My Ovary-Free Life

Why am I so sad?
I have a dull headache when I wake up, and my stomach feels like a painful balloon. (I’m told it’ll take six weeks for my stomach to deflate—nice!) I peek under my bandages, and it’s not too scary. Plus, the ibuprofen seems strong enough to control my pain … but then the crying jags start.

Lying in bed, my thoughts race. I’ve lost a part of myself that’s so personal. I’m over the fact that I won’t bear another child; it’s more that from this moment on I’m staying young synthetically. That’s disturbing. And the cruelest trick of all: My period starts. I realize I’m 24 days into my cycle. It’s worlds colliding: I’m taking estrogen from what looks like a birth control pack, I have my period, and I’ve lost my ovaries. I can’t even put what I’m feeling into words.

In a few days I’m moving sluggishly, not a bad thing. I observe more, I appreciate more. I’m tired but happy the whole thing is behind me, especially since my pathology report came back all clear. And, though I’m sad that I can’t scoop up my son, I’ll be tickling him in just a few weeks. I look at him, my one and only biological child, and the husband I love now more than ever, with pure wonder and joy.

Meet the new me
My breast-cancer risk has now dropped 50 percent since I had my ovaries removed before I turned 40 (my birthday is in August), but my breasts remain a constant worry since my mom and aunt are breast-cancer survivors and I’m BRCA positive. That means vigilant monitoring, and I get the red-carpet treatment. Women who have found something suspicious and don’t have my genetic legacy often have to wait weeks to get a mammogram. I make just one call, and I’m squeezed in on even the busiest of days. This special treatment seems unfair. So the new me—the one who can now worry a little less about getting cancer—decides to use my BRCA status to tell the world my story.

A week after surgery I’m due back at NYU, but nothing’s wrong. I’m going to be the “real woman” in a video news story featuring my surgeon and his studies on early detection of ovarian cancer. I feel grateful as I head up to the familiar fourth floor. The waiting room is packed. I gaze at the faces, the scarves, the women of all backgrounds gathered for the fight of their lives. I realize that for the past two years, I avoided looking at the other faces in this room. Now I really look and see unbridled bravery. I am this brave woman, too. I got rid of a body part before it had the power to kill. Sure, this was a huge ordeal, and there will always be a hole in my center, where my fertility, my innocence, once lay nestled somewhere within. But I’m not a gambler. Not when it comes to my life, anyway. I have too much to share with the world. And now I can.