Farewell My Ovaries
A catalyst for change
“I mean, you don’t need your ovaries anymore, do you?”
This was more a statement of fact than a question posed by the oncology surgeon. I sat across from him as he pulled out colorful illustrations of ovaries, fallopian tubes, and a uterus. He circled the ovaries and recommended that both of them come out.
Tapping on the illustration of the uterus, he asked me if I wanted that out too. Since there was no evidence of anything growing in my uterus, I said, “Maybe you could take only what’s necessary?”
Just two weeks before, I went for my routine exam. My gynecologist looked up at me and asked, “Do you feel that?” I felt nothing. She excused herself to fetch the portable ultrasound machine, which, in a minute or two, revealed that I had at least a 9 cm cyst on my right ovary and something smaller on the left.
“You will need surgery.”
She said it with such a grave, almost grieving tone. She felt the loss of my ovaries before I did. As a woman and a mother, maybe ovaries represented something more to her than cystic organs to remove.
There was a small chance it was cancer, and the protocol called for an oncology surgeon to perform the surgery. Blood tests, MRIs, and more ultrasounds soon followed.
Other than making the birth of my two daughters possible, my ovaries had given me nothing but trouble with heavy bleeding and painful cramps since I was 11. Now, a decade after menopause, multi-ocular cysts had overtaken one of them. I was far less sorry for their removal than my gynecologist seemed to be.
In truth, part of me had wanted them gone since I was a teenager. I remembered the conversation in which when I explained to my mother that I would cross off every day on the calendar until I was finally done with my period.
But the surgeon’s question, “You don’t need your ovaries anymore, do you?” played in a loop-like fashion in my mind. I wanted to ask him if he would be so casual when talking to a male patient about his testicles or the removal of his prostate.
The truth is, I already knew the answer, so the question didn’t need to be asked.
Still, I laughed when I played out the conversation in my mind. “Well, sir, your right testicle cyst is massive, but your left is quite small. But heck, let’s take both because you don’t need them anymore, do you?”
In such moments, I often find myself zooming in and out, considering broader issues and more personal ones. I wondered why post-menopausal women aren’t regularly screened with a simple ultrasound since most ovarian cancers occur in older women. Is it because, along with our ovaries, we are no longer valuable enough to consider? I wondered why my husband always gets an EKG at his annual physical and I never do, even with a long family history of heart disease.
I wondered why my menstrual pain was considered something I had to put up with and if medical research would ever focus on girls for whom “becoming a woman” is met with dread.
I also thought about my own daughters and how much I want for them a world in which women’s medicine and women’s bodies matter as much as men’s. In a post Roe v. Wade world, will women have the power to restore their rights or lose even more of them?
I’m grateful that I had access to a world-class surgeon who took out of me what no longer served me well, and relieved that no cancer was found.
I’m perhaps even more grateful for the vivid reminder of what it means to be a woman. My fatigue and increasing complacency on women’s rights was replaced with fresh fuel to work for lasting change.
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