Today is six weeks post-op and I am confident I am 100% recovered! I managed the entirety of the first segment of my Inhale Steve Ross yoga today, I managed 10 minutes on my stationary bike, and I managed a lot of my arm-related physical therapy exercises.
I am feeling really, really good about having the hysterectomy. All things considered, my recovery was as uncomplicated as I could have asked for. I am thrilled.
I got a vaccination yesterday and was asked if there was any chance I was pregnant for the first time. I just laughed and said, “Nope,” and explained about the surgery. The nurse laughed when I told her it was the first time I’d been asked that question since the surgery.
We will have family visiting for the next few days and I am thrilled about that, too! Bowling is on the agenda; we might go to a jazz concert tonight, and of course the fireworks for the 4th. We like to go to the overlook by the high school to sit because it’s not quite as crowded.
I decided to hold off on selling any of my camera gear. It would be better to sell after I officially close the business in August anyway. Plus, Jared is right: we do not have the funds currently to replace my camera if I broke it or if it started malfunctioning, so it is best to hold onto the backup GFX 50sII for now. I will likely reassess in January or so.
I did figure out I can do 1:1 macro photography with my Schneider-Kreuznach Cinelux lens, however, and I am thrilled! The photo above of one of our aging hydrangeas is one of my first attempts. It’s tricky and limited, however, because I only have the f2 aperture, of course. It works for shots like this but I will have to be picky about how I go about such photography because of the thin depth of field. Not complaining at all, it’s just an artistic feature. Another reason that lens is one of my favorites.
I really do think it is possible I could survive with just my 80mm f1.7 Fuji lens, that Cinelux lens, and my 50mm f2 Minolta lens. Food for thought, for sure.
Four weeks and two days after my hysterectomy, I am finally feeling okay enough to do some light exercise. So, today:
five minutes on the stationary bike
20 chest fly’s
15 reps of my five physical therapy stretch band arm exercises
I’m feeling pretty great about all that, if a little tired after.
Jared and I got out to the lake last night and I got a sort-of interesting shot with the help of some lens flare:
I was feeling sort of bummed last night. At the lake, I also tested some of my lenses on one of my cameras that has been fussy about its autofocus capabilities lately…..as in, sometimes the autofocus doesn’t work. I’d been planning to sell one of my cameras to help pay down some of our debt, but obviously I can’t sell a camera that might not be at its best. And I would send it to Edison, NJ for repair if I could reliably get the problem to replicate but it doesn’t always malfunction. So when I took this photo, I was sort of in a mood. The lens flare, though somewhat interesting, also captured the hazy frustration I was feeling.
But this morning, I remembered that I do have a good number of manual focus lenses: I love my Minolta and my Cinelux lenses! And, the camera works just fine in manual focus. So, it appears that moving forward I will simply have a manual focus Fuji GFX camera and a GFX camera that I use my native lenses with. Not ideal for my plan to pay down our debt, but it does make use of my current gear and is probably a pretty darn good plan moving forward.
Sometimes I have brief flickers of just selling all my photo gear and getting out of photography altogether. I know that is not likely healthy, and I know I’d likely just want to start up again probably less than a year after I got out.
Today’s goal was basic: get a shower. Goal accomplished.
Tuesday was a rough day; I wasn’t feeling physically great after having way-overdone it on Monday. I was pretty sure I was going to have to go back in, which now feels funny considering it’s Friday and I feel much better, if a little washed out.
It is difficult to remember that I am recovering from major surgery. It’s hard to think of it as major surgery because all in all, pain was minimal and I don’t have crazy external incisions at all. Just three tiny little almost cute incisions.
But Tuesday reminded me that I have to take it easy. I don’t like it and I am bored and it feels ridiculous. But it is what it is.
I am considering selling my second camera and a few of my lenses. I sort of have this vision of being a one-camera, one-lens photographer. Kind of funny to circle back around to that after so many years of chasing better and more, photography-wise. But, here we are.
And then there are the days like today where I am writing, where I only took a single photo of Bess our cat, where I just am sort of existing.
It is difficult to be kind to myself sometimes.
Fridays in the summer Jared is off, so we took Oliver to a bouncy house in town earlier in the day:
It’s pretty funny that I got a photo of one of the little kid bouncy houses– Oliver was playing in a lot of others but not this one.
It’s been raining a lot, and with my brief setback earlier in the week, Oliver didn’t make it to the pool. I feel bad about it, but we’re going to try to do more next week.
Two days shy of three weeks ago, I had a complete hysterectomy. They took everything. While medically justified due to family history, they did find problems with both ovaries in surgery that made it apparent they did indeed need to come out. The decision was made initially because I just wanted to prevent problems as I got older, so the timing of the ovarian problems was just a happy coincidence.
The first three or four days were the worst, though the physical pain hasn’t been too bad overall. Now I struggle with the not doing too much, as I feel called now to do things like purge my house of unnecessary clutter and potentially rearrange furniture.
I feel like I should be lamenting the loss of my ability to have more children, but the reality is, I have been mourning that loss of ability for the better part of a decade.
Our youngest son was a surprise pregnancy and I was so traumatized by that pregnancy that I not only got my tubes tied, I insisted on my husband having his own procedure, too. But after the dust had cleared from those procedures, and after I realized that yes, I can be a successful stay at home mom to toddlers, I regretted that sterilization choice.
So, I have been mourning the loss of my fertility for most of a decade so it doesn’t feel that jarring now that it is permanently impossible to have more children.
My husband and I have three beautiful, wonderful, brilliant, kind, and funny boys. I treasure each of them.
In reality, this whole procedure, assuming the rest of recovery goes smoothly, feels like a big gift to myself, not a loss at all. No more periods; immediate menopause so no more years of the back and forth wondering when menopause will come.
I’ve been walking a little with Jared most days at the Marina, and yesterday I started doing my lying chest fly exercises that I love to help my chest and back– they are part of my physical therapy exercises and it felt so good to ease back into them. And I got clearance to drive last Thursday, so I have my freedom again.
Here’s to hoping the remainder of my recovery goes smoothly.
I’ve been struggling with my identity lately, and I know why.
In early adulthood, I associated my identity with my profession. It was not a healthy association, I realize, but it’s what happened.
And then, I qualified for SSDI based on my mental health needs. And so all of a sudden, there was no professional life, and no prospect for one.
And then, I found photography as a mental health outlet.
But then, I took on the idea that I should be a professional photographer, that THAT should be my professional life and identity.
And for the better part of eight years on and off, I have somewhat pigeonholed myself into a part-time version of just that: professional photographer.
Except, now it’s time to do away with the photography business.
I have considered selling some of my gear and downgrading to less bulky and expensive gear in the aftermath, both to pay down some debt but also to sort of step away from the role of professional, in gear as well as identity.
But the reality is: I will always be a photographer, whether I make any money from the endeavor, or not. It’s part of who I am at this point.
And, I absolutely adore my cameras. They are big, but they are big because they are medium format and as far as medium format goes, they are not that big.
And I love the bokeh, and all my lenses– both brand and adapted.
Jared and I have taken a number of steps in the past month to be much more fiscally responsible. Closing down the photography business will help with that, as well. The best thing I can do is not acquire more gear, and continue enjoying and using the equipment I have. Offloading even a portion wouldn’t help in the ways I wish, as trading out gear is always a losing proposition – I definitely know that by now.
It’s hard to quantify and medical and pet expenses made it such that last month we still spent more than planned. But in the last month we have eliminated YouTube TV, Netflix, eight other entertainment type memberships, we spent $501.59 less in groceries between April and May, we spent $52.12 less in eating out. I made the decision this weekend to migrate the hosting of this website to another much cheaper service and that saved us another $100 a year.
We’ve made pretty immediate progress on getting our spending in order and that is much needed and promising. Our spending has long been out of control and the photography business contributed greatly to that end, unfortunately. It is no exaggeration to say that we incurred significant costs to support my business expenses, unfortunately.
It is rather astounding though: I have been shooting with my GFX 50sIIs (well, one of them anyway) for 3.5 years. That’s longer than I have stuck with any single camera ever, since the original Sony Alpha NEX 5N. So there is some progress there, at least.
This identity struggle though: it is rough. I struggle to embrace the role of housewife and mother. I’ve raised a grown son and have another teen and a tween too, and the role of mother has never really felt completely natural, truth be told.
And I do know why it is: I idolized my grandmother and my aunt and my mother, and they all worked their whole lives.
It does not feel natural that I should not do the same. Even though Jared tells me it is fine that I do not, and that my value to him and to our family is in no way tied to my income.
So anyway, that’s the core of one of my major life’s struggles. I do not know if I would struggle in the same way if money were easier for us or not. I like to think that if we didn’t struggle with money, I would worry less about working. But somehow, I suspect that isn’t as relevant an issue as I often believe.
But, at least for today, I’ve settled the issue of whether I should keep the gear, and whether or not at my core I am still a photog.
Also, as an aside: Jared had the idea (that has given him much laughter over the last several days) at the Marina a few days ago that we should make a Duck Butt Blog. It came about when I was bemoaning the fact that the ducks were all putting their heads underwater to fish the other night, making them less picturesque. So I took photos of them with their heads underwater.
So, I came home, and not an hour and a half later, https://duckbutt.blog came into being. It’s a thing and will be an ongoing project. It makes Jared exceedingly happy to have this project even though I am the one who is doing the work, and apparently there is an audience for such, judging by the reaction on WordPress.
Anyway, that’s what’s happening in these parts.
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