The surgery went cleanly, but Eve was sent into a spiralling depression over some details. The surgeon did as good a job as he could in reducing the surgery scars Eve would have. Three one-inch incisions were made, and the entire operation was performed through those. But those incisions were leaving very obvious scars on Eve's stomach, and this tore at her constantly.

I, of course, reassured Eve constantly that the scars didn't matter to me, but it wasn't for me that she wanted her body to be perfect. It was for her art. Some of her greatest photography was done as nudes, and semi-nudes. And for this, her skin had to be perfect. This entire category of her artistic expression was being taken away from her. We tried topical creams, directly applied Vitamin E, everything we could think of, but only her belly-button scar seemed to heal well. The other two scars remained very visible.

The other frustration that ate her up inside was that she had specifically asked her surgeon, on several occasions, that she wanted the remains of the cist as a keepsake. The cist, however, was not as solid as the X-rays had indicated, and there really wasn't much that could be salvaged. The doctor decided, off-hand, to just forget about it. A few pictures were taken, including a VCR recording of some of the surgery, but none of these show much at all. Eve was REALLY wanting SOMETHING, though. She was using the hope for a keepsake as a way to see something, anything, positive to be taken away from this operation. When she didn't get it, she felt horribly betrayed. Once again a doctor had lied to her, ignored her, and when she talked to him about her problems, the doctor refused to be even the slightest bit sympathetic to her.

And I believe that this was a major cause of her suicidal depression. Throughout all of this ordeal, she was forever at the mercy of people who showed absolutely NO sympathy to her. They didn't care. So many things that horrified Eve, that caused her such intense physical and emotional pain and anguish, were thrown onto her without a second thought. And it was contempt and disgust at her that was OFTEN returned when she complained. Eve had many times said to me that she was not meant for this world. What was supposed to work for everyone else, didn't work for her. What didn't hurt for anyone else, caused horrible pain for her. What mattered to her, didn't matter to anyone else. What was intrinsically obvious to her, seemed completely beyond the grasp of everyone else. And I couldn't argue with it, because I had ALWAYS felt the same way about myself. We had found each other, and that was my entire world, and I was content with that. But this wasn't enough for Eve, for living in this world was constant torture.