My husband reminded me, as he avoided potholes on Riverside Drive, that a scant eight years ago we had run up this way to the George Washington Bridge – across it, and back down this same Riverside Drive preparing for the N.Y.C. Marathon. Today I had exhausted myself just getting into the car at Columbia Presbyterian after a charming operation that removed all my female organs. It’s amazing the competition about this operation. One friend got out of the hospital after only three days (I had taken four). Another was back at work in two weeks (I’ve taken a month). Then we have the pain competition – and the walking competition – one friend did twelve laps a day to my paltry three.

Home in my own bed, my husband and son are confounded with my requests – "Help me up, did I take my sleeping pills, turn on the a/c, turn off the a/c, help me back to bed, help me up I need the bathroom, stay near while I shower, get me some ginger ale, pour it for me it’s so heavy, I need, I need, I need help, help, help." Now I already am a princess type – as a farmer’s wife I would have lasted a year if he was very, very handsome, but more likely a month once I got the chore assignments straight and realized my hair, nails, clothes were not going to be taken care of but that getting up early was the daily reality. But I feel we women have a right to be princesses after this operation. I have a friend who rightly separated from her husband when he didn’t get it and saddled her with his children as well as her own after her operation. My husband came in smiling Saturday morning to say he would bring his black tie to Newport since he would be attending the Newport Preservation Ball after a round of golf. I was not smiling. I had, in fact, urged him to go with our son to Newport, but did he think I meant it? Dancing? Honestly, dancing? Another war story was the husband who dropped off his newly operated on wife in NYC and headed to their house at Fishers Island. When he arrived on the island he was sternly told to return to NYC by his friends, which he sheepishly did. She had cried non-stop since he’d left her – alone, no less. Another friend told me, when I praised her husband, that he’d left her alone with a bowl of fruit and some water and had trotted off to a golf tournament. At least I was to have had my Consuelo to look out for me. Oh, this is fun.

Hyster-ectomy

It has your history.

It has your hysteria

And when it is over – the operation –

Here’s what to expect

Pain and exhaustion

Or

Exhaustion and pain.

By Tina