Two decades of joy remembered.

I don’t know if too many women celebrate a hysterectomy anniversary, but mine occurred 20 years ago today at Butterworth Hospital in Grand Rapids Michigan ... a happy and long-anticipated occasion that’s definitely worthy of a milestone acknowledgement. The smiling tampon posing at right says it all. It’s like blowing two decades of raspberries at Kimberly-Clark.

I know you’ll forgive me if this falls into the category of too much information, but I was only 39 when I had my surgery ... a procedure that was strongly recommended after 25 years of misery, two D&Cs and four years of chemotherapy for an early stage of endometrial cancer, which was treated by three different oncologists in three different states during my first husband’s upwardly mobile years. When my Michigan oncologist finally suggested surgery I wanted to do a couple of back flips, but I wasn’t feeling so hot at the time because I’d caught pneumonia raking leaves in the rain on a 35° day. The hysterectomy had to be rescheduled twice over the course of five weeks while we waited for my lungs to clear up.

For the record, I think the best part of all this (for me and for Sam) is the fact that I never had to deal with menopause! Thank you for reading this ... and don’t forget to send me some panini recipes, okay?