Empty

I was talking to my uncle tonight and asking him for more details about what my doctor said after the surgery. I was out of it and wanted to make sure everything that needed to be accomplished had been.  My uncle said that the doctor said I was empty now.

I'm not sure that is the word the doctor used, but it is the word that has been playing through my mind ever since. Empty. Empty. I suppose it's true, really. In the need to have this cancer out of me, in the need to stop the threat of bleeding and the threat of possible death, the magnitude of what this also means has been on the back burner.

It's not so much that I've lost my ability to have children. I have processed that, I believe. It's more that I have lost parts of myself that have been with me since before I was born. Parts of me are gone now. Having the lipoma removed wasn't emotional. It was something that grew on my body later in life. But these elements developed when I was still in the womb. They served a purpose. They could have linked me to new generations. Now all of that is gone.

Parts of me are gone.

I am still on the mend. I am still walking. I'm doing my best to taper my meds so that the end of them doesn't hit me as hard. I am in the process of recovery. And I think for a while, I'll also be in the process of mourning.