I’ve had this title sitting for a while now. At the time I thought it was catchy and a celebration of the fact my operation is done and dusted. I’m no longer celebrating, but feck it, I’ll use the title anyway because I’m too tired to think of a new one.

Yesterday was one of the bad days of post hysterectomy life, where I travelled to work, had 10, 000 hot flushes, raged and then ultimately broke down in tears due to frustration.

Let me make things simple for you, I know it’s early days, but THIS IS FUCKING SHITE!!

Oh at the start I thought I was so smart, people had told me that I’d have hot flushes and night sweats straight away, but nope nothing, for the first two weeks or so I was blissfully hobbling around as cool as a cucumber thinking how lucky I was that I was clearly going to miss all the bad stuff people were talking about. Even my anxiety was manageable, so I thought, hmmm, perhaps I had been right in thinking that Bert and Ernie the effing fibroids had in fact caused it to spike and become worse.

Well no, how wrong was I because on the third week it all happened, everything all at once and I wished I was a fecking cucumber just so I could jump into the fridge and cool off my body whose internal furnace was clearly malfunctioning. Never mind my face, which continually hit a shade of red you will never ever see on any self respecting colour chart. If I had been attached to a solar power grid I could have supplied the whole of the UK!

To be honest it’s a bit of a rude awakening when you don’t know what to expect. Waking in the middle of the night boiling, flinging off the covers, to only be freezing five minutes later and cocooning yourself into the quilt again. Rinse and repeat and there is not a lot of sleep to be had.

It’s like a domino effect, all of those things then kick off the anxiety, my broken body was clearly telling my equally broken brain that every ache and twinge was a symptom of the menopause. In moments of clarity, which are few and far between ffs, I imagine looking at myself saying, dude, chill the fuck out, it’s just a phase. But it wasn’t a phase, it went on and on until one Sunday I got in bed and I just didn’t want to wake up because I didn’t know how to deal with everything that was going on.

I slept, maybe for a solid eight hours or more, the first time in ages and I woke up the next morning and the sun was shining and I was still alive and things didn’t seem so bad. Then I had a hot flush and remembering something I had read I did this weird kinda breathing, I imagine it’s how a cow would sound when it’s trying to birth it’s first calf. It was ugly, but it was effective.

This is the new normal isn’t it, it’s not like I can go back to the hospital and say, hey guys, I think I made a mistake, can you put my bits back in.

In some ways I wish I’d had a little more information or asked more questions to see if there were alternatives to having the hysterectomy, but I’d been so sick I just wanted an end to it all and you put your faith in your medical team in the hope that they are offering the best advice.

There are good days though with only a few hot flushes or sweats and the anxiety remains at more of an acceptable level.

I guess like all new normals it’s just something I need to get used to. Head down, one day at a time!

Wish me and all those around me good luck, we will all need it :)*

*insert laughing emoji – oh wait, I can, doh! 😂