An Anniversary

As of yesterday, it has been one year since I had my surgery. Which is kind of an odd thought for me. On one hand, that period of recovery time seems to have receded into the distant past and taken on a strangely unreal quality. I actually have to actively remind myself that, oh, yeah, that really happened, that time when I couldn't even bend over. On the other hand, surely I have not aged a full year since then. Wait, you mean even my cats have aged a full year since then? That's a significant chunk of lifespan for them! It cannot be possible! Seriously, time is just... weird. You'd think the older I get, and the more of it I experience, the more used I would be to the way it passes, but instead it keeps taking me more and more by surprise.

Anyway. They -- by which, of course I mean the internet -- say that it takes a year to fully recover from a hysterectomy, so I guess I should celebrate now or something. I remember, just after the surgery, reading a site that had a timeline of what to expect as you heal, and somewhere a few months in was the milestone of finding you could go an entire day at a time without thinking about having had the surgery. A few weeks in, I was having serious trouble believing that would ever be possible, but, of course, it was. By now, even the numbness around my scar that lingered for most of the year has faded. And the scar itself has faded into an unobtrusive line that I mostly can't see over my fat belly, anyway.

The one thing that hasn't faded -- as I feared it was going to -- is my joy at the results. I have not yet come to take the fact that I am not bleeding massively from my genitals once a month for granted. Indeed, the realization that that is not happening and -- unless something goes very badly wrong -- never will again still hits me on a fairly regular basis, and it's hard to keep a grin off my face when it does.