The Ultimate Upgrade: From Living Child-free to Living Uterus-free

Life Changes I experience through My Hysterectomy

May 19, 2024

Time for a Decision: Hysterectomy

I am uterus-free! My body no longer has a uterus, which I have been carrying around quite inconveniently for 42 years of my life. It doesn’t bleed every few weeks because it doesn’t exist anymore.

Before my surgery, my partner Chris questioned, “What would they do with it?” I assumed that it would get dumped in a bio-waste bin along with any other liquid and solids from patients’ bodies. But Chris was not convinced. “That simple? It’s your uterus!” So what? Should I keep it? How? In the freezer? For what? My uterus has done its job. Well, technically it has not. It tried very hard though, diligently prepping itself for conception, over and over, month after month. I have talked to it multiple times, “You don’t need to do that. I won’t get you pregnant. Stop torturing yourself FFS! Arrrrgh!” It didn’t listen, and now it’s gone.

I did not sneak up on it and vacuumed it out of my vagina. As a victim of childhood physical punishment, I don’t believe there are any positive effects from punishment. I just did what I was supposed to do: examination by a gynecologist. I have been struggling with severe menstrual symptoms for years, but after my last move across the country, it got even worse. I was bleeding heavily for days, and my menstrual frequency (already short compared to those of many other people at 24 days) shortened to 16 days in some months. That is pretty much bleeding for one week and breaking for another.

A vaginal ultrasound found two small fibroids in my uterus, and I chose to try tranexamic acid instead of hormonal pills because of my bad experience with them before. Tranexamic acid did wonders for me. I took it during my menstruation, and it reduced blood flow in the uterus. I still had symptoms but to a much lesser degree, so my periods became more manageable. That lasted two years.

At my last gyno visit, the ultrasound revealed that my uterine fibroids had grown in size and multiplied. Wow! How my body creates things that I don’t need! They necessitated a new kind of intervention, and I needed to make a choice. After some consideration, I decided on a hysterectomy. It was the only definitive treatment since new fibroids are likely to grow if I only remove ones that are presently big enough to discern. That would mean another surgery down the road, and I said no thanks to that scenario.

After all, why not remove my uterus? The only reason not to get a hysterectomy would have been to preserve the uterus. Again, I did not need it. At least, I didn’t need a working uterus. My partner and I had settled on living without children and have been enjoying it day in and day out. If I had known living without a uterus was an option, I would have opted for it a long time ago. Why didn’t anyone tell me this?

Well, if you try to get a hysterectomy without any medical condition requiring it, your insurance might not cover it. You might also have a hard time finding a doctor to operate on you. But I think it could become a feasible option in the future, if medical care is more universally available, and people are not condemned for choosing not to bear babies. Some people get mastectomies to avoid potential breast cancers based on genetic tests. Many people suction fat out of their tummies or shave their jawbones for smoother face lines. Why not a hysterectomy then? If you have experienced severe menstrual symptoms, you will understand how taxing it is in your daily life. And it continues until menopause.

Oh, talking about menopause, that was one of my concerns. My mother got a hysterectomy due to uterine cancer and experienced the side effects of surgical menopause. In my case, I was able to keep my ovaries and continue my ovulation. I asked my doctor, “What will happen to my eggs then? Don’t they need a way out?” She said, “No, they don’t. They will get absorbed back into your body. They are not bodily waste that needs to get out of the system.” Whaaaat???!! I learned that menstruation, all the repeated revamping of my uterus was not necessary for my body. My ovaries will keep making eggs periodically, but they will just sit there, dawdle a little, and return to “the ground.” What a peaceful cycle of life!

Reflecting on Loss and Embracing Changes

My uterus is gone. All of a sudden, I feel sad. I thought I wouldn’t miss it at all. Perhaps I miss our time together? That’s not it, either. Maybe it’s just the fact that I will never see it again. That must be it. It’s like your ex-partner. You know that you should not go back to them, and you won’t, but at the same time, you feel nostalgic about the person. It’s the feeling that your paths will never cross again. It’s that feeling. Something beyond your reach.

Before my surgery, at one of my grief workshops, I ended up making a zine about my uterus. That was quite unexpected. I thought I hated my uterus. I deemed it useless, even detrimental to the quality of my life. But it turns out that I had a love-and-hate relationship with it. I hated it for menstruating unnecessarily, causing me so much pain, and wasting my time and energy. However, I also loved it for being part of me.

Ever since my first period in 4th grade, it has reminded me of my hormonal cycle. Thanks to it, I got to read on and learn a lot about the complexity of my body. It also allowed me to have an instant connection with all the others who experience menstruation, wearing pads, all the leaking incidents, etc. Although having a uterus does not determine my gender, it still made up a big part of shared experiences with other female bodies.

I was not all that excited about having a hysterectomy when I first heard the news. I got quite shaken up by it. I never had a major surgery in my life, and the biggest operation I experienced was removing a couple of wisdom teeth. Even though I had been wishing for my uterus’s disappearance, the deeply internalized ideas of women’s worth being connected to their fertility made me question my body’s worth without a uterus. If the uterus is a determinant part of defining a woman’s body, what is my body then without it?

Well, I’m not attached to my gender being a woman anyway. I have been using the pronouns she and they, and I am keeping “she” for our old time’s sake. It is one I have used since 1998 when I immigrated to the US. So sure! I will let you tag along a little more. But I lived the first 16 years of my life without the pronoun “she.” Koreans in general use genderless pronouns geu for people, and that worked fine for me. I don’t need people to call me “she” to affirm my femininity. Nowadays you can call me with any pronouns if done respectfully. she/they/it/ze/Judy (Taylor Mac’s pronoun), I don’t fit in any of these boxes. I’m just me, and transcending pronouns feels quite nice, freeing.

There is an overemphasis on the connection between the uterus and a woman’s body because some people believe that women’s value lies in their ability to procreate. That might be true if humans had only 10 people left on earth and we were struggling to continue our species. Well, we are far from that hypothetical situation. We really need fewer babies than ever.

My close friend Christine and I talked about our fear of being unaccepted by others if we don’t have our uteruses. We had this internalized fear even though we had decided long ago not to have any children and we both have life partners who love us for who we are (not because we will get them children that look like them).

Now I have no uterus. What does it mean about my body? Is it worth as much as it did with the uterus? Am I as womanly as I was with the uterus? My decision to remove my uterus urged me to question my gender identity. What does it mean to me to live in a body without the ability to procreate? After some thought, my answer was “Well, nada.” It didn’t mean anything. My partner and I have settled into living child-free. I have sought and found values in my life through means other than rearing children. My life was blossoming in its own way. Once I got to that conclusion, the significance of my gender didn’t feel like much. Being a woman only meant that I have shared experiences with other women because of how we are conditioned and treated in this society.

I updated my email signatures from she/they to Any Pronouns Are Okay. These four words made me feel so expansive that I could connect with everyone beyond gender. I knew gender was a social construct, but this moment made me experience what that meant. I felt like I transcended one of the social constructs that I had been boxed in since my birth.

Now I am uterus-free. I see it as an upgrade from child-free. Not having a uterus doesn’t close the door to having adoptive children, but at least it means I won’t get pregnant. Wow. Can I say it again? I will never get pregnant, period. Bam, bam, bam! If you have been following the radical decrease in access to abortion in this country, you can imagine how much of a relief this means to a person who does not want pregnancy. I won’t have to menstruate again. I won’t get cervical cancer or ovarian cancer. I will be able to enjoy sex with intercourse more without the pain caused by my fibroids. It’s a new era of pain-free, worry-free, pregnancy-free sex. It’s a new body, a new life, and a new me (any pronouns are okay).