My Tale of a Laparoscopic Hysterectomy – October 2008
Let’s start off from the beginning. I started having VERY (and I won’t be graphic but I mean VERY) heavy periods and bad cramping. I went to a local GYN doctor and he examined me, did a pap and ordered an ultrasound and endometrial biopsy. From the exam he said my uterus seemed a bit enlarged. The ultrasound showed 1 small fibroid (probably not the cause of my bleeding) and a thickened endometrial lining. After much reading on the internet, I was told by MANY women that an in-office (with just Motrin for pain) endometrial biopsy was EXCRUTIATING. I told the doctor that I just couldn’t do it awake. He told me that my pap had come back abnormal so he would refer me to a GYN Oncologist anyway.
At GYN Oncology, I was examined again and got conflicting information from the 2 doctors – but she did agree to do a cervical biopsy (for the abnormal pap), a D&C (and get my endometrial biopsy that way), and a hysteroscopy (looking inside the uterus with a camera) under general anesthesia and then we would proceed from there.
I went to same day surgery for that and tolerated things very well. The worst was that the anesthesia guy couldn’t do an IV to save his life. It took 4 attempts with Lidocane that was quite painful. Post surgery, I woke up nicely, bleeding was minimal, and I went home. I was up and about within a couple days, just taking it easy.
The pathology results came in and all was clear of cancer! Thank God! So, the doctor referred me back to a regular (but different – I wasn’t going back to doctor #1 as he was terrible) GYN doctor. I chose to cancel that and go see my GYN doctor from 12 years ago because she is the most amazing person and doctor. She had delivered my 12 year old son back when she was doing both OB and GYN.
She told me all of my options: Birth control pills, Depo Provera shots, IUD, ablation, and hysterectomy. I gave it a lot of thought and decided that the hysterectomy was the best choice for me as it was a guarantee to fix my problems, the other solutions may or may not have worked and I did not want to be back dealing with all of this again in a year.
We scheduled the surgery quickly. Two days prior to surgery I had to do a bowel prep. I drank Magnesium Citrate (Cherry). The dose said 6.5-10 oz for an adult. I went with the 6.5 oz. The stuff was nasty and one more sip would have made it all come up. It took 7 hours to work and I went about 15 times (didn’t get sore but did use baby wipes). I was on an all liquid diet at this point too. The next morning I had 2 more episodes of diarrhea. I didn’t eat much that day just 1 milkshake and a bowl of cream of chicken soup broth. I took 2 days of antibiotics and 4 days of acidophilus.
We got up at 4:30 am to leave at 5:00 so we would be at the hospital at 5:30am. We then waited without much interaction from the hospital staff for 2 hours. I did get an IV (one stick, yeah) during that time. I had a terrible headache from not eating so they let me take 2 Tylenol with a sip of water. It helped a lot.
Finally they came in at 7:30 and gave me a dose of “happy meds” in my IV. I don’t remember anything after that until I woke up. Waking up was HARD. My incision site was VERY painful. I remember asking for pain meds and going back to sleep. Apparently they want you to breathe while sleeping though – which apparently I was not doing. The nurse said no more IV pain meds until I could remember to breathe! I tried and was somewhat more successful.
Once I got stabilized with pain meds, I was still very sore but better. I had to go to the bathroom (the cath was taken out before I woke). The first bathroom trip was in a wheel chair, painful, and not too rewarding (just a small amount that burned when it came out.) I felt very weak and sore after the trip.
I got back and bed and kept dozing off. My throat was very sore from being intubated. I asked for a popsicle and felt much better after having one. The sugar and the cold was helpful. That was when things started getting better for me. It was slow but now that I was on top of the pain meds, the sharp pains in my incisions weren’t as bad. I had one bout of feeling like I would throw up but that quickly passed once I was lying down in my bed. I had to use the bathroom again and had a nice “normal” event and “passed” my tests including walking to the bathroom.
The nurse wanted to start me on oral pain meds but wanted me to eat a cracker or two first. She gave me a package of Graham Crackers. The problem was that my mouth was SOOOOO dry (I had a patch of med behind my ear to also help with nausea and it makes your mouth turn into Cotton Mouth) that I couldn’t eat the cracker with a sip of liquid for each bite. I finally got the cracker down and she gave me liquid Lortab (ughhh, nasty tasting stuff!). Once that kicked in, I felt really good, only mildly sore. I walked to the bathroom a third time (they used up 3 liters of IV solution!) and did well. I told them I was ready to go home.
My doctor came and talked to me. She said my uterus was quite large and she thought I was going to feel so much better once I healed.
At 1:30 pm (6 hours from start to discharge) we went home. I was comfortable on the way home but did have to stop once to use a bathroom AGAIN!!! They told me to stay on top of the pain pills (taking Percocet) and the nausea meds. We got home at 2 pm, I took 1 nausea pill and by 3 pm I was in a lot of pain from the incision site again – I was supposed to wait until 4:30 for the pain pills but couldn’t do it and took it early. I have been doing great since. I haven’t even had to nap. Just typing on the computer, talking to my kids, and still going to the bathroom a TON. There is no bleeding (a tiny bit of brown discharge sometimes). I have 3 incisions. One is in my belly button and one on either side. The left side is the one that hurts, it is bigger (about 2 inches) and is where they had to take the uterus out from. She did my LEEP, removing a cone of tissue from my cervix and stitched it up. I weigh 6 pounds more than I did this morning when I weighed myself, all water weight. I am hungry, awake, and in no pain as long a I don’t move a lot and stay on the pain pills. My doctor said that Thursday and Friday will be harder days as my insides “wake up” from the anesthesia.