Five weeks out from surgery, I’m probably 80% healed up. I can walk with a normal gate, and I can get through a whole day without having to take a nap. I’m back at work full-time as well, though it’s another week still until I can lift anything heavier than 10lbs. And the glue fell off my incisions a couple weeks ago, and they’re healing up really well.

But I still definitely have a ways to go. I can’t bend down to pick things up off the floor yet without a struggle; it’s a good thing it’s warm enough for me to go barefoot at home, because picking up things with my toes has become my super power. And forget tying my own shoes; just reaching my feet long enough to put them on is a serious struggle. I still get tired pretty quickly, and as I tire the pain ratchets up. I have trouble getting up out of chairs without arms. And if you’re a cat who decides to walk across my stomach, prepare to be flung.

In the week after my surgery, I was surprised by how quickly I progressed. I had been imagining that I would be incapacitated for much longer, in intense pain for longer, stuck in bed for longer. In that way, recovery was much easier than I had anticipated. It seemed like only a few days before I was up and moving around quasi-normally.

But there’s a lot about the healing process that I wasn’t emotionally prepared for, and it’s that which has been much, much more difficult than I anticipated, both physically and emotionally.

For one, no one warned me about how much internal healing I was facing. See, being slightly smaller than a softball, my cyst took up quite a bit of real estate, more than was naturally available. It compressed some things and moved other to the side. And once the cyst was gone (and my body got over the initially shock of being invaded,) my organs started to…put themselves back. And otherwise rebuild themselves. And some other things that I don’t know exactly what was going on in there, but I know that it was pretty violent and caused a lot of intense cramping. And meant that for the first three weeks I was essentially on a perma-period. Which, let me tell you, is awesome  is not that bad  fucking sucks. Especially when for much of it–unlike a normal period, where my body releases blood and tissue at a slow, imperceptible rate–my body decided to wait until I stood up or shifted positions and suddenly let loose a good half-cup all at once. How’s that for terrifying? Both the spotting (splooshing?) and the cramping have pretty much disappeared (thank fucking god for that,) but while they were around, they were that perfect combination of incredibly painful, wildly frustrating, and fucking obnoxious. And definitely not something that I was emotionally prepared for.

I also wasn’t ready for how tired I would be, and for how long. I mean, I knew I had a lot of resting ahead of me, but once I started to feel better, I guess I figured that I would get stronger and require less rest. Not that five weeks out, an activity so simple as grocery shopping would require that I come home and take a nap. Or that I still wouldn’t be able to sit on a stool for more than about 15 minutes at a stretch before my core muscles start to shake. As I’ve returned to feeling more normal than not, I keep expecting my body to be able to do all the things that it used to, and being surprised (and frustrated) when it can’t. I look normal (minus the dotted line across my belly,) I feel (more or less) normal (as long as I don’t have to sneeze or cough,) so why can’t I do all the normal things I used to, like walk for more than 30 minutes at a time without needing a rest? Oh, right. The dissection.

Which leads me to the part of this whole enchilada that has been the hardest of all: the motherfucking frustration. That’s the only word that can possibly describe this whole experience. Frustration that I don’t feel like I know my body or its limits anymore. Frustrated that I don’t understand my relationship with pain anymore; before surgery, pain was a thing to be ignored and overcome in the name of getting stronger, but now, I have to decide if the pain means that I’m getting stronger or that I’m overdoing it. Frustrated that I don’t sleep well anymore, because when I toss and turn (as I always have,) the sharp pain in my side wakes me up and makes it nearly impossible for me to fall back asleep. Frustrated that my current version of exercise isn’t a 3-mile run or weight lifting at the gym, but a 30-minute walk that leaves me exhausted and sore. Frustrated that the healing process hasn’t been consistent or linear, so some days are better and some days are worse. And frustrated that even though the surgery is more than a month behind me, it still affects my life in very real ways every. single. day.

No one warned me about any of those challenges. The physical, the mental, the emotional. “Just don’t lift anything heavy for six weeks,” that was all they told me. But not how much it would take out of me. Not how much it would require of Kyle. And not for how long it would be the defining feature of my life. That’s probably the thing that’s been hardest of all.

But if the worst part has been the frustration, the best part has been the support of my friends and family. Especially Kyle. I know this is cliche and expected and bullshit, but seriously guys, he’s been amazing. I mean, for fuck’s sake, my first week at home he had to dress me. And even now that I’m mostly healed, he’s still had to take on all the (literal) heavy lifting around the house; taking out the garbage, doing all the laundry, carrying things around for me. But even more amazing to me is how supportive he’s been emotionally. No matter how much I complain about how uncomfortable I am, bitchy I get because I’m sleep deprived, or how many times I feel as if the physical and emotional load are too much to bear, he always listens without complaint and is ready to stroke my hair and tell me that the hard part is over and he’s proud of me for being strong. Especially while I was on my perma-period, there was many a rant about how much this sucked, how it was so hard having a woman’s reproductive system, how I was over it and just wanted this to be done; he never rolled his eyes or told me to suck it up or otherwise indicated that he was tired of listening to me pulverize that dead horse into dust. (Even though I’m certain he kinda was.) Kyle has always been my rock, my gravity, and my shelter when the world seems to swirl darkly around me, and my recovery from surgery has been no different.

And he wasn’t the only one. So many of my friends and family leaned in with support. Cards and hugs before surgery rained down on me from all kinds of loved ones. Karen, my mother-in-law, came out and stayed with us for almost a week to help take care of me when I first got home. All my friends who came to see me in the days after surgery, despite my pajama-ed state and the fact that I was a bit loopy from drugs. And my co-workers–who have been unflinchingly supportive– dutifully helping me move my special chair between rooms, picking things up off the floor for me, and running up to the catwalks to focus lights for me. I even had to ask our flyman to tie my shoe for me once, and he did so with only the mildest of ragging. Even something as simple as a kind word on Facebook from a high school friend, neither of us having spoken in years, sharing their own struggles with reproductive issues and offering words of support, went miles to brighten my sometimes dark mood.

Going through this experience has taught me a lot. How amazing my husband and friends are. How kind and willing to help strangers can be when you ask for assistance. How physically demanding my job really is. How many other women out there have had to go through an experience just as shitty–if not shittier–than mine. How flawed the human female reproductive system really is. Just how strong my body was before the surgery.

But I’m ready to move forward from all that. Instead of marveling at how strong my body was and how difficult recovery has been, I’m ready to direct my focus towards making my body strong again, and returning to all the things I love to do. Throw myself back into a job that I enjoy, and rejoining my co-workers in the trenches. (Or as we call it, the back of a truck.) And ensure through my actions that all of my friends and family realize that I am grateful everyday for their love and friendship.

The monster-grapefruit is gone. There’s no more grapefruit-and-me.

There’s just Monster. That’s me.

I have no memory of most of what was told to me after my surgery. Kyle says that someone (a nurse? my surgeon?) told me how it had gone and what they had done, but I don’t remember this. Apparently I smiled and said, “Good,” a lot until a nurse handed me a graham cracker, but I don’t remember that either. I do, however, vividly remember the nurse lifting up my gown to check on my incisions.

Yeah, you read that right. Incisions. As in, more than one. That was a surprise, which is probably why I remember it. I’d been under the impression that the only two options on the table were a single 6″ incision (meaning that they’d found cancer and given me a complete hysterectomy) or a single 1″ incision (meaning no cancer, and they’d removed the mass as planned by cutting a small hole in the back of my vagina and pulling it out through the vagina.) Not five 1″ incisions dotting across my belly.

As my friend Christine put it, “You look like you’ve been perforated for easy tearing.” So yeah, that was something I wasn’t exactly emotionally prepared for. I’d also guessed that my incision was going to be lower, more in the pelvic region; someplace less…obtrusive, if you will. To this day, I still haven’t emotionally dealt with the fact that I’ll forever have a line of scars across my stomach. I’m crossing my fingers that they as they heal—with the help of some scar diminishing balm—they’ll fade to the point where they more or less disappear. (And if not, I already have a story about fighting a shark ready to go.)

I also remember not fully understanding how much pain I was facing at first. Sure, lying in that bed, I felt like I’d been flattened, and I was fairly confident that my throat had previously been on fire. There was also some definite throbbing in my midsection, thanks to the aforementioned incisions; it felt like I had done the P90X Ab Ripper workout 500 times without stopping. But I didn’t feel sick, and I certainly didn’t feel the stabbing pain that I had imagined would accompany a person’s skin being sliced open. Lying in the hospital bed, I just felt…fuzzy.

All that changed when I tried to sit up to dress myself.

Maybe it was the drugs, maybe it was because I’ve never had surgery before. Either way, I legitimately thought I’d be able to hop up and put my clothes on like normal. The moment I tried to raise my shoulders away from the pillow, my stomach muscles tried to engage and I screamed. With Kyle’s help, I was able to slowly make my way up to a sitting position, and it was only then that I realized just how bad of shape I was in. It wasn’t just the cuts on my stomach. I could suddenly feel every single muscle in my abs, all the way into my pelvis, and they all felt like they’d been shredded into brisket. I couldn’t believe how weak I was. It was also about this time that the nausea set in.

I don’t remember much more from the rest of that day. I remember having to sit with the orderly while Kyle brought the car around, and her telling me that Kyle was a good husband so I should reward him by giving him five babies. (HA!) I remember getting home and being so happy that I wanted to cry because I was in my own pajamas in my own bed and not in the hospital. I remember telling Kyle that I didn’t want the crackers he tried to get me to eat because crackers are too messy to eat in bed and I wanted beef jerky instead. And I remember a mug of egg drop soup that was the most delicious motherfucking thing I’ve ever eaten.

Things were really rough at first. Even with a steady stream of oxycodone in my blood, I was in a lot of pain. I could barely walk to and from the bathroom, and even with the help that I required, getting in and out of bed usually caused me to cry out in pain. Every time I wanted to get up to pee, get something to eat, adjust my pillows, or even grab the remote if it was out of reach, I had to ask Kyle or Karen for help. And I was so, so tired. I slept a lot those first couple of days.

Despite my rough shape, progress came surprisingly quickly. Two days after surgery, I’d figure out how to get out of bed by myself; the secret was using the turtle strategy to rock myself onto my side and push up with my arms. A few days after that I managed to shower and dress myself without assistance. (Let me tell you, I didn’t know elation until the first time I was able to put on a pair of underpants by myself.) And a week after surgery, I was back at work. Granted, I spent most of the day pushing myself around in a rolly office chair, and definitely not doing anything that even resembled physical labor. But for a week out of surgery, it just felt good to see how far along I’d come.

My recovery was moving forward at full tilt, but the healing? Only just begun.

Hey, there. Me again.

Actual me this time, not Kyle. Though, can we take a quick aside and discuss how romantic that blog post Kyle wrote for me while I was in the recovery room was? Especially when I tell you that I didn’t ask him to do that for me, I just asked him to keep my family updated?

Seriously, swoon.

Anyhoo, Monster here. It’s been over three weeks since my surgery now. I know, I know, I should have given you guys an update sooner. But to be fair, for the first week I was home I was on some pretty heavy drugs that made it difficult to focus on anything much more complicated than Super Mario Bros. (Of which I played a lot.) And after I got off the meds, I’ve been…tired. No, more like exhausted. Physically to be sure, but also emotionally. This has been a lot to handle, and I won’t pretend I’ve done so flawlessly. So to rehash the whole thing, for a good while, just seemed like too much to deal with. A lot of things have felt like too much to deal with lately. But I’m here now. And more importantly, I’m alive, grapefruit-free, and on the mend. Which has been both a little easier and much, much harder than I anticipated.

The real fun started the night of May 3rd, with what I dubbed the kickoff of #MonsterTumorFest2017. What happened that night, you ask? I ate a whole goddamn pizza, that’s what. By myself.

And why would I do that? Because May 4th was the start of the actual actual beginning of my surgery pre-op procedure. Which began that morning with marching orders to consume nothing but liquids, and not even good liquids, like eggnog or gin. Boring liquids, like apple juice and Gatorade. The only solids I was allowed to eat were Jell-o and Italian ices, which I tried to tell myself were food on account of the fact that I ate them with a spoon, but are not actually food at all. I even ended up drinking mugs of beef and chicken stock–even though warm, they totally smell like cat food–because my body smelled them and went, “Holy shit, that smells like food! I remember food! Fuck, I’m starving, this is delicious! FOOD!”

And that wasn’t the only fun on that delightful day. I had a thing called a “bowel prep” in store for me. I won’t go into details (you’re welcome,) but let’s just say that it involved 119 grams of Miralax…

…and I was busy for the better half of the afternoon.

So yeah, in addition to all the…fun…involved in that, ridding my body of all matter made me sick. And on top of that, I was fucking. starving. Seriously, it’s only with mild hyperbole that I say that I would have gutted both my cats for a fucking Taco Bell Crunchwrap. But honestly, all the discomfort I was feeling that night turned out to be a blessing in disguise, because it worked beautifully to distract me from any nervousness I might have otherwise been feeling.

And then it was the big day.

I was definitely nervous that morning. Not by anything rational, like that I might not wake up from the anesthesia or that I might have cancer, but by irrational things, like that I would accidentally forget and put on deodorant and then they would refuse to do surgery on me and I would have starved myself for nothing. Yeah, fear is a weird thing.

My surgery was scheduled for 10am, and I had to be at the hospital at 8am. It felt beyond surreal to walk into the hospital, strong and healthy, knowing that I would come out weak and broken. Things moved fairly quickly once inside, and before I knew it, I was peeing in a cup and changing into a hospital gown.

And yet, it was also about that time that the fear and anxiety began to take hold with both hands, and every moment that I wasn’t occupied with nurses and doctors (which was a fair amount of my time…I swear to god, I said, “Stephanie Van Sandt, March 4th, 1986” seven bazillion times,) crept by achingly slow. Eventually, Kyle and his mother (who stayed with us for a while to help take care of me, and to whom we are both eternally grateful,) were allowed to come see me, but only after getting the world’s two largest IVs with the world’s two biggest needles put in my arms and a shot in the stomach. So needless to say, Kyle pushed aside the curtain to find a very anxious, very afraid monster.

Moments later, I was being wheeled down the hall and into the OR. It wasn’t until they rolled me into the OR and I saw all the staff in scrubs that my nervousness became outright terror; it was all I could do to keep from bursting into tears. But luckily for me, I was only in there for a few minutes before…

…waking up in recovery and hearing someone say that I’d be able to go home today. I think. The rest of the day was pretty fuzzy.

I found out later that my “grapefruit” turned out to be a gigantic benign dermoid cyst, which is a blob of tissue that can be made of hair, skin, teeth, and sometimes even eyeballs. (If you have a strong stomach, google that shit. It’s like something out of a goddamn sci-fi movie.) Mine enveloped my right ovary, which was also removed. This wasn’t exactly something we’d seen coming (we’d actually specifically been told that it most definitely wasn’t that,) but it turned out to be the best possible diagnosis. No cancer, no chance of cancer forming, no chance it will grow back. It was a freak mutation that laid dormant from the time I was born until a few months ago, and as soon as I heal from surgery, I’ll be right back to normal. Just, you know, minus an ovary.

Author’s note: This is part one of what I’m thinking is going to end up being a three-part saga all about how I got cut up. I know, that’s a lot, but bear with me through these last few posts and then I swear, you’ll never have to hear about any of my internal organs again. (Probably.) Part two in a few days, kisses until then!