AmandaKathleen

1) Full term pregnant, yes just the nine pound size factor! Bigger than a lot of babies! Ha!

2) Oddly enough, it makes you realize the importance of medicine. Really, a good doctor that you trust and respects you can make all the difference.

3) Sex has been shaped by this absolutely. Sex was normal and great for many years, then I noticed that I couldn’t be on top any longer. This eventually continued to hurt more gradually as my vaginal canal was closing back down. They said it could happen over time. Just something I will have to go in and have them look at. Currently sex is incredibly painful about half the time or more. I have a very patient husband to ride along through the ups and downs. I don’t think my sexuality changed much due to these experiences.. just realized how much importance is placed on sex to have a normal relationship one day. More than anything I believe I have a very unhealthy drive or need to be a mother. I would say more so than average. Not sure if this was due to the doctor and adults using, “if you ever want to be a mother one day..” do this. Sex wasn’t a driving factor to motivate me because that didn’t occur until college for me. So each day I woke up saying, you know you want to be a mother one day and have kids.. go get on the bike and do your sticks. Unhealthily I focused from 8th grade on being a mother every single day. I feel that is partly why it knocked the wind out of me so badly when they ended up removing my ovaries.

4) The doctors believed that if I did depo provera, a birth control shot, every month that I would no longer have a period. The shot was normally given every three months. I went every month because it was critical that I wasn’t ovulating. The doctors also believed that while stopping the blood from continuing and the shot would allow the blood to re-absorb back into my body basically. This didn’t work. That was discovered after the sophomore surgery when I sat up and the blood that had been there two years came out. My health suffered greatly and my coloring was sickly during those two years. I have no idea how I lived with it in my uterus chillin that long.

5) I just still sadly want to be a mom. One day perhaps! I enjoy animals to the max. Very intuitive and sensitive to feelings and emotions.. perhaps from spending loads of time developing in and out of hospitals. Mostly life is too short and if there is something nagging on your shoulders. Find a correction for it and enjoy the time we get healthy and happy. I will also say, take college seriously. Even if you get cancer just finish it. I left one semester shy of just my associates before enrolling in cosmetology. Still one of my biggest regrets. Should have buckled down or went back after.

When this comment reduces me to tears it reminds me all too much the wait to have her and how much she matters to me now! Ooof! Very kind of you. We are all she has ever know as family.

It is very special to hear my journey is inspiring to others.

Thank you for such kind words. :)

Further, fighting biological family for a child has caused quite the controversy around us. They shouldn’t have asked us to adopt for such a long time. Our role changed from foster towards adoption resource at that moment. Then they showed zero interest until way late.

Absolutely we will have to connect! Still am on the Cellcept and Prograf, well the generic for them. Mycophenolate and Tacrolimus. I was on prednisone from 1992 until 2008. Wayyy too long! Not on it anymore! So please forgive me, what is a living liver donor? Where they transplant partial possibly so you both live?

Very interesting! I remember writing Oprah when I was sixteen after seeing that lady with two vaginas go on! Haha. She never called. Thanks Oprah. Out of everything pain wise would be the tumor removal. It was up under my rib cage, reached in back to my spine, and down to almost my pelvic bone. Plus it just angered adhesions from past surgeries. Mentally it was also the hardest. I also didn’t realize when I woke up and ate breakfast that morning that after a four hour surgery I would wake up not just baron but in menopause like a middle aged lady at 20. Hot flashes are no joke. The smell.. kind of sour. I just remember the nurse standing next to my bedside to help me sit up for the first time after surgery, that sound of the blood rushing out, the nurse leaping backwards, and the awkward minute it took us all to figure out what had ruined the bed. Literally it was like dark dark almost black. My skin tone looks sickly looking back during those two years living with it in me.