why is prolapse devastating

I completely agree, and this is why I am having such a hard time trying to get my husband to understand my complete devestation. Just for the function of us as women, we don't make love with our arthritic knees, or worry about the knee falling off if we carry our toddlers, or if that painful knee will keep us from caring for our families in the way of keeping our homes, playing with our children, exercising to keep our bodies healthy and let's face it appealing. It's the whole package... Not too mention, our knees would only bother us here and there, we are constantly aware of what is wrong when we have prolapse. And also, I for one never knew this could happen until it did! I would have been more prepared, and also maybe worked on more prevention. I know if I over do it, my knee could blow out....not my but, bladder, or uterus!!! Men have it easy!

I think you and 518 have voiced it pretty well, alemama. It is tied to the most basic and lifelong identity we have -- our gender. It seems to come out of nowhere (aren't we all afraid of those "bumps in the night"). And it comes directly or years after (most times) having already sacrificed a lot of personal comfort to have and raise children. I knew there would be "sacrifices," but never fathomed like this. That no one else understands what POP is also makes a difference IMO. My DH is fabulous, but couldn't get the concept of bulges. I'm not about to give him a detailed tour! An Aleve can do a lot for a bum knee, but not for prolapse. Most activities that endanger a bum knee can be avoided. For prolapse, not so much. Although WW opens an amazing amount of doorways!

Alemama, thankyou so much for posting this topic. I think you are right too, about it being tied up intimately with our woman-ness.

Badmirror, I think you are equally right in perceiving that it often comes after years of willing sacrifice and giving. It also can come as an unwelcome dampener of feminine integrity to a woman who has not even had babies yet, though most women do think about having babies from quite early on, and decide that it is something further into their future. "What did I do wrong, that I deserve this difficulty?" or, "Is this the reward I get for pouring myself lovingly into these little kids that are fruit of our loins?" It comes from way down deep, where we don't usually go.

Older women who have grown children have seens tangible results of the sacrifice and giving that they have done, hopefully in the form of healthy, young adults who are competent human beings. This too will come to younger Mums who are still doing it hard, with the physical work and mental work of growing kids up. I can only tell you that it is just *magic* watching your kids turn into adults, able to make difficult decisions, able to live independently in the world, listening to their adult thinking taking over from their child thinking. That's what makes all the hard work and worry worthwhile. Then there are grandchildren ... maybe.

However for an older woman it does come with another cost. Getting prolapse when you are older, POP is often taken as another sign of having budded, flowered, the petals of the rose now drooping, drying up and falling back to the earth. I know that it is not purely a sign of ageing, but it is related to the end of our reproductive lives because everything seems to take a plunge at menopause. It reminds us of our mortality, and who wants that? (IMHO, keeping an eye on your mortality and what it means, and looking at it in terms of your faith, is a more complete way of looking at it.)

I try to look at it as a badge of honour, a scar from the turmoil, but you have to get to this stage, or older, before you can look at it like this. As a younger woman it is probably more like a fresh wound or a seeping, half-healed wound, and you feel helpless and vulnerable. But like the dicky knee, which gives you spasmodic or constant worry, you can work around it. You can look after it. You can get used to it, and scars do fade. Sometimes they just blend in to all the other scars and become relatively less significant.

Unlike the dicky knee, other people ignore it. It is invisible to others, so you don't get sympathy. And commercial, consumer interests, whether it fashion, food, consumer goodies, medicines, gyms, just play on the feelings of being inadequate, too big, too small, broken, past it, bad in bed, knee won't work, etc. This is largely through tapping in to our lower level feelings about ourselves, our libido, our quest to be likable or desirable, and our quest to reproduce and be loved. It is not only POP sufferers who get this rap. It is everybody, but women don't tend to share POP difficulties with each other. For some reason POP really drills privately into our inadequacy, our acceptability, and our feelings of shame, not being good enough. Why? I don't know. It is a pretty irrational thing. This is unlike the quest for recipes, home decorating ideas, fashion bargains, the latest diet. Shopping and thinking about shopping is fun. Well, they try to make us think it is, anyway, even the prospect of buying a big jar of glucosamine and chondroitin to take the edge off the dicky knee. Having POP is not fun. There are really no pleasurable activities we can do to help us feel better about it, other than taking the risks on the surgical treadmill, or attending to posture, exercise, good food, being mindful of how we work, and coming here to share our experiences, look for answers, and have the odd laugh.

Hey, that's quite a bit that we can do!

What are you going to do with your head space?

Cheers

Louise

All reasons you have said.

It is frightening. And I feel alone a lot. It is crazy, but sometimes I see all those happy moms and think it is not fair everybody is healthy and happy except me...bad, bad!
Liv

Betcha anything that there is also a bit of "Put on a happy face" happening with the other women! It may be a different story for some of them when they are alone at home. We all need to be kind to each other, no matter how a woman looks on the outside.

Cheers

Louise

Maybe for some but not for me. The problems I have with prolapse are only pragmatic. As long as I have my orgasmer (uterus) - and it works - and as long as my hubby treats me as if I still looked like Raquel Welch even though now I look more like Susan Boyle, I feel completely womanly. My husband seems oblivious to my prolapse. He reacts positively when I treat him sweetly. That seems more important to him than the fact that my body is aging. He's aging too; I won't get into how he's changed. I really would not want him to feel that he is less "manly" over it. He's as manly as he acts, so I figure I'm as womanly as I act toward him. He just accepts himself; I accept myself, and we accept each other. I guess my relationship with him is what makes me feel womanly, not my sex organs. But like I say... as long as that uterus stays connected to me... and even the post menopausal ovaries... I probably have the hormones and chemistry to remain this way. I have far more trouble with my joints and my legs than my POP. Severe and constant leg pain and back pain are far more disabling than my POP. Maybe it's just a relative thing - whatever is worst on you, devastates you the most. I guess if I got cancer of the pancreas all of a sudden my leg pain would be no big deal. We all have our own crosses to bear.

EDIT: Afterthought: this is how I am NOW. I have past menopause and am emotionally more stable than I've ever been before. If you had asked me this a year ago I would have told you I am ready to tear my husband's throat out.

I have so many thoughts on this one, alemama

I think the big difference between a knee injury and prolapse is the disfigurement. not only does it attack one's concept of 'woman' but I think that anything that changes our physical/cosmetic appearance has the potential to bring on a depression type reaction.
so I think in the short term, for me anyway, a prolapse is more devastating that a bum knee, but the reverse is probably true for the long term.
when I started losing my hearing I didn't have any of that depression/devastation stuff. now that I'm over the cosmetic issues of prolapse and know that I still function pretty well as a woman, the hearing loss is a much bigger deal on a day to day basis.

Wow, hearing loss...that must be scary! hugs
I am dealing with PKD (policystic kidney disease), but so far I am asymptomatic, and my kidneys are fine, but I have a 50-60% chance I'd need dialysis or transplantation in my 40s or 50s or 60s. It is not devastating for me right now, but prolapse IS.

I worry that my POP can be worse, and this is the devastating part for me. I guess this time next year I'll be more confident about my body and my ability to heal. Right now...not so much.

Liv

Hi Liv

Devastated raised this point in another post. I agree with her it that the secrecy and stigma that really p***** me off. It is like the troll under the bridge, or the monster under the bed. You can only deal with your fear if you can rationalise it. You can only rationalise it by dragging it out and playing with it (metaphorically) until it no longer has any power over you. But if little is spoken about it by those whom we trust, and it is not spoken about in terms of a potential problem to avoid by doing childbirth differently, or by teaching girls posture differently, or by getting people fit differently, or by feeding our bodies differently, then the monster just grows and grows in people's heads until it is so big that people won't even give it an airing at all, instead pretending that if we don't talk about it, it will go away. It won't!

In this way POP is just about as fashionable as sexual abuse of children, which has been traditionally dealt with by ignoring it, which just feeds it. Thankfully, people all over the world are at last dragging that dreaqdful monster out from under the bed and dealing with it more openly. If one child is spared this abomination by talking about it, bringing it out in the open and stopping the perpetrators, then feeling a bit uncomfortable about facing up to the monster is a small price to pay.

This may seem like an extreme parallel, but in principle, I don't think it is. Countless women over the years have given birth in a hurry, at the mercy of patriarchal 'healthcare' systems, hospital shift changes, anaesthetised and 'brutalised' without their consent, talked or ordered into birthing on their backs instead of upright, etc. Women's physical integrity has been belittled, overshadowed by Big Med. Sorry if you think that last statement is Feminist Twaddle, but I believe it from the bottom of my heart.

Could I have given birth safely to a healthy baby, naturally, upright, and without the epidural I did not want, 27 years ago, when I had pre-eclampsia, and ended up with labour and birthing on my back, feet in stirrups, forceps and monster episiotomy that seems to have resulted in POPs? I do not know, and I never will know. Would I have ended up with pre-ecalmpsia if I hadn't eaten a gigantic Chinese meal that, as usual, blew me up like a balloon the next morning, the night before I was admitted? Again, I will never know, but I will make sure that my daughter doesn't pig out on Chinese when she is pregnant.

It is all shades of grey, this childbirth business. Nothing in life is perfect, but I think a lot more respect for the female body and its amazing design would go a long way towards preventing POP in the first place.

Rant over.

Louise

You know, you can talk about your messed-up knee with just about anybody, till they're sick of hearing about it. But you can't unload and share strategies of dealing with your POP with anybody, except online in these forums. Plus, it's just so darned personal, and it affects your lifestyle a lot. Then they are the people that tell you that there's a surgical solution for your problem. My friend told me her mother had POP surgery done and lives an "active lifestyle," which my friend went on to describe as being able to drive a car to go shopping and play cards. It's just not good enough for me. So I've been living like I don't have POP, but I fear it will get worse. Then I think about people with life-threatening illnesses, and since mine is really only lifestyle threatening, I have to back off from the pity party. Another curve ball from Life.