The Little Ovary That Couldn’t

I saw way too many doctors for way too many years.

I spent about eleven years in pain.

Not a stubbed-toe kind of pain. Not a "take some ibuprofen and lie down for a while" kind of pain. The kind of pain that makes you double over unexpectedly and wonder how something inside your body can hurt that much and still technically be functioning.

The pain started in my early twenties. Over the years, I saw doctor after doctor looking for answers. Every appointment felt like a variation of the same conversation.

"You're too young." Too young for a hysterectomy. Too young for that option. Too young to be thinking about removing organs.

Meanwhile, I was thinking something much simpler: Take it out.

If I wanted children later, I could adopt. If removing an organ meant getting my life back, I was completely fine with that trade.

The doctors, to their credit, weren't ignoring me. They were trying every option they had before resorting to surgery. Medications. Procedures. Monitoring. More appointments. More tests. More waiting.

Years of waiting. I was actually at the bakery working, and in so much pain every day that I could only work bent at the waist. I couldn’t fully stand up straight because it was too painful. Just hours of fatigue and pain and overwhelming nausea all while making cupcakes and cookies.

By the time I was thirty-three, there was only one option left. A total hysterectomy. I didn’t have time to be off work for a hysterectomy; I owned a business. At the time, I had 3 employees and myself, so they kind of needed me there. I asked the doctor how long recovery was and she said, “I’ve found that recovery is usually as long as you have sick days.” Oh, great, I don’t have sick days. And she said, “Honestly, the faster you get moving afterward, the faster the recovery will be.” And she was right about that.

Before surgery, my gynecologist explained that she would try to save whatever she could. Ovaries are important for hormone production, bone health, heart health, and overall long-term health. If she could preserve healthy tissue, she would.

I understood the logic. I still told her to take everything anyway. I didn't care about preserving organs anymore. I cared about ending the pain. Just rip it all out, lady. I ended up signing my life away because doctors DO NOT want to take away your ability to have children and then be sued for it - even if you promise not to.

I scheduled it for the week after Valentine’s Day, and made sure no pre-orders were taken for that week. This way, my employees would only have to bake for the case items and not fulfill orders. I could rest for a week and come back (which is exactly what happened).

When I woke up from surgery, I immediately noticed something strange. The pain I had lived with for over a decade was gone. In its place was a different pain entirely. My abdomen felt sore, like I had somehow done a thousand sit-ups while unconscious. It wasn't pleasant, but it was completely different from the pain that had followed me for years.

Later, my doctor came in before I was discharged. "It was really bad," she told me. "It was everywhere."

She had removed my uterus, both fallopian tubes, my right ovary, and endometrial tissue that had spread throughout my pelvis. It had attached itself to my bladder, my vaginal canal, and several other places it had absolutely no business being.

The soreness I felt wasn't the old pain. It was the result of her scraping endometrial tissue off the one ovary she had managed to save. The left ovary. Ironically, it was the ovary that had never caused me trouble. Probably because it didn’t work.

My doctor assured me it would take over hormone production and provide everything my body needed. For about a year, it did. Then it apparently decided it had other plans. It decided to retire.

Around age thirty-six, I started experiencing symptoms that seemed pretty obvious to me. Night sweats. Hot flashes. Weight gain. Mood changes. The whole package. I suspected menopause. The doctors disagreed. Again.

I was told I was too young. I reminded them that I had undergone a hysterectomy. They reminded me that I still had one ovary. I pointed out that I was having symptoms. They suggested stress. Apparently owning a business was stressful. Who knew?

I asked for testing. Sometimes they refused. Sometimes they told me it wasn't necessary. One doctor I genuinely liked asked me a question I'll never forget. "If I test you and you're in menopause, do you want hormone replacement therapy?" "Not really," I said (me and medication have issues too because hello, cornstarch is in everything). "So what do you care?" At the time, I didn't have a good answer. Now I do.

I cared because I wanted to know what was happening in my own body.

I wasn't looking for medication. I wasn't demanding treatment. I wasn't trying to prove anyone wrong. I just wanted confirmation that I wasn't imagining it.

By the time anyone took the possibility seriously, most of the symptoms were already fading. The diagnosis would have been little more than paperwork by then. Life moved on.

Fourteen years later, I'm forty-eight years old and fully post-menopausal.

Looking back, the hysterectomy solved about eighty percent of my health problems. If I had to make the decision again tomorrow, I would. No hesitation. The surgery gave me my life back. Even if that life was sweaty, and moody, fatter, and hot. At least it wasn’t a life of pain.

What it didn't give me back was my trust in the healthcare system. That's the part that never fully recovered.

People often ask why women Google their symptoms and diagnose themselves. Why we compare notes with friends. Why we show up to appointments with theories about what's wrong.

I don't think it's because we're trying to play doctor. I think it's because many of us have spent years being told we're wrong before eventually discovering we weren't.

I don't hate doctors. I don't think medicine is broken. I've had doctors who were compassionate and genuinely helpful.

But I also spent more than a decade trying to convince people that I was in pain.

The surgery was hard. The recovery was hard. The menopause was hard.

But none of those things were as exhausting as constantly having to prove that something was wrong in the first place.