It's a little early to be thinking about 2017. But maybe because I'm so anxious for the disaster that is 2016 to be over, I've already started planning parts of next year.

Instead of a New Year's resolution, like many people make and often break, I create mantras for my year.

It's an idea I picked up in therapy for depression and anxiety a few years ago. When faced with a panic-inducing situation, my therapist recommended repeating a mantra to help me work through it.

Her suggestion was something like "This, too, shall pass." Mine ended up being "Will I die from this? No, I won't."

(It was a difficult year, okay?)

Likewise, I've crafted a few mantras over the years to help me set a tone or mindset for the new year, rather than a list of things I'd like to accomplish that I'll forget about and never do.

My junior year of college, my mantra was "Shameless," as in, "I'm going to do things without regard to what people think of me."

For 2016, it was "I will wear what I want." Pretty self-explanatory. The above picture is one of the products of that mantra.

This upcoming year, my mantra is "I'm not afraid of you." And I've already started to apply it.

When facing my second endometriosis surgery two weeks ago, I couldn't deny that I was scared. Not so much for the surgery itself, although anesthesia always freaks me out, but because I didn't know what it would hold for me.

Looking back, my first surgery was a cluster. By that, I mean I had a doctor so hellbent on proving that I didn't have endometriosis that I don't believe I received the care that I needed. I know I can't really say that he for sure didn't get everything out in my surgery that he could have. But it's a feeling both me and my husband, Andrew have had.

This time around, I found that my endometriosis has migrated to another organ, my bladder. And that was frustrating to hear but, ultimately, inevitable.

I was hesitant to even have this surgery done because, honestly, I was scared. I feared the IUD and pelvic floor injections that would be added to cutting and burning off endometriosis sites. I was afraid of a longer recovery and complications. I had it in my mind that my body would hate my IUD and that I'd be one of the horror stories in women's health magazines that read "WOMAN'S UTERUS TWISTS AROUND IUD AND NOW SHE IS JUST A HEAD SOMEHOW."

But for most of these scary things that I confront with my illness, I won't know if it will help me until I get over my fear of more pain and more problems and just try.

The same goes for my fear of offending or annoying my doctors. For the most part, I got over that fear pretty damn quick. Having a bad doctor and a delayed diagnosis will make you appreciate self-advocacy a lot more... 

But I still fear upsetting my physicians and other medical professionals with my insistence and stubbornness. I dread getting frustrated and tired over playing phone tag and begging for prior authorizations. I'm afraid of alienating people who are trying to help me when I say "no" to certain treatments or ask probing questions.

But why? Honestly, why? What can I expect from doing nothing at all, besides more nothing?

If I can be candid, the past few months of my life have been consumed with fear and anger. These feelings turned to numbness when election results rolled in the night before my surgery. 

Deep down, I am still afraid. I'm afraid for my health care and any changes that could affect treatment for my chronic illness. I fear for my friends who have bigger fears, and I fear for how things around me will change. 

But most of all, I fear that I can't do anything about it.

And that's the purpose of my mantra: to force me to act in spite of my fear. Maybe a truer mantra would be "Okay, I really am afraid of you, but I can't just stand here paralyzed, so I'm going to do something about it." But that doesn't fit neatly at the top of my day planner...

I still think I have plenty of reasonable fears. Like "I don't want to go out tonight because I hurt, and I'm afraid of hurting further." Or "I don't want to drive three hours by myself because I'm afraid I'll fall asleep."

But I'm learning to categorize some of these thoughts as "danger." "I'm in danger of hurting myself further from this action because it's happened before, like, every single time" as opposed to "I'm afraid of hurting more down the road from a treatment I haven't tried yet that I know can be successful."

There have always been times I've feared how people will view me. I've feared losing friends or saying the wrong thing. I've feared feeling things I didn't want to feel or looking like an idiot. I've feared additional diagnoses and being told "Well, this is all we can do for you." But I'm turning all of my fears into action, advocacy and activism, as best as I possibly can.

This week, Andrew and I booked a summer vacation. I'm taking advantage of the able body I currently have and pushing aside my fears of wearing myself out or ending up in pain while hiking through national parks. I know that Future Tracy will thank me for casting aside these fears and allowing myself freedom beyond my body.

And soon, I will return to the gym for the first time since my surgery. I won't allow myself to be afraid to see how far I have to go in my recovery. Or afraid of how frustrated I'll be to see how much progress I lost. Or afraid of setting the elliptical to a lower speed and accepting that I have to start over.

This is a conversation I will have to have with myself every day for the rest of my life, probably. But for now, I will move forward, even if it's a slow crawl at the start.

This week, I had the unique pleasure of having surgery the day after Election Day. (I will reserve my comments on that for a later blog post.)

If you've followed my journey for a while, you'll know my first surgery (the one that diagnosed me) was done by a different doctor. I'm no longer with him because, in short, he wanted to prove I didn't have endometriosis, didn't give me any medication after my follow-up appointment and just told me to get pregnant. NEAT.

My current ob-gyn, despite being chronically unavailable, is pretty great. She's always willing to work with me to find a treatment I'm comfortable being on, and most of all, she gets endometriosis. So when her nurse called me the day before to tell me I was in good hands, I sincerely believed it and still do.

My husband, Andrew and I showed up at the hospital after driving around looking for Door 5 forever. I promise my hospital isn't as sketch as this picture looks, but Andrew and I were both wondering if it meant I'd wake up years later from a coma during the zombie apocalypse... And I was kind of cool with it, given the election results.

I was due for surgery at 10:45 a.m., but as it approached noon, I still hadn't been moved. The longer I waited, the more tired and sore I became. I hadn't been allowed to take any painkillers for the two weeks prior to my surgery, and I desperately wanted a heating pad... or anesthesia. I'd take that, too.

I twisted in my bed, trying to get comfortable, and fell asleep at least twice before my ob-gyn and anesthesiologist showed up to talk about usual pre-surgery things. "We're going to cut you open..." Yep. "...and get rid of what we find..." Yeah. "...and it'll be great times." Totally.

An attendant finally showed up to roll me away, and I kissed Andrew goodbye. As opposed to my first surgery, I was pretty chill about this one, but my heart always sinks before major medical procedures. It's almost like another part of me is being chipped away and given to a disease I can't cure and didn't ask for. So as I tried to crack jokes and smile at my husband, I choked up a little bit, just simply overwhelmed by the heaviness that is endometriosis.

My operating room was absolutely freezing, as they tend to be, and my team of doctors buzzed around the room. They got me situated on the table and made sure I had plenty of warm blankets, which is seriously the best part of being at a hospital, besides the socks.

Then came the mask. "This is just pure oxygen," my anesthesiologist said. I immediately became dizzy as the anxiety hit me.

"Oh, you must be nervous!" a surgeon said. "Your heart rate just jumped."
"Uhh yep!"

My anesthesiologist soothingly told me to think of a nice dream to have, even though I never dream under anesthesia. (Do people do that?) I took deep breaths of oxygen, trying to calm myself down as three women stared down at me.

Then one of them took my hand, and it was honestly the most important thing that happened to me that day. After remaining nearly speechless for 24 hours, numbed by a presidential election and my impending surgery, I wanted to cry as this complete stranger held my hand and anesthesia flooded my veins.

I fell asleep holding her hand and woke up in an instant, hours later.

Post-surgery with apple juice

Just like my last surgery, I woke up on my left side. My teeth were chattering from the anesthesia and my pain was pretty... uhh... painful.

"On a scale of 1 to 10..."
Oh, here we go.
"...how bad is your pain?"

Unable to talk from the tube that had been down my throat, I held up seven fingers. Seven is usually a safe bet.

But as my nurses talked among themselves, my pain escalated, and I hoarsely asked to be shifted to my back. That didn't help. I held up eight fingers.

"Okay, well, your doctor didn't order you pain meds, so..."

...excuse me, what?

You cut into my uterus, burned off stuff and... didn't order me pain meds?!?!

The nurses quickly called my doctor as I stared at the ceiling, wondering why the hell I didn't have morphine. I thanked them as they spoon-fed me ice chips and did  That situation was remedied in a few minutes, luckily, and I focused on taking deep breaths to fully come out of anesthesia. I was having a lot of trouble keeping my eyes open this time, but instead of sleeping, I desperately wanted to know what happened in my surgery.

I was soon wheeled into recovery to talk to Andrew about what my ob-gyn said and to watch Arthur:

My fave

As I slowly sipped some apple juice, Andrew retold what my doctor said and showed me pictures of my uterus (which I'll spare you).

"It was everywhere."
What does that mean?
"I don't know. She said they moved something, and it was everywhere. You see those black dots?"
Yeah.
"That's what they burned off."
Oh, yeah. That is everywhere.
"They found some on your bladder..."
Oh, great.
"...but you don't have interstitial cystitis. "
I TOLD them I didn't have it! I TOLD THEM.
"But they said everything looked great. They did the injections, and you have an IUD."
So that's it?
"That's pretty much it."

So that's all I really know right now about my surgery. Apparently, my doctor did come talk to me, but I was completely out of it and don't remember... I guess they have to do that, even if you're not aware of the world around you.

I don't really know what this means for my endometriosis, as far as staging does, but I'm not sure a label matters. My endo has officially migrated to another organ, which sucks, but I'm hoping my Mirena IUD does what it allegedly can do and slows it own.

Stages, for those who don't know, don't really mean much as far as symptoms go. You can have stage I endometriosis and experience crippling pain. And you can have stage IV and experience no symptoms at all.

I was diagnosed with "minimal endometriosis," but in just two years, things have progressed pretty significantly from what I can tell right now. I'll know more during my post-op in late December, but I do know that it took longer to recover from this surgery than my first, making me think they did a lot more work. (I also had an IUD, injections and am fighting an infection I had beforehand, so there's that...)

I haven't had much time to absorb my surgery. My emotions have been focused on the election results, and they haven't strayed. But I think I'll have more feelings about it, when I take the time to let them come.

For now, I'm focused on my recovery, which is almost over. I should be okay to drive tomorrow, and I left my house yesterday for the first time.

I'm ready to face the next chapter of my endometriosis journey.