(This is me, right after I had a complete hysterectomy. It's been several years, but this time in my life is indelibly imprinted in my mind....)

On the outside it appears as if I have everything a woman could possibly want. I'm living a fairy tale life with a wonderful husband, extraordinary daughter, and a beautiful home. But on the inside I am crumbling.

Disintegrating. And slowly. I'm trapped in a body that I no longer know, as if my mind and heart have been plucked from my old, familiar body and thrust into a new one that is not only foreign, it is falling apart.

When you’re ill, it’s hard to remember what it was ever like to feel good. It’s easy to lose hope. That’s where I am now, lying in bed, gazing at the ceiling above the window that faces the backyard. I watch the swirl of reflected light from the swimming pool dancing on the ceiling until my eyes blur over and my eyelids fall shut. I don’t have the energy to open them again. I hear my housekeeper stirring in my closet and wish that she would leave. She's no help to me. She can organize my closet. She can make polite excuses to my friends whose phone calls I don't have the strength to return. She can supply me an endless supply of clean sheets that I need more and more frequently because of my horrible night sweats. But she can’t do what I really need. What I desperately need. She can’t lift me from this body that can barely crawl from the bed where I lay; trapped, inert, and waiting for my fairy tale turned nightmare to be over.