A home for my words.

In my blog post about a National Parks road trip, I touched on a time when I was very ill. I’d decided that it wasn’t the time to go into specifics of how my severe anemia had been caused by fibroids, non-cancerous tumors that grow in the uterus. This is largely a travel blog, so you might ask why I’m writing about a health matter here. It’s because the disease often kept me from being able to travel. I had the opportunity to elaborate more on my fight with fibroids when a story that I submitted was selected for a taping of Stories from the Stage. You can watch that here:

One of the pros of staying in the US mostly full-time over the past few years was eventually getting my surgeries: a hysteroscopic myomectomy and a uterine fibroid embolization (also known as a UFE). Still, it took roughly a decade to be taken seriously about the gravity of my condition. In fact, I had to be on the brink of death to get the proper intervention. It was only because my case had grown so grave that I even needed the two aforementioned procedures. And I am so grateful to the doctor who found this solution for me.

Through telling my story in front of cameras, I learned about the magic of TV editing. You can’t even tell which parts of the story I told on the stage that night were taken out; it all looks quite seamless. It took me a while to share the video of the story with people, in part, because of one portion of the story that was edited out: how my illness left me suicidal. I thought I’d stated it delicately and indirectly enough that it wouldn’t get dropped to the editing floor, but it did.

To be clear, I hold no grudge against the show or its editors. Business is business. However, I write this piece now because I still want to make that important part of the story visible. Suicide and its ideation are already so often withheld from the light of day for one reason or another. The same way I had no shame in sharing the other parts of my story, I have no shame in sharing this part either.

I feel it’s so common to hear people applaud the strength of a sick person. They say things like, “They’re so strong. They’re sick, but you would never know it. They’re so brave,” etc. It is indeed incredible that people can publicly face illness in this way. And I also feel that it is okay to allow sick people to be sad. I don’t think we should sanitize sickness to the point that those experiencing a medical hardship can’t be open about having bad days. Surely I wasn’t the only person that was sick and suicidal. Being frank about this might help someone battling an illness to not feel further isolated. They are not alone.

I was fed up with messaging that you were only a good sick person if you put on a brave front. It felt like a silencing of the truth of my experience, which was that 50% of the time, I was slowly bleeding to death. It was draining in the most literal sense. And the pain was unlike anything I’ve ever experienced. But some people didn’t believe me: these were not regular cramps. But, if I was complaining about pain, seemingly some took it to mean that I must just not be that strong. “So-and-so knew a lady who had one tiny fibroid and she was fine,” someone might say. But one person’s case is not the next person’s. The size of my fibroids were being described in terms of gestational stages of pregnancy. Plus, the symptoms of fibroids come from a combination of quantity, size, and location; this meaning again that you cannot use one person’s experience to predict the next person’s with certainty. The best you can do is believe someone who is sick when they tell you about their symptoms.

I once came across a quote that said: “I believe it is as bad as you say it is and worse than I can imagine.” Let’s have that energy when someone tries to tell us about a health matter they are experiencing. They know their illness best.

I felt like I was faced with either believing I was a whiny woman who wasn’t even going through something all that bad or to be the “yaaaas, Queen, she’s-so-strong” figure. Strong had gotten me nowhere. Or, at least, strong had gotten me ignored. And I needed to be seen. I was sick, and I was suffering. And I needed help.

It’s still true that I learned many positive and uplifting lessons about my body. In particular, that my body was my friend. And that my body was not fighting against me, but rather for me. I just couldn’t see it that way at first. And that is the kind of shiny ending that is made for some types of storytelling. But like I’ve said in this blog before, I want to be real with you all. And real is sometimes sad. That’s okay. That’s life. I’d love to speak truth to the balance of life. I hope I’ve done that now.

If you or someone else needs help or is experiencing suicidal ideation, dial the 988 Lifeline or click to communicate with them via text or chat. They also offer communication for those who are Deaf or HoH.