Surgery Updates

I went in as scheduled on January 13th bright and early for my hysterectomy. They did a supracervical hysterectomy meaning they took everything except my cervix and ovaries which is what I wanted. The surgery required a bikini line C-section type cut. Everything went really well with surgery, it took about 3 hours and now I am in the hospital recovering.

This is where you can stop reading if you don't want to know the nitty gritty of what they found or if stuff like that interests you, continue on reading...

When they opened me up they found lesions on the outside of my uterus which tells them I had Endometriosis growing on the outside of my uterus (which they had suspected years ago before I started having children, but it can only be confirmed with surgery, so I never found out for sure until now.) They also discovered that inside the uterus I had Adenomyosis which is uterine lining that was growing into the uterine muscle itself and bleeding into that muscle each time I had a cycle. Another thing they found that I had been having what is called reversed periods where the bleeding goes up into the fallopian tubes and bleeds out into the abdomen, so I had pooled blood in my abdomen. All of these things combined shows why I was in such horrible pain and why I was bleeding so much. It just confirms in my mind that this was the right course of action for me to take. Hearing these things also makes me so grateful that I was able to get pregnant and stay pregnant and have 5 children. I really feel like that in and of itself is a miracle!

So this is a super painful procedure. I have never had a C-section, so I don't know how to compare it to people who have, but the first day felt like having a constant contraction, extreme cramping and pain. Today the cramping is gone, but I am having really bad sharp pains that feel like someone is stabbing my abdomen repeatedly. This morning, they were talking about letting me go home today because they took out the catheter and I was getting up and walking to the bathroom. But later they had to put in another catheter because I had been to the bathroom 4 times and each time had voided 500 ml of fluid, but was still feeling lots of pressure, which was making the other abdominal pain even worse. The nurse did a bladder scan and found that I still had 800 ml of fluid in there. They put the catheter in thinking that must have been a mistake, and then I proceeded to void 1,000 ml of fluid into the cath bag. I am still having bladder retention problems so they are keeping the catheter in until tomorrow morning. This afternoon I developed Mastitis again. I will be seeing the doctor hopefully in the morning and she can prescribe some antibiotics for the mastitis. So they are keeping me for at least another night and day. We will see how things go tomorrow. They moved me down to the pnu now so I have a private room, which is nice. Once I got moved, they also gave me an abdominal belt to help support my muscles better when I move. I walked around the nurses station 3 times for my exercise. Such a little thing, but it wore me out.

My mom is holding down the fort at home and I am so grateful for her help. Don is running Marcus back and forth to me at the hospital so I can keep nursing.

Thanks for the prayers, happy thoughts, and support everyone ~ Much appreciated!