, outside of my body, giving me the opportunity to start again. Seeing the photo gave me a sense of clarity about what was happening.

I stopped the morphine and started to take oral painkillers the morning after the operation, following the orders of the gynaecologist on duty. I was determined to follow the doctors’ orders to be able to recover as best and as soon as possible. The painkillers didn’t help so much with the pain, but they allowed me to feel less lethargic and start having more energy to move. When I tried to get out of the bed after the catheter being removed and my wound being drained, my whole abdominal region really hurt. I realised that core muscles constantly help us to move our bodies. By then, my body had an unbearable smell of sweat. I can’t stand it when I smell myself and I smell bad. I have a very fine sense of smell and I decided that it would be worse to carrying on smelling myself than to go and take a shower. Arriving at the ward bathroom was a clumsy and painful process. Every step was a challenge, but every step was one closer to recovery. That first shower was one of the best feelings I remember from those three days.

I was discharged on the third day. My friend Sharon came to find me in the afternoon to take me home. I have had lots of conversations with her about the fibroids and the decision to operate. She has always been very supportive and offered me both understanding and a pragmatic approach. Seeing her at the hospital entrance made me really happy. During those three days I received lots of kind and encouraging messages from my family and friends. I was happy to have made the decision to share what was happening to me. And despite not having a single visit in hospital due to the pandemic safety measures, I felt very accompanied and fortunate. Leaving the hospital, a new stage of the journey was beginning, one for me, for looking after myself, understanding, reflecting, learning, and making new decisions.