Where to start?
🕑 Added 2022-10-19 19:37:15 +0000 UTCWhere to start?
Last I posted I was brokenhearted to be canceling my appearance in Buffalo New York. I think I dropped out of existence for a little while after that for the most part. There’s been a lot going on with me personally, my health, both physical and mental. So I’m going to take it bit by bit and tell you in short stories what happening. I think it’s too much to catch up all at once, so maybe we’ll talk about one thing at a time. First I want to say how happy I am that my daughter Memphis and her partner Oliver, their two dogs, their two cats have all safely made it home to Illinois. She lives close to me, my son is close, and the hospital where I'm having my surgery is very close, too. There’s a really great noodle shop that’s 10 minutes away. So I have found my own little slice of heaven here in Illinois, to rest and recuperate for the next four months or so.
I’m so thankful for this! I’m still close enough to my parents and I’m able to see them pretty regularly. I have a lot of feelings right now but my most prevalent and overwhelming feeling is gratitude. I feel deep gratitude to be in a location where I have good, accessible healthcare. I am heartbroken that so many people in this country cannot afford healthcare, therefore they struggle with illness for extended periods of time or sometimes for a lifetime. I’m in a very fortunate position that I can afford to have a life-saving surgery.
I’m realizing that we live in a country where you simply cannot afford to get sick. Maybe we busy our minds and our lives with so many other things and put our healthcare on the back burner because we understand that if we get sick, we are then saddled with the stress of wondering if we can afford to survive the sickness. I feel thankful once again, that I am in a position where I can afford to survive a sickness. Sadly there are many many many other people who are not in that position. Something for us to think about.
Nothing I do or say is really going to matter much on this subject if I don’t communicate with my state representatives or vote. So instead of talking more about that piece, I will make sure to instead, take action.
Jeremy and I have moved in to a cute little house in Illinois. It’s affordable and comfortable. That’s all we really need right now. A place to heal that’s affordable and comfortable and provides easy accessibility to all the things we need, like the Thai noodle place obviously.😅
I’ve taken a lot of time to heal, I understand pain management, put my health as a priority and go to a slew of doctors appointments. I have an incredible doctor, I really love her so far. Finding a female gynecologist is a truly freeing experience. It makes everything so much easier and I’m very fortunate that my doctor makes me feel heard and has a beautifully compassionate bedside manner. I wasn’t quite sure how much I wanted to share of my journey because it’s is a deeply personal one and I feel very vulnerable letting the world know what’s happening in my life right now. While I tend to share a lot of skin, I tend to be very private about some other things.
I’m learning that I need to trust my voice and talk about what’s happening.
About four months ago I shared with Mike’s girlfriend Tish, that I was having a terrible time on set managing my menstrual cycles. It seemed like I was always bleeding, it was always an excruciating amount of pain, feeling like I was being held back from a lot of opportunities because I couldn’t figure out how to control the amount of pain I was living with. She talked with me for a while about the importance of getting into the gynecologist and making sure that everything is OK. So about three months ago I was finally able to find a female gynecologist, get into an appointment, have multiple exams and understood more about what was happening in my body. I’m extremely thankful for this conversation with Tish because I found out that I have uterine fibroids. It didn't really sound like a big deal. I didn’t quite understand what all was involved with having uterine fibroids. I kind of figured maybe I just have a bumpy uterus and I can live with it. My doctor informed me that this was not a situation, and I couldn't live with it. In fact, this is a situation that needs to be addressed as soon as possible, surgically. During the exams, because of the number and size of the fibroids, she was not able to procure a proper biopsy sample from the area that she was most concerned with. She informed me that I was going to need to have my uterus removed regardless of whether the biopsy came back cancerous or not. My uterus is enlarged and heavy with fibroids so it’s causing a lot of distress elsewhere in my body. I’ve known I’ve not been well for about three years. During those three years we were passing through Covid and I could not get into a gynecologist to save my life. It took me three years to finally find a female gynecologist. And I had to travel from Puerto Rico to Illinois to find her. Some very interesting things have happened since legislation has changed and Roe v. Wade has been overturned. We have a massive shortage of gynecologists. In many places around The United States half or more of the gynecologists in the country have left the field. This leaves a massive healthcare shortage for people with uteruses.
Often times when I think about this shortage the first thing that comes to mind is pregnant women being affected. And they are! But it affects all of us. It affects anybody who was born with a uterus. And it certainly affects those who are not born with a uterus. My wonderful partner Jeremy has been taking care of me this entire time. He’s had emotional support from my children and my family and physical support from time to time when needed. But this affects him every day. From the time he wakes up in the morning, doses out my medication to me, cleans the house by himself, does the laundry, makes breakfast for me, doses out more of my pills, runs and gets more necessities, gets back home, checks in on my pain, put me to bed at night on the couch (because it’s the only place I can find comfort), sleeps alone in bed (otherwise I will keep him up all night). It’s impossible for me to sleep right now for any length of time because of the pain that I feel. I have been bleeding for two months and he has been the one to take care of me, make sure that I am clean, fed, loved, and prioritized. He has been dealing with his own issues in the process. He has had shingles in the past and unfortunately when stress hits hard his shingles flares up and it is extremely painful for him. So you don’t have to be born with a uterus for this situation to affect you.
It affects everybody.
Uterine fibroids are incredibly painful. There’s no way around it. It’s a very real thing. Last night was the first night that I figured out how to properly understand my pain management. I’ve always been afraid to take drugs. I smoke a lot of weed, but outside of that I don’t enjoy taking pills and medications.
The two previous nights I spent in the emergency room trying to get the pain under control. Here’s what I realized about hospital emergency rooms, or at least this specific one in Illinois. There are a lot of sick people in this world who need help, and there simply are not enough healthcare practitioners right now for all of the people who are in need. Last night we didn’t have to go to the emergency room, but the night before we did, and the night before that we did. The first night that I went into the emergency room I got there at 4 PM and sat in the public waiting room at minimum for two hours, vomiting. Uncontrollably vomiting. The pain was so bad that I couldn’t stop throwing up. It was no fault of the hospital or the emergency room or the staff that they didn’t have enough attending physicians or nurses. It’s just how the world is right now. Who in the hell would wanna go into healthcare and be underpaid to over serve their community? I don’t know who would want to do that anymore, but to anybody who is still in the healthcare field or entering the healthcare field you have my mad respect. Fortunately I had company with Jeremy, Memphis, and Oliver. I had three wonderful people kissing my forehead, throwing away my vomit bags, making me take sips of sprite, showing me love. My daughter Memphis is mortified by vomit. She can’t handle it, it's just her kryptonite. She sat with me in the bathroom while I puked and she held my hair back and held my hand. She got me wet paper towels to put on my neck and my forehead when I got too hot. The level of compassion that the people around me have shown is truly unreal and I could not be more thankful. I’m truly surrounded by angels. After two hours I was brought into a private room in the back and seen by the doctor immediately.
The hospital staff was extremely compassionate, extremely short staffed, and they were on it! They did not skip a beat, they acted with swiftness, compassion and actionable deeds. If they said they were gonna be back in 10 minutes they were back in 10 minutes. They helped me get my pain under control. They sent me home with the proper medications. They were incredible. The next day I got used to the new medications for the pain and nausea and anxiety.
I still ended up going to the emergency room in the middle of the night because I was feeling so much pain and pressure. We did end up hearing from my doctor, who was loving enough to meet me at the hospital so that we can bypass any wait time and take me directly back to a private room again. I found out that I have a UTI on top of this issue with my fibroid tumors causing pain. So now on top of the pain medication, anxiety medication and hormones I am also on antibiotics for this urinary tract infection.
OK, so I know this is a lot of information. I realize that this page tends to be a little less stressful and a little more sexy but since I am a whole complete person, I feel a whole complete spectrum of emotions. And I have so much more going on than what I show. Part of my luxuriating process right now is getting iron infusions twice a week on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I have really come to enjoy going in for the iron infusions because the nurses are so gentle and incredibly helpful and really nice to talk to. Again this facility is completely understaffed. Yet somehow they make sure to take care of everybody to the best of their ability.
Tuesday was my last iron infusion, we brought them donuts and I’m not gonna lie, it made me cry knowing that I won’t see them regularly anymore. They were all truly lovely nurses and I’m so lucky to have been cared for by them for the last month.
I do have my surgery scheduled within the week for a hysterectomy. So in a week I will have some relief. I will have a different kind of pain but I’m excited to be closer to the process of healing from this. I don’t exactly know what to say right now in terms of how I’m feeling because I’m just feeling a lot of everything. Mostly I just feel thankful. Like I said earlier, I think about my friends in Puerto Rico who need to go into surgery and have to deal with the unfair conditions that the island islands private power plant LUMA has put everybody into. Completely unreliable electricity, unreliable water because of the unreliable electricity, since the electric system carries the water from place to place.
The thought of even having a surgery like this on the island felt wrong for so many reasons. The healthcare system there is quite fragile right now and I don’t need to be an extra strain on a healthcare system that is already struggling because of lack of workforce, electricity and water issues. I felt it irresponsible for myself to have surgery on the island when there could be somebody else who really needs that spot. I figured it would be easier to come home to Illinois and have the surgery here. There’s so many more doctors available here. But I did realize very quickly that there’s a doctor shortage here as well. Especially among gynecologists, like I mentioned earlier.
So I’m sitting and I’m waiting and I am appreciative for every moment that I have that is peaceful and pain-free and I am deeply appreciative to the true heroes of this country, the nurses and hospital staff, doctors who truly care about their patients.
If you’re a healthcare worker, thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I can’t say thank you enough. I can see it in everybody’s eyes that they’re exhausted, yet somehow, something drives them to continue to go to work every day in an environment where the risk is high and the pay scale is not.
Comments
Danielle Colby Striptease Historian
Thank you 🙏
Danielle Colby Striptease Historian
Wow! This is so very familiar. I’m not gonna lie it has me a little bit concerned because I am in a very similar situation to what you were in, however I’m going to think positively and hope for the best🙏 thank you so much for sharing your experience with me and the rest of us. I’m going to take a moment to process this information 💗
Andrew Connolly
So brave of you to talk so openly about all of your personal issues. I have had a friend in the past with the same issue and all I can say is I send you my most heartfelt best wishes and hope you get better soon 🥰
Shelley Johnson
I can’t respond on your last comment, but here’s what happened to me- and it is crazy it’s this time of year, because four years ago at this time I quite literally felt like I was dying. I had a huge cyst, like the size of a pumpkin. I was scheduled for it to come out on 10/31/18, but for a week before that, I was practically bedridden from it pushing on my organs. I didn’t know it was cancer beforehand, but I knew it COULD be. A couple hour surgery turned into like six, and because they tested the cyst while I was still under, they knew it was cancerous and went ahead and did and entire debulking of all of my reproductive organs plus part of my colon and spleen. I had some post surgical complications and then had to have an NG tube until my insides “woke up”. I was in the hospital 13 days, but I was never so happy to have the cyst removed. I would venture to say that you won’t have a traumatic time like me, and if you’re able to have it laparoscopically, you will recover just fine! I had a huge incision but it healed up nicely. I did chemo and here I am. I wasn’t scared of the surgery because I felt so bad leading up to it. I’ll be thinking about you!
Kevin Barnes
Xx.
Greg Smith
Bless you Dannie. The candle is lit. ❤️❤️❤️🙏🙏🙏
Danielle Colby Striptease Historian
I love you ❤️ thank you for sharing your stories with me. It has helped me prepare for the surgery. I’m trying to remember all the details. There’s a lot of wisdom you have shared with me🤗
Danielle Colby Striptease Historian
Thank you Greg, I feel your love and do appreciate and happily receive your prayers. I do believe prayer and meditation help. I’ve been doing a great deal of it lately. I can’t sleep in the night very much because that’s when the pain hits hardest , so I light a candle, set an intention and mourn the loss of my uterus and thank it for all the beautiful things it has done for me. I almost feel like the waves of pain are like cries from a newborn baby after you deliver. Every time my new baby would cry, my uterus would contract and it would take my breath away. It was reminding me to stop what I’m doing and address the babies needs. Also nursing brought on contractions so I’m trying to add good memories to the pain so that I can find comfort in the waves of pain. Sounds weird but it helps me feel grateful for having had this opportunity to have been born with a uterus. But I’m excited for a future with no pain from this ever again. It has brought me even closer to my kids and mom.🌺
Danielle Colby Striptease Historian
❤️🤗❤️ thank you Bud, we are falling more in love through this journey. Learning to rely on each other.
Danielle Colby Striptease Historian
Thank you Jeff🙏❤️🙏 the love is felt
Danielle Colby Striptease Historian
Thank you kindly Wes, I appreciate your kindness. I hope Illinois stays awake. As a society we are getting lazy about caring for our ill, elderly, disabled populations. I’m able to afford this surgery but it greatly changes my financial security. I’m fortunate that I put emergency savings away (thank you Haley). We could never afford insurance growing up. And my folks worked hard but had a small business that didn’t afford them the luxury of insurance. Obviously I never saw a dentist unless it was emergency. The only time I ever really saw a doctor was if there was an emergency. I relate doctors with emergency rooms. I wish folks didn’t have to suffer due to money. If I had one wish…💗🙏💗
Danielle Colby Striptease Historian
Thank you Matt, Please send your sister my love. Thank you for supporting your sister. It’s crazy how much I’m learning to ask for help and rely on people. I’m generally not quick to do that but I’m finding that it makes life feel softer and more enjoyable. Thank you for coming along on this journey with me.🌺
Danielle Colby Striptease Historian
💗🙏💗 thank you! It’s only going to get better from here. Thank the Gods!
Danielle Colby Striptease Historian
I love you too my sister! I miss our talks. I can’t wait to be well enough to talk more and even come back to New York. Stillness has always been a struggle for me so I’m learning a lot right now. I need to hug you soon ❤️🤗❤️
Danielle Colby Striptease Historian
🙏💗🙏 please send her my love and compassion.
Danielle Colby Striptease Historian
Shelly, what strange time, isn’t it? I’m so encouraged to hear from you because you have experience that is useful and important. My friend kim has been sharing her stories too. We’re you afraid of the surgery? Did you know your cancer diagnosis before they removed and biopsied your uterus? I’m getting less afraid with the advancing pain. Now I just want to feel better. Thank you for sharing! 💗🙏💗
Danielle Colby Striptease Historian
It’s only going to get better from here. I’m so excited for it!🤗
Danielle Colby Striptease Historian
Thank you for the love ❤️🙏❤️ it’s deeply felt.
Danielle Colby Striptease Historian
Christopher, it truly touches everyone doesn’t it? I watched my mother go through this too. It’s a total loss of control of the body. Like a shock that waves it’s way through the body, effecting motor skills, so it’s so hard to communicate in the moment. Thank you for being a support to the femmes around you. 💗🙏💗
dmo
Sorry to hear you are not feeling well. Wishing your a speedy recovery!!
Christopher Langlais
So good to hear that you finally were able to see the gyno and learn what the issue was. Almost every woman in my life, that I’m close to, has had these fibroid tumors. My girlfriend is dealing with them right now, when I got married, in Italy, in a previous life, my stepmother had to miss the wedding because a few days prior she lay bleeding on the floor of a shopping mall bathroom with ruptured fibroid tumors. I’m sending all the love and healing vibes that I can muster! I hope your surgery goes well and you feel better soon 🥰♥️
David Johnson
Its a struggle to stay well in life and it's a much bigger struggle for women. The damn health care system is supported by hard working people who sincerely love their jobs. Just too much greed by the drug and pharmaceutical companies. If you're poor just forget about the best care. You stay strong and stubborn against this challenge. You have a good support team and will come out of this better than ever. 🤗❤💛💜💚
Cleanwolf
This sounds like such a rough and stressful time. Hope you get to feeling a lot better after your surgery! 💜💜💜
Shelley Johnson
Hey Danielle- I had Ovarian Cancer so I somewhat understand this journey. I wish you the best. I hated leaving my chemo care team- it was bittersweet.
Kevin Barnes
So sorry Danielle.Thanks for your comments about my mum too.She is hanging in there.God speed your recovery and happiness.
Jo Weldon
Love you, Danielle! I'm glad you're getting the care you need.
B Z
Gosh! Danielle, I'm so sorry to hear all of this. I'm glad that you have a great doctor. I'm glad that you didn't wait any longer. God speed!
Matt Forrest
Well Danni it's ammazing that you shared so much of your personal health struggles. My sister was an obgyn so we had some pretty colorful family gatherings with some of her stories. She also had to have a hysterectomy due to cancer. Much love to you while you travel through these processes. Know that it quite refreshing that you are being yourself as a whole person and sharing. Wishing you a successful surgery and easy recovery. Take care you sweet awesome person.
Wes Melton
Glad you are able to get the healthcare that you need. Not surprised that it is in Illinois. IL is fast becoming a beacon state for women's healthcare since a lot of the rest of the country has lost their minds. Not sure what part of the state you are in but if you need anything and I could help, I would be willing. I live in the central part of the state. Take care.
Jeff Black
So sorry to hear about this, Sweet Lady. I hope you get long term relief after this awful and scary chapter of Life. Long distance Love and Hugs. ❤️
Bud March
Danielle, thank you so much for sharing this part of yourself with us. I wish you all the very best in your surgery and healing. Wishing you and Jeremy and all your family the strength that it takes.
Greg Smith
Oh Dannie! I don't know what to say. I'm sitting here with tears in my eyes as I read about what you are dealing with right now. I know that you're not big on religion so I will only say that may God protect you and Jeremy. With His help you will be fine. Thank you for sharing with us a very personal time in your life. I'll be praying for you to have a speedy and complete recovery. Love you very sincerely sweetie. Take care❤❤❤
Kim Rice
You got this! I’m glad to hear your surgery is soon. Still hoping you can get the laparoscopic. 🤞 Please let us know once everything is said and done. Love you, sister witch! 🖤♥️🖤
