Just Cut It Out

I’m preparing for a total hysterectomy next month — uterus, cervix, ovaries, the lot. I’m not even thirty.

Writing that feels surreal.

I’ve been living with endometriosis, PCOS, and PMDD for most of my adult life. I’ve been dismissed, patronised, gaslit, and told everything from “it’s just bad periods” to “you’re too young for something that drastic.”

But the truth is, I’m out of options. My body has been at war with itself for years, and the only thing the medical system seems able to do is cut it out.

I’m scared — of surgery, of menopause, of what happens when I hand my body over to a system that has failed me repeatedly.

The body parts they cut out of women

A doctor on TikTok recently told a story that’s been living rent-free in my mind.

At a medical conference, she asked the audience:

“Raise your hand if you know a man who’s had a body part amputated or removed because of a health issue.”

A few hands went up.

Then she asked, “Raise your hand if you know a woman.”

The room filled with raised hands.

That’s the reality of women’s healthcare.

Men are treated.

Women are cut open.

When there’s no cure, no research, no funding — the fallback is surgery. Remove the problem, remove the organ, remove the woman’s autonomy.

The gender gap in medical research

Endometriosis affects one in ten women. That’s the official number — but experts suspect it’s much higher because we’ve been trained to think painful periods are normal. They’re not.

This disease has been documented in the lungs, liver, bladder, kidneys, and even the brain. Yet it’s still dismissed as a “reproductive issue.”

It’s not.

It’s a systemic disease that can invade organs and cause life-threatening complications — bowel obstruction, kidney failure, even lung collapse.

Endometriosis doesn’t kill directly, but the way it spreads absolutely can.

And still, research into this condition has barely moved since the 1950s.

When rare funding was finally approved in the UK, I was hopeful. Maybe they’d look at new treatments, early diagnosis, or pain management. But no.

The study focused on how attractive women with endometriosis are compared to women without it.

We’re not being studied to be saved — we’re being studied to be looked at by men.

The endless cycle of dismissal

I’ve been under an NHS specialist for six years. I haven’t seen him since he added me to the waiting list for my hysterectomy two years ago.

In that time, I’ve been prescribed every hormone known to womankind — pills that made me bleed for months, injections that shut my body down, and antidepressants that made me feel like I wasn’t really there.

And every time I’ve gone back to say, “It’s not working,” they’ve sighed.

Eye-rolled.

Spoken to me like I’m being dramatic or difficult.

They don’t say it outright, but the message is clear: you’re the problem.

Not the treatment that doesn’t work.

Not the system that refuses to investigate why.

You.

And when nothing else works, they offer the “solution” they always circle back to: a hysterectomy.

The cruel irony of the “cure”

Here’s the thing they don’t tell you: a hysterectomy isn’t a cure for endometriosis.

If they don’t remove every trace of the tissue — which is almost impossible — it can grow back.

Endometriosis has even been shown to produce its own hormones, feeding itself like a parasite.

So even if they remove everything, there’s no guarantee it’s gone.

I’ll wake up without my uterus, without my ovaries, thrown into surgical menopause before 30, and still no promise of relief.

But I’ll also wake up infertile.

Endometriosis took that from me long before surgery did. Scar tissue has wrapped around my reproductive organs for years, distorting them beyond repair.

It’s not that I ever dreamed of motherhood — but losing that option feels like losing a future version of myself.

The one who might have changed her mind.

The one who might have had the choice.

When medicine gives up on women

Doctors are now debating whether to reclassify endometriosis as a benign cancer.

And honestly? That makes sense.

It behaves like one. It invades, spreads, damages, and consumes.

The only difference is that when cancer does this, it’s an emergency. When endometriosis does it, it’s “women’s problems.”

This is the quiet violence of the medical system: the normalization of female suffering.

You can collapse in pain, faint, vomit, miss work, lose your fertility — and it’s still framed as an inconvenience rather than an emergency.

If men experienced even a fraction of this, there would be billion-pound research projects and national awareness campaigns.

But for women, the answer is always the same: cut it out.

The grief no one prepares you for

When people talk about hysterectomies, they talk about pain relief — not grief.

But I’m grieving already.

Grieving the years lost to pain.

Grieving the parts of me that feel stolen.

Grieving the trust I once had in the healthcare system.

Because the system that ignored me, dismissed me, and blamed me for my symptoms is now the same system holding the scalpel.

They’ve told me this will fix everything, but I know better. I’ve learned the hard way that medicine doesn’t treat women’s pain — it manages it, minimizes it, or removes the source of it entirely.

We are not cured.

We are erased.

“It’s just your period”

That sentence has followed me since I was a teenager.

Every stabbing cramp.

Every day I bled through clothes at school.

Every hospital visit where I could barely stand.

“It’s just your period.”

But it’s not just anything.

Endometriosis has been found in every major organ system of the body — yet it’s still reduced to a menstrual issue.

That language is why it takes nearly a decade for most women to be diagnosed. Because from the moment we get our first period, we’re told that pain is normal, that bleeding through clothes is a rite of passage, that we’re weak if we complain.

We’re conditioned to endure — and then blamed when the damage becomes irreversible.

What I want people to understand

This isn’t just about my surgery. It’s about what that surgery represents.

A lifetime of being told to endure.

A healthcare system that treats women’s organs as optional.

A culture that still doesn’t believe women’s pain.

I want real research.

Real compassion.

Real accountability.

I want girls to grow up knowing that pain is not normal.

That they have a right to answers — not eye rolls.

That their suffering deserves attention — not amputation.

As the surgery approaches

The date is set. The consent forms are signed. Soon I’ll be wheeled into a sterile room, put to sleep, and wake up to a silence inside my body that feels both terrifying and freeing.

Because even if I don’t trust the system, I trust myself.

I’ve fought too long and too hard to live like this.

And if losing these organs gives me even a fraction of peace — I’ll take it.

But I’ll never stop asking why so many of us had to lose so much before anyone started listening.

Until women’s bodies are valued as more than medical experiments, fertility machines, or disposable parts, there will be more of us lying on operating tables, whispering the same words:

“Just cut it out.”

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If you have any tips for managing hysterectomy recovery or menopause then please let me know! And if you’ve enjoyed this story, check out my other work 😊