Where to start?

Where to start?

Last I posted I was brokenhearted to be canceling my appearance in Buffalo New York. I think I dropped out of existence for a little while after that for the most part. There’s been a lot going on with me personally, my health, both physical and mental. So I’m going to take it bit by bit and tell you in short stories what happening. I think it’s too much to catch up all at once, so maybe we’ll talk about one thing at a time. First I want to say how happy I am that my daughter Memphis and her partner Oliver, their two dogs, their two cats have all safely made it home to Illinois. She lives close to me, my son is close, and the hospital where I'm having my surgery is very close, too. There’s a really great noodle shop that’s 10 minutes away. So I have found my own little slice of heaven here in Illinois, to rest and recuperate for the next four months or so.

I’m so thankful for this! I’m still close enough to my parents and I’m able to see them pretty regularly. I have a lot of feelings right now but my most prevalent and overwhelming feeling is gratitude. I feel deep gratitude to be in a location where I have good, accessible healthcare. I am heartbroken that so many people in this country cannot afford healthcare, therefore they struggle with illness for extended periods of time or sometimes for a lifetime. I’m in a very fortunate position that I can afford to have a life-saving surgery.

I’m realizing that we live in a country where you simply cannot afford to get sick. Maybe we busy our minds and our lives with so many other things and put our healthcare on the back burner because we understand that if we get sick, we are then saddled with the stress of wondering if we can afford to survive the sickness. I feel thankful once again, that I am in a position where I can afford to survive a sickness. Sadly there are many many many other people who are not in that position. Something for us to think about.

Nothing I do or say is really going to matter much on this subject if I don’t communicate with my state representatives or vote. So instead of talking more about that piece, I will make sure to instead, take action.

Jeremy and I have moved in to a cute little house in Illinois. It’s affordable and comfortable. That’s all we really need right now. A place to heal that’s affordable and comfortable and provides easy accessibility to all the things we need, like the Thai noodle place obviously.😅

I’ve taken a lot of time to heal, I understand pain management, put my health as a priority and go to a slew of doctors appointments. I have an incredible doctor, I really love her so far. Finding a female gynecologist is a truly freeing experience. It makes everything so much easier and I’m very fortunate that my doctor makes me feel heard and has a beautifully compassionate bedside manner. I wasn’t quite sure how much I wanted to share of my journey because it’s is a deeply personal one and I feel very vulnerable letting the world know what’s happening in my life right now. While I tend to share a lot of skin, I tend to be very private about some other things.

I’m learning that I need to trust my voice and talk about what’s happening.

About four months ago I shared with Mike’s girlfriend Tish, that I was having a terrible time on set managing my menstrual cycles. It seemed like I was always bleeding, it was always an excruciating amount of pain, feeling like I was being held back from a lot of opportunities because I couldn’t figure out how to control the amount of pain I was living with. She talked with me for a while about the importance of getting into the gynecologist and making sure that everything is OK. So about three months ago I was finally able to find a female gynecologist, get into an appointment, have multiple exams and understood more about what was happening in my body. I’m extremely thankful for this conversation with Tish because I found out that I have uterine fibroids. It didn't really sound like a big deal. I didn’t quite understand what all was involved with having uterine fibroids. I kind of figured maybe I just have a bumpy uterus and I can live with it. My doctor informed me that this was not a situation, and I couldn't live with it. In fact, this is a situation that needs to be addressed as soon as possible, surgically. During the exams, because of the number and size of the fibroids, she was not able to procure a proper biopsy sample from the area that she was most concerned with. She informed me that I was going to need to have my uterus removed regardless of whether the biopsy came back cancerous or not. My uterus is enlarged and heavy with fibroids so it’s causing a lot of distress elsewhere in my body. I’ve known I’ve not been well for about three years. During those three years we were passing through Covid and I could not get into a gynecologist to save my life. It took me three years to finally find a female gynecologist. And I had to travel from Puerto Rico to Illinois to find her. Some very interesting things have happened since legislation has changed and Roe v. Wade has been overturned. We have a massive shortage of gynecologists. In many places around The United States half or more of the gynecologists in the country have left the field. This leaves a massive healthcare shortage for people with uteruses.

Often times when I think about this shortage the first thing that comes to mind is pregnant women being affected. And they are! But it affects all of us. It affects anybody who was born with a uterus. And it certainly affects those who are not born with a uterus. My wonderful partner Jeremy has been taking care of me this entire time. He’s had emotional support from my children and my family and physical support from time to time when needed. But this affects him every day. From the time he wakes up in the morning, doses out my medication to me, cleans the house by himself, does the laundry, makes breakfast for me, doses out more of my pills, runs and gets more necessities, gets back home, checks in on my pain, put me to bed at night on the couch (because it’s the only place I can find comfort), sleeps alone in bed (otherwise I will keep him up all night). It’s impossible for me to sleep right now for any length of time because of the pain that I feel. I have been bleeding for two months and he has been the one to take care of me, make sure that I am clean, fed, loved, and prioritized. He has been dealing with his own issues in the process. He has had shingles in the past and unfortunately when stress hits hard his shingles flares up and it is extremely painful for him. So you don’t have to be born with a uterus for this situation to affect you.

It affects everybody.

Uterine fibroids are incredibly painful. There’s no way around it. It’s a very real thing. Last night was the first night that I figured out how to properly understand my pain management. I’ve always been afraid to take drugs. I smoke a lot of weed, but outside of that I don’t enjoy taking pills and medications.

The two previous nights I spent in the emergency room trying to get the pain under control. Here’s what I realized about hospital emergency rooms, or at least this specific one in Illinois. There are a lot of sick people in this world who need help, and there simply are not enough healthcare practitioners right now for all of the people who are in need. Last night we didn’t have to go to the emergency room, but the night before we did, and the night before that we did. The first night that I went into the emergency room I got there at 4 PM and sat in the public waiting room at minimum for two hours, vomiting. Uncontrollably vomiting. The pain was so bad that I couldn’t stop throwing up. It was no fault of the hospital or the emergency room or the staff that they didn’t have enough attending physicians or nurses. It’s just how the world is right now. Who in the hell would wanna go into healthcare and be underpaid to over serve their community? I don’t know who would want to do that anymore, but to anybody who is still in the healthcare field or entering the healthcare field you have my mad respect. Fortunately I had company with Jeremy, Memphis, and Oliver. I had three wonderful people kissing my forehead, throwing away my vomit bags, making me take sips of sprite, showing me love. My daughter Memphis is mortified by vomit. She can’t handle it, it's just her kryptonite. She sat with me in the bathroom while I puked and she held my hair back and held my hand. She got me wet paper towels to put on my neck and my forehead when I got too hot. The level of compassion that the people around me have shown is truly unreal and I could not be more thankful. I’m truly surrounded by angels. After two hours I was brought into a private room in the back and seen by the doctor immediately.

The hospital staff was extremely compassionate, extremely short staffed, and they were on it! They did not skip a beat, they acted with swiftness, compassion and actionable deeds. If they said they were gonna be back in 10 minutes they were back in 10 minutes. They helped me get my pain under control. They sent me home with the proper medications. They were incredible. The next day I got used to the new medications for the pain and nausea and anxiety.

I still ended up going to the emergency room in the middle of the night because I was feeling so much pain and pressure. We did end up hearing from my doctor, who was loving enough to meet me at the hospital so that we can bypass any wait time and take me directly back to a private room again. I found out that I have a UTI on top of this issue with my fibroid tumors causing pain. So now on top of the pain medication, anxiety medication and hormones I am also on antibiotics for this urinary tract infection. 

OK, so I know this is a lot of information. I realize that this page tends to be a little less stressful and a little more sexy but since I am a whole complete person, I feel a whole complete spectrum of emotions. And I have so much more going on than what I show. Part of my luxuriating process right now is getting iron infusions twice a week on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I have really come to enjoy going in for the iron infusions because the nurses are so gentle and incredibly helpful and really nice to talk to. Again this facility is completely understaffed. Yet somehow they make sure to take care of everybody to the best of their ability.

Tuesday was my last iron infusion, we brought them donuts and I’m not gonna lie, it made me cry knowing that I won’t see them regularly anymore. They were all truly lovely nurses and I’m so lucky to have been cared for by them for the last month.

I do have my surgery scheduled within the week for a hysterectomy. So in a week I will have some relief. I will have a different kind of pain but I’m excited to be closer to the process of healing from this. I don’t exactly know what to say right now in terms of how I’m feeling because I’m just feeling a lot of everything. Mostly I just feel thankful. Like I said earlier, I think about my friends in Puerto Rico who need to go into surgery and have to deal with the unfair conditions that the island islands private power plant LUMA has put everybody into. Completely unreliable electricity, unreliable water because of the unreliable electricity, since the electric system carries the water from place to place.

The thought of even having a surgery like this on the island felt wrong for so many reasons. The healthcare system there is quite fragile right now and I don’t need to be an extra strain on a healthcare system that is already struggling because of lack of workforce, electricity and water issues. I felt it irresponsible for myself to have surgery on the island when there could be somebody else who really needs that spot. I figured it would be easier to come home to Illinois and have the surgery here. There’s so many more doctors available here. But I did realize very quickly that there’s a doctor shortage here as well. Especially among gynecologists, like I mentioned earlier.

So I’m sitting and I’m waiting and I am appreciative for every moment that I have that is peaceful and pain-free and I am deeply appreciative to the true heroes of this country, the nurses and hospital staff, doctors who truly care about their patients.

If you’re a healthcare worker, thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I can’t say thank you enough. I can see it in everybody’s eyes that they’re exhausted, yet somehow, something drives them to continue to go to work every day in an environment where the risk is high and the pay scale is not.