5 Weeks Post-Op Update
Going back to work tomorrow. I'm not 100% confident I'm up to it, but I'm at the point where progress is much slower and I can't get away with skipping out on work much longer. Though since I just got my boss to pay for a really expensive conference in a little over a month, I guess he's not too pissed with me being on med leave. Anyway, I don't think it will be too bad, just that I might need to take it a little easy and go back on painkillers after I mostly dropped them. Though I'm back on daily Celebrex, which my gyno thinks I need to be taking more of and that I shouldn't have stopped taking them after the surgery. My blood sugar has been even more unstable, but she doesn't want to try anything new until I don't have any more internal pain and stomach problems going on (it's been a bit tetchy still, which is to be expected), which makes sense, but that also makes me a bit worried about making it through work.
Fair warning, I may get very blunt here. But I hope my experience may help those of you who may also have to make this decision. Apparently, one in three women have a hysterectomy at some point, which I did not know until recently.
I am happy I got the hysterectomy, even though surgery is definitely no joke. This is my first one, so it has been a learning experience, but it has all gone very well really, no problems. I have four incisions and only one looks like it might have a bad scar. But they look nothing like the awfulness of my mom and sister's c-section scars. They didn't even have to use steri-strips, just glue. So I'm vain and that makes me really happy. There were several women on hystersisters.com who got a hyst the same time as I who had to have staples *shudder*.
It's sometimes hard to tell where the pain is coming from, but I think my abdomen where the instruments went in is mostly good, and that most of my remaining pain is from my vaginal cuff. Since I had my cervix removed, they had to sew my vagina shut and attach it to some ligaments so I won't have to worry about prolapse, but now my vagina will be longer (how much longer is something I will find out later, I guess). I am still on restriction for any kind of vaginal or anal penetration, which has been mostly driving me crazy with frustration from around 2 weeks, even though I don't really think I am up to it anyway. In another week I will get a full pelvic exam so my doc can tell me if I am healing okay inside or if I will be on restriction for longer. I had no restriction from the get go as far as non-penetration orgasms go, and I'll just say I have tested the equipment throughly. ;) Early on (I caved a little over a week post-op) I had some difficulty with taking longer, which can easily be explained by being on heavy painkillers and lingering effects from anesthesia, but I can say with confidence that I can still have excellent orgasms. So far, I only see one difference - before I could often feel my uterus contract also during orgasms and now that I don't have a uterus, those contractions are gone, so it is somewhat of a shallower orgasm. I am still a little concerned that I will miss my cervix, but I really won't know until I can enjoy vaginal penetration again (hopefully soon before I die of frustration!). I think it's quite possible that once I've totally healed my orgasms will be better overall though, because I won't have the pelvic pain I sometimes had before and I won't have 1-2 weeks of cramps every month keeping me from enjoying anything properly.
Personally, I have felt zero regrets about my fertility being gone so far. Actually I feel truly relieved to never have to be scared of getting pregnant ever again. The only emotional distress I have felt is my unfortunately unchanged hormone cycling, 2 weeks in I had my hormones surge just like they did on my period - about 2 days of sky high levels of libido followed by deep depression for a few days (this especially came as a surprise since I just finished my period right before surgery and I have a long cycle around 40 days usually). I and my gyno are hoping my hormones will level out some later. Otherwise it might have been better to remove my ovaries too, after all. I do suspect they will have to be removed eventually, I am just hoping for being over 40, but anyway it's too soon to worry about that. It could just be an adjustment period for my ovaries. At least I know they are working, right?
I still feel quite tired most of the time, unfortunately. I think it might help to force myself to walk more than I have. I've been walking some, but not as much as I was supposed to be. It gets boring walking around the house and it's too cold to enjoy walking outside (and I've been feeling anti-social). I think I might join a Tai-Chi class in March and I should probably go back to using my Wii Fit after next week (I am still under exercise restriction for at least another week, too).
I quite enjoyed the time off work, I got a chance to catch up on TV and sleep as much as I like. As part of my incentive for being good, I decided to start up a sex toy review blog. I will share the link after I get it properly set up. It's sort of a way of bribing myself to stay strong and don't break the sex restriction by giving myself some new toys to look forward to, and partly that I had enough free time to look into starting a blog and figuring out how to join some affiliate programs so I can get free sex toys, which I've been wanting to do for awhile now. I hope I can stick with it monthly, I love trying out new toys.
My brother ended up staying over for four weeks, I decided to extend his ticket since he's surprisingly cheap to feed (he seems to have the opposite metabolism problem I have and isn't very hungry and burns off sugar like mad, which is why he's skin and bones), he and my guy were fun to hang out with, even though I slept a lot and couldn't go on any fun driving trips with them. Although I can't afford to support him, it was really great getting to spend some time with him and renew our sibling bond. We get along a lot better than my sister and I do.
Anyway, I feel like I am forgetting to mention stuff. So ask any questions you want to ask about the surgery.
Fair warning, I may get very blunt here. But I hope my experience may help those of you who may also have to make this decision. Apparently, one in three women have a hysterectomy at some point, which I did not know until recently.
I am happy I got the hysterectomy, even though surgery is definitely no joke. This is my first one, so it has been a learning experience, but it has all gone very well really, no problems. I have four incisions and only one looks like it might have a bad scar. But they look nothing like the awfulness of my mom and sister's c-section scars. They didn't even have to use steri-strips, just glue. So I'm vain and that makes me really happy. There were several women on hystersisters.com who got a hyst the same time as I who had to have staples *shudder*.
It's sometimes hard to tell where the pain is coming from, but I think my abdomen where the instruments went in is mostly good, and that most of my remaining pain is from my vaginal cuff. Since I had my cervix removed, they had to sew my vagina shut and attach it to some ligaments so I won't have to worry about prolapse, but now my vagina will be longer (how much longer is something I will find out later, I guess). I am still on restriction for any kind of vaginal or anal penetration, which has been mostly driving me crazy with frustration from around 2 weeks, even though I don't really think I am up to it anyway. In another week I will get a full pelvic exam so my doc can tell me if I am healing okay inside or if I will be on restriction for longer. I had no restriction from the get go as far as non-penetration orgasms go, and I'll just say I have tested the equipment throughly. ;) Early on (I caved a little over a week post-op) I had some difficulty with taking longer, which can easily be explained by being on heavy painkillers and lingering effects from anesthesia, but I can say with confidence that I can still have excellent orgasms. So far, I only see one difference - before I could often feel my uterus contract also during orgasms and now that I don't have a uterus, those contractions are gone, so it is somewhat of a shallower orgasm. I am still a little concerned that I will miss my cervix, but I really won't know until I can enjoy vaginal penetration again (hopefully soon before I die of frustration!). I think it's quite possible that once I've totally healed my orgasms will be better overall though, because I won't have the pelvic pain I sometimes had before and I won't have 1-2 weeks of cramps every month keeping me from enjoying anything properly.
Personally, I have felt zero regrets about my fertility being gone so far. Actually I feel truly relieved to never have to be scared of getting pregnant ever again. The only emotional distress I have felt is my unfortunately unchanged hormone cycling, 2 weeks in I had my hormones surge just like they did on my period - about 2 days of sky high levels of libido followed by deep depression for a few days (this especially came as a surprise since I just finished my period right before surgery and I have a long cycle around 40 days usually). I and my gyno are hoping my hormones will level out some later. Otherwise it might have been better to remove my ovaries too, after all. I do suspect they will have to be removed eventually, I am just hoping for being over 40, but anyway it's too soon to worry about that. It could just be an adjustment period for my ovaries. At least I know they are working, right?
I still feel quite tired most of the time, unfortunately. I think it might help to force myself to walk more than I have. I've been walking some, but not as much as I was supposed to be. It gets boring walking around the house and it's too cold to enjoy walking outside (and I've been feeling anti-social). I think I might join a Tai-Chi class in March and I should probably go back to using my Wii Fit after next week (I am still under exercise restriction for at least another week, too).
I quite enjoyed the time off work, I got a chance to catch up on TV and sleep as much as I like. As part of my incentive for being good, I decided to start up a sex toy review blog. I will share the link after I get it properly set up. It's sort of a way of bribing myself to stay strong and don't break the sex restriction by giving myself some new toys to look forward to, and partly that I had enough free time to look into starting a blog and figuring out how to join some affiliate programs so I can get free sex toys, which I've been wanting to do for awhile now. I hope I can stick with it monthly, I love trying out new toys.
My brother ended up staying over for four weeks, I decided to extend his ticket since he's surprisingly cheap to feed (he seems to have the opposite metabolism problem I have and isn't very hungry and burns off sugar like mad, which is why he's skin and bones), he and my guy were fun to hang out with, even though I slept a lot and couldn't go on any fun driving trips with them. Although I can't afford to support him, it was really great getting to spend some time with him and renew our sibling bond. We get along a lot better than my sister and I do.
Anyway, I feel like I am forgetting to mention stuff. So ask any questions you want to ask about the surgery.