Women's Bodies, Women's Wisdom (49 page)

Gail agreed to have the surgery, performed by me, whom she trusted. As part of her preparation, she worked with a spiritual studies group. The process included a kind of guided meditation in which she experienced her surgery in archetypal images, her warrior/masculine aspect standing behind her hospital bed protecting her emerging mystic/feminine aspect. As she remembered it, “The warrior reached to stroke gently the mystic’s forehead. At the conclusion of the surgery my mystic held the cyst and handed it to the warrior. The warrior took the cyst and bowed deeply to the mystic. This was a profound image for me. I knew at that moment that through this surgery something very old, at my very essence, would come into balance.

“In partnership with this mythic changing of the guard, another friend led me through a meditation several days before my surgery. I had a dialogue with my cyst. I visualized it as being like the inside of a golf ball. I told it I was ready to release its ‘crystallized overdrive.’ I was ready to balance my outer warrior side and my inner reflective mysti cal side. I truly yearned for this as a healing for me.

“During this second meditation, I gave Chris [Northrup] permission to cut open my body and remove the cyst. I meditated about the removal of the cyst. I experienced vast space in my body, the turquoise color of the Caribbean Sea healing and cleansing me. Into that infinite turquoise, the female lineage of my family appeared—a long line of sis ter, mother, grandmother, and on and on back. They acknowledged me for reclaiming my feminine self for myself and for them.”

With these healing images instilled in her mind and heart, Gail created a medicine pouch of items of significance to her. It included some crystals that had been given to her, some special stones from a beach she loved, pictures of her mother and grandmother, and some childhood toys. She packed her bag and left for Maine, to have her surgery at the hospital where I performed surgery. As she later said, “My husband and two of my dearest friends were with me before and after my surgery. Their presence created a calm, loving, and joyful center from which my surgery/initiation could unfold.

“The surgery went smoothly and gracefully. Chris removed the be nign cyst that had replaced my left ovary. She reported to me that I had a gorgeous and healthy uterus and right tube and ovary. When she showed my dear friends the cyst she had removed, one of my friends said that it looked like the bulging red muscles in the neck of a runner who is overexerting. Overdrive itself.

“I felt only a small amount of pain from the surgery and only mild effects from the anesthesia. I left the hospital after two days with an enormously positive feeling about my adventure there. My body then began the miraculous process of healing itself.

“I am enjoying my time of healing retreat. It’s too soon to under stand all of what has changed and transpired in me. What I do know is that I have faced one of my scariest dragons, and for that I am a fuller, richer person. I know that I can ask for support when I am afraid, and I know that I am loved and cared for by many dear ones. I know that I have shifted and balanced an ancient partnership within myself where the warrior waltzes with the mystic.”

In many cases of large, complex ovarian cysts like Gail’s, the healthy ovarian tissue is replaced almost entirely by that of the cyst, and there is almost no way to distinguish healthy from unhealthy tis sue. Therefore, the entire ovary requires removal.
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Gail continues to do well, however. The very way in which she approached her cyst, her hospitalization, and her postoperative care are good examples of allowing more feminine, intuitive, nurturing energy into her life, part of the lesson she learned from her left ovary.

Mary Jane: Married to the Job

Mary Jane is a molecular biologist who has spent her entire career working in male-dominated institutions. When she was in high school, she wanted to take physics and advanced mathematics, but her father, a physics professor, told her that she should take typing instead, because it would be much more useful to her. Like many men of his generation, he felt that his daughter would only get married and have children and that higher education would be wasted on her. Ironically, Mary Jane eventually went on to get an advanced de gree in science, and she published many more research papers than her father. Though she was once married and has one child, her marriage was unsatisfying to her almost from the beginning. She divorced, and then became married to her job.

Mary Jane had been a patient of mine for a few years, always trav eling from out of state to my office in Maine for her annual exam. At one of these exams, I felt a seven-centimeter left ovarian cyst, which was confirmed by ultrasound. Because she was very open to working with the symptoms in her body in a conscious way, I told her that this manifestation was there to teach her something about second-chakra issues, specifically her relationships and her creativity. I told her to talk with her ovary and see what it was telling her. My plan was to reeval uate her in three months or less.

An intuitive reading by Caroline Myss revealed that the cyst was filled with anger, the anger of violation. It also had “cancer energy.” This isn’t the same as physical cancer but is moving toward it, and Caroline felt the cyst would have to be removed soon. Although there was no cancer now, the angry energy in the cyst was very strong.

After Myss’s intuitive reading, Mary Jane started a dialogue with her ovary. As she discovered, “I found that it was filled with anger, a sense of abandonment, and also jealousy. But there was love there as well. Though I had felt this love on occasion, I couldn’t express it. I had needed a place to put all of this—it went into my ovary.”

Mary Jane took a leave of absence from work. She had decided to have the surgery because of Myss’s warning. I affirmed her decision and told her that she should not look at surgery as a giving-up on her self-healing capabilities. Surgery can be a very healing choice, and it would allow her to move forward quickly with healing her life on all levels. Mary Jane’s personal healing issues would mean working to heal her relationship with her father and her work.

Mary Jane had her surgery and all went well. The cyst was benign. During her immediate postoperative period, she went through a process of deep grieving and let go of the unattainable vision of the relationship with her father that she had always wanted but could not have. She realized that her longing for paternal approval that never came had set up a lifelong pattern of unsatisfactory relationships with men that also affected her work and work relationships. She came to understand that she had to release her father from her expectations and demands. She saw that she had used her research as a method to win the ap proval of her peers, not simply for the joy of scientific discovery. Four weeks later, at the time of her checkup, she was doing beautifully— grateful to her ovary for showing her a truth about her life that was not obvious to her intellect. Mary Jane used her ovarian growth as a transformational journey that reconnected her body’s wisdom and joy in her life’s work.

Conny: Truncated Creativity and Need for Outer Approval

Conny was thirty-eight when she developed a six-centimeter benign left ovarian cyst. It was removed surgically, leaving some normal left ovarian tissue behind. During the time she was developing this cyst, she had been trying to decide whether to have a child. At the time of her surgery we had discussed how she could best maximize her cyst experience for change and growth. She knew that her job was stifling her. She very much wanted to pursue making pottery and was, in fact, very good at it—she was always able to sell what she had time to make. But her job had great benefits. I told her to check out whether it was worthwhile to kill herself for her “benefits.”

A year after her surgery, Conny was back in my office, reexperiencing the pain in her left side that had been there when she had the ovar ian cyst. This time there was no cyst, but the pain was the same. She found that as soon as she arrived at work, the pain started, and it was getting worse. Her body was speaking loudly to her this time. She had already had one surgery. The conditions leading to the cyst in the first place—the energy pattern in her body— hadn’t really changed.

Conny understood her dilemma intellectually, and she knew that something had to change. But somewhere deep inside, whenever she thought about leaving work to pursue her creative instincts, she heard her father’s voice in her head saying, “You’re a fool to leave your job security. Making art is not a job. That’s a hobby. That’s what you do when you’ve finished your work.” She’d been carrying this belief from her father since childhood. Her job represented his approval in her life. She thus allowed forces outside herself to control her inherent creativ ity. Meanwhile she was denying the anger and rage associated with this situation.

I asked Conny to consider what she would do if she were given six months to live. She gave it a great deal of thought. Finally, exhausted, depressed, and in pain, she took a three-month leave of absence from work with the blessing of her company in order to sort out her priorities. The pain went away almost immediately, her energy returned, and her artistic side began blossoming. Her challenge was to balance her creative needs with her job.

When she first returned to work after her leave, her company put her in a different location, one in which she didn’t have to deal directly with the public. Instead, she worked behind the scenes processing pa perwork and invoices. This change fit her needs only temporarily. It was not satisfying work, and she was still allowing many aspects of her life to be controlled by her need for approval from her parents and her bosses. Within three months of a completely normal pelvic exam, she developed a very large precancerous tumor of the left ovary. It was growing so fast that she noticed a bulge in her abdominal wall that hadn’t been there the week before. At surgery, the tumor was found to be a “borderline tumor”—halfway between benign and malignant. The tumor growth at the time of surgery appeared confined to the left ovary only, and after consultation with a gynecological oncologist, only the left ovary was removed—leaving Conny with a normal uterus and a normal right ovary. (Borderline ovarian tumors often grow so slowly that it’s possible to remove only the abnormality, leaving a woman’s other pelvic organs— and physical fertility—intact.)

However, she knew at a deep cellular level that her creativity was desperate for expression and that her body would not settle for any thing less than her complete yielding to her innermost wisdom. She quit her job and spent as much time as she could making pots. She eventually planned to return to school to study holistic medicine. When I last saw her, the veil of depression that had surrounded her for the previous three years had lifted. She was blossoming into the fullness of her creative self. Her relationship with her parents had never been better. She was making peace with the fact that they might never understand her creative needs fully, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t have a relationship with them. She also learned that she could not hold her parents responsible for the years when she chose to curtail her creativity. She regarded her ovarian message as a “kick in the pants” that she really needed. She was grateful.

OVARIAN CANCER

Many American gynecologists are trained to remove the ovaries after the age of forty if a woman has pelvic surgery of any kind. The rea son for this is to prevent ovarian cancer. Yet ovarian cancer affects only one in eighty women in the United States. This means that thousands of women throughout the country are having normal organs removed to prevent a condition that will actually affect very few of them. Thousands will be deprived of the essential benefits that these hormone-producing organs provide. In fact, premature removal of the ovaries is associated with increased risk for osteoporosis and heart disease, as well as a host of menopausal symptoms, including decreased skin thickness, which results in a more aged appearance and possible increased susceptibility to bruising and injury.
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Other problems include decreased sex drive and decreased sexual attention. The research of Winnifred Cutler, Ph.D., has shown that hysterectomy with ovarian removal decreases or eliminates a woman’s ability to produce sex-attractant pheromones, rendering her less attractive to appropriate partners.
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The good news is that the use of commercially available pheromones reverses this. (see
chapter 8
, “Reclaiming the Erotic.”)

Medicine in this culture, however, focuses on ovarian removal for its potential cancer-prevention benefits and downplays any adverse factors possibly associated with it. Removal of the ovaries to prevent ovar ian cancer is based on the assumptions that (1) prophylactic removal of the ovaries during hysterectomy is associated with a lower incidence of ovarian cancer, and (2) a woman’s own hormones can be easily replaced with hormone medication. But studies have shown that neither of these assumptions is always true.
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In the absence of ovarian disease, the ovaries are best left in place un less a very clear genetic risk has been identified: that is, a woman has one or more first-degree female relatives who have had ovarian cancer. (See Resources for information on genetic counseling.) Neither synthetic nor bioidentical hormones can match the complex mix of androgens, progesterone, and estrogen that the normal ovary produces. When the actual drug-taking behavior of patients is considered, including their lapses in taking medication and other erratic factors that impede a drug’s absorption and performance, retaining the ovaries results in longer survival.
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We need another approach to prevent the needless sacrifice of our ovaries. Understanding ovarian wisdom and energy holds the key to this approach. Ovarian cancer may result from the energy of unex pressed rage or resentment, encoded in the second-chakra area of the body. A woman may not be consciously aware of this encoding. But this energy may be present in a woman whose mate or boss is always angry with her and who may be otherwise abusive. A woman can be in an abusive partnership with her work or even with herself, and it may affect the ovaries in the same way. A woman who continues this pattern because of her fear of physical, emotional, or financial abandonment does not believe in her own inner ability to change her circumstances. She is out of touch with her innate power, and sometimes her body will try to get her attention via the ovaries, especially if she feels resentment or anger or blames others for her circumstances. (Remember that the uterus has a more passive energy than the ovaries.)