But here I am, happy and healthy.

I have few regrets. Mostly that I didn't take action with regards to the growing fibroids years before ... back when there were more treatment options available to me.

In the end things have worked out well. I'm ovulating right now, which is a nice anniversary present to have because it was the one thing that I was most worried about - loss of ovarian function.

My sex life is delightful, my bladder is perfectly normal, my backaches have all but disappeared and my blood is normal.

I doubt that I will continue to update this diary, as I feel I've said pretty much everything I have to say on the subject of the decision and recovery period. I don't even know if anyone ever reads this anyway. But I'm moving on with my life.

If I have one thing to leave you with if you're in the boat of looking for answers about anything gynecological, it's to check out HysterSisters.com.

I've always been frustrated with my nails, and for that matter, not terribly fond of my hands.

I have tiny fingers. My hands are normal sized, just very short, stubby fingers. Add to that, I've got rather small nails. So my hands have never been a part of my self that I found attractive.

I bit my nails.

I used to bite them quite a bit - down to the nubbins. But more recently I've tried growing them out. They were brittle, weak and flaky. I tried all those things - supplements, different applications of stuff, special diets. Nothing worked very well in those brief periods when I could manage to stop biting my nails. They just didn't grow well.

Now they're long and strong and flawless. The old ridges and cracks are gone. No sign of flaking.

Who knew.

It helps that I'm a calmer, more self-assured person of late. I feel at home in my body. It's not perfect, but it's where I live.

I don't think I had much to worry about, but it's always nice when my body kicks backin again.

I have really nothing to report about the actual hysterectomy recovery. All I can say is that I've had no little pings and twinges lately. In an odd way, I notice painful intestinal gas more often than I used to, but who knows what that's all about. I could be eating to many beans.

This year I didn't go anywhere.

So why did I not have a period this month?

I did have some suspicious breast tenderness and some slight spotting, but nothing that would qualify as my new "period."

Of course I've been walking around with a panty liner for a week - because you know the moment I stop wearing one it'll start. I guess there's only one way to find out.

If the skip happens again next month I'll contact my doctor. At the moment, it's something absolutely normal for me.

The resolutions to do so really mean nothing to me.

I do, slowly, stop biting my cuticles though. They're not the gnarled mess they were when I was in college.

My teeth are in much better shape than they were fifteen years ago and I should stop wishing they were white and either do something about it or accept that they'll always be normal teeth colored.

There are some things, I'm guessing that you can't make up for in a day. Nutrition is one. So I'm going to make an effort to eat more calcium to make sure my bones stay strong.

I don't know if eating calcium when you're in your thirties and forties really does anything to make them stronger, but I'm hoping it will at least keep them from weakening.

What brought this to mind is not the new year, but my knee. I have a problem with my knee right now and it mirrors a problem I had with the other one about five years ago. The problem five years ago was a ruptured miniscus, which is that cartelige coating on the ends of our bones at the joints. Apparently my right knee was missing a small spot which meant quite a bit of pain but not real evidence of what was causing it until I had an MRI. There is no cure for it, though they recommended surgery to smooth things out and remove any floaters.

So, here I am with the exact symptoms on my other knee a scant four years and three months later.

And the recommendation then was take it easy and take glucosamine and chondroitin.

So that's what I'm going to do instead of hobbling all over town to different doctors trying to figure out why my knee hurt but it wasn't swollen.

On a side but slightly related note, I turn 40 on Monday. Yes, it seems that this little knee problem is an early reminder that I'm entering a new decade.

The good news on the health front so far is that I have not gotten bronchitis, which I usually do in January and my cycles continue to be normal, so at least my ovaries are going to accompany me into my fifth decade.

If you have a hysterectomy and keep your ovaries and your cervix, there is a 7-15% chance that you'll have some cyclical bleeding.

What is a mini-period? Basically when a partial or supracervical hysterectomy is performed, a little bit of the uterus is retained to make a pouch that's sewn shut (where the uterus used to be, basically think of a pear and the neck of the uterus as it leads into the cervix and birth canal is the narrow top). The endometrium is naturally thinner there and most surgeons will either core out the remaining endometrium or cauterize it to prevent cyclical bleeding.

However, sometimes doctors miss some of the endometrium or don't perform this service so the ovarian hormone still cycle and the endometrium builds up and is shed monthly.

The amount of blood in my case is minimal, it's a panty liner during the day and a panty liner at night. I don't always even need it, but I use it just in case. The period itself lasts about five days (my old ones lasted eight).

If you're pre-surgery, I urge you to talk to your doctor about this issue. It's not something that should be discussed afterwards when you actually discover you have it. It's also pretty important for a good inspection to be made of the cervical stump if you're having a hysterectomy for adenomyosis or endometriosis as this would be where some of that tissue would lurk.

If you're post surgery and think you have a mini-period (and it's not a substanial amount of bleeding), relax. I consider mine a good reminder that my ovaries are working, which is far more important than that pesky light bleeding. However, talk to your doctor, it's possible that either freezing the cervix and the cervical channel can eliminate the problematic endometrium, or using a cauterizing technique through the dialted cervix. The last ditch effort would be to remove the cervical stump which is actually a rather involved surgery.

Me? I'm not really that disturbed by them and don't plan on doing anything to get rid of them.

I'm still meeting my obligations. But I'd really rather just be in bed.

But I can't sleep.

And of course I can't help wondering if it's that dreaded "hysterectomy" depression. Of course it's been well over a year. And I've often experienced these blues ... about every three or four years, though usually in January or February (probably seasonally related to the lack of sun, hormonal fluctuations and post-holiday blahs).

But I'm sure if I'd had a myomectomy or was just riding out the fibroids I'd think that it was something related to those decisions. I'm never going to know. There's no magic box that shows you how these things would be if you'd taken that different path.

Also, the time change makes me much more tired in the evening and I guess it's easier to sleep that way. Of course it means that I'm waking up a bit earlier again because of the earlier sunrise. Ah well. We all go through this every year.

I'm back in class again for getting certified for my educational outreach program that I volunteer for. And I'm working with my writing group again so things are very busy. I've got plenty of energy during the day. Holidays are coming up and I'm looking forward to snuggling in for the long winter instead of traveling this year.

This has nothing to do with my hysterectomy. I've had trouble sleeping since I was about eight years old. I used to sit up late at night in the hallway of the second floor of the house and read by the big bookshelf on the carpeted floor. It was the only light that was on in the house and of course the carpeting helped. My parents slept downstairs, so they didn't know that I'd sit up until two in the morning reading.

I don't know if it's because of the change in seasons, but it started around the time of the equinox, so maybe it's just the light.

I don't fall asleep easily and I'm easily woken by the slightest noise. Many nights I only get four hours sleep, and none of it straight through.

I know it will pass in a few weeks, through it never goes away. I always have trouble falling asleep. I doubt it's hormones. I think it's just me. I'm hypersensitve and I'm hesistant to do anything about it. I mentioned it to the doctor and he rather dismissed it, saying that maybe I needed to relax more. He's probably right and if he'd offered me sleeping pills I'd probably be more upset.

You can read more about it here.

It's just another reason to investigate all options when it comes to hysterectomy. It's not just a muscular pouch to grow babies, it's an organ and a part of our endocrine system.

If you've been following along, in early March I noticed that my incision had an infected spot. I was already on my way to the doctor to see him as a follow up to my chronic bouts of bronchitis every winter, so I had him look at it. Well, I was on keflex and the low grade fever and redness subsided, but the spot still looked odd. It was always a little pink and would scab every once in a while.

This weekend the scab came off and I looked closely in there, I thought maybe it was an ingrown hair, so I got the tweezers (washed them first and dried them carefully) and grabbed onto what looked like a little bit of skin. It was either a very blonde, straight hair (which I do not have) or an undissolved stitch. It looked like a piece of light fishing line. Anyway, the spot looks much better now, so maybe I've been trying to push that little piece out for over a year.

I'm going to keep an eye on it. There is another little spot on that side of the incision that's definitely an ingrown hair. I don't know what happens to the hair, that it just grows and grows and maybe gets reabsorbed.

Here's a link to the article - link.

This has nothing to do with hysterectomy or fibroids, however, I am a southpaw and I do have breasts.

I've read articles (probably hundreds in my lifetime) about left-handedness and its cause and one of the theories has to do with hormones the fetus is exposed to. I'm guessing that those same hormones that may cause the brain to develop favoring the right side of the brain (and left side of the body) might also make the breast tissue more succeptible to cancer.

The connection, though strong, doesn't really increase my risk that much, as pre-menopausal breast cancer is much less common than post-menopause (that's why we start getting our mammograms at age 40 - I'm due for mine next year).

I've never put much stock into anything about left-handed people being any better or worse at anything other than doing something with a particular hand. I don't think that lefties are any smarter than righties, nor more creative or articulate. I have noticed that I have a fair amount of left-handed friends. I did a count a few months back and found that 20-25% of my friends and associates are left-handed, where the general statistic is 10%.

My father is left-handed as was his mother. I don't think there's a gene that makes you lefty, but I think there's probably some sort of gene that controls hormone levels that might control whether or not a fetus becomes a lefty. However, my mother's side of the family has no left-handedness at all (as far as I know). So, I've succeeded in confusing myself, I have no idea how I became left-handed or not.

Last week I got an email from a friend (one who was with me through the whole process). He sent me the link to the story about the newly developed treatment and then went on and on about how he wished that he or I knew about it last year and that it would have helped me.

Then he sent me another email a few hours later with a couple more links on the same subject.

Why he sent this to me (he doesn't know about this diary) is beyond me. It would be like me sending him an article about how getting regular maintenance for you car can keep it in good working order, since he'd just totaled his car as a result of an alignment problem that would have been caught if he took care of his car.

It's not just pouring salt on an open wound, it's opening it up again.

A lot of people believe that women go through the same five stages of grief when it comes to losing their uterus. I'm still in the bargaining stage, I guess. If I'd taken more interest in my own health, if I'd gone to my checkups and got my fibroids diagnosed more quickly I'd have more options.

In fact, I still had options, I had the option of myomectomy. I just didn't take it ... I didn't want to have another surgery later because I was convinced that my doctor couldn't possibly get them all. She said she wouldn't have removed them all. She said that I had a 50-50 chance that I'd be back in the same position in 5 to 10 years.

I wasn't brave enough, is what I tell myself. I wasn't willing to take the same recovery period for a myomectomy. I was only willing to give myself one recovery period for the rest of my life. I was scared and I took what I thought was the rational and safe way out. But in reality, I don't know that being without my uterus is safe. Sure, about 1/3 of all women end up with a hysterectomy, but having one at 38 is much less common. And for some reason the medical establishment has never bothered to actually study the effects of hysterectomy (just the uterus). And they really haven't explored the effects of oophorectomy.

Okay, maybe I'm still in that anger stage.

The idea is that focused ultrasound is used to basically damage fibroid tumors thermally so that they shrivel up and die, or at least lose volume.

The doctors use an MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imager) to guide the directed ultrasound to the right area of tissue in the uterus.

The report that I read late last year said that it's promising but at the moment they were saying the average reduction of fibroid volume is 13.5% ... I'm sorry, but if mine were the size of a grapefruit and an eggplant, that'd mean that they'd be reduced to a large orange and a smaller eggplant. (The largest fibroid was 11 cms, that means that its diameter after 6 months would be reduced to 9.5 cms, which is still kinda big.)

Don't get me wrong, I think this is a great therapy and I'm glad their pursuing it. It's no-invasive (no cutting of the skin at all) and if women pursue treating their fibroids early this might be just the ticket ... after all, if you can reduce or at least stop the growth of a 6 cm fibroid, you can certainly keep from having your uterus removed to get rid of symptoms.

This along with embolization and myomectomy are improving so many women's lives and of course preserving their fertility and ovarian function.

When we respond positively and knowledgably about these stories to our doctors and friends, we're telling the medical establishment that resolving these health issues is important. If all women just accept hysterectomy and its risks and side effects as the status quo ... well, that's they way things will stay.

Link to: MRI guidance of focused ultrasound therapy of uterine fibroids: early results

Of course, hearing that makes me want to do a better job.

First, I focus a lot here on trying to help women realize the importance of their ovaries. But I think I've been remiss on introducing information about alternative therapies for uterine fibroids. After all, that's what brought me to this place in my life, and possibly brought you to this site.

So, look forward to more information about fibroid treatments and therapies as I find them and of course my continuing mission to help women get educated about their own bodies.

Is there something you'd like me to address? I'm hoping to do some special articles about recovery times, pros and cons of different procedures and therapies and touchstones about my progress.