“The operating doctors were in shock when they saw the damage to my uterus and ovaries from the years of fertility treatments. It had become a norm for me to undergo fertility treatment every month for close to ten years after my wedding and that led to me bleeding for around a week to ten days every month. One such instance was when I was working in a school, it was the tenth day I was bleeding and my colleagues were pushing me to visit the doctor. Traumatized by the years of injections and treatments, I refused to visit one. But when I fell unconscious, they had to rush me in. That’s when the doctors told me about having to remove my ovaries.

A few weeks after the surgery, I slipped into depression, it was like mourning the loss of every possible fetus over the past decade after the unsuccessful treatment. From the positive person who writes about optimism all the time, I was reduced to a person who cries out of the blue and doesn’t think about where I am when the tears start rolling. I broke ties with a lot of people for good. My husband stood by my side and helped me bounce back to normalcy.
I had already published a poetry collection and with the pictures that my husband had clicked, so I went on to work on the next anthology. In the meantime, I was also collaborating with the Madras 380 anthology, signed up as a book with the Human Library in Chennai and started networking with a lot of people. I brought out my second book with my picture on the cover as I did not want to hide my face or my struggle. I wanted to be the voice for many who suffer in silence. Today, I look back at all those years spent in the hospital and tell myself it was not worth it! Because none of those who ridiculed or criticized me for not bearing a child are around now. And it was my body all along that I was traumatizing through the multiple doses of steroids.”

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