Surgeons with laser beams on their heads

Ok, not really.  My doctor/surgeon has lasers but not on her head.

So just a warning, this post has pictures from my surgery.  My bare innards, how sexy!  It’s like porn for medical geeks.

I went in last Monday at 6AM to St. Joseph’s Hospital.  It was very nice because I got my own room with my own personal Jeebus on the wall.  I was a very good patient until the nurse hit my artery on her first try.  She changed sides and did manage to get a vein in my left wrist but not until she punctured one of my nerves.  So now I have some lovely nerve pain shooting into my left hand and arm.  The right arm doesn’t hurt as much as it did but it looks pretty wicked!

I was out of surgery and recovery by 10:30 but stuck around until 1:00 because I couldn’t pee.  This is pretty normal.  Every time I have surgery there is one nurse, Nurse Evil Bitch, who thinks she needs to turn the bed over as soon as she can and all but kicks me out.  There was a “Do Not Discharge Without Pee” order on me thankfully.  But that didn’t stop her from trying!  Instead of napping peacefully, she wanted me up and trying to piss.  Everytime I got up, the gas pumped into my abdomen during surgery would migrate up my torso.  Fun.  It decided to settle into my shoulders and diaphram.  The diaphram gas prevented me from taking nice, normal breaths and when I couldn’t pee without much struggle and pain, I got upset.  The more upset I got, the harder it was to breathe.  So what happens?  A fucking panic attack.  Ron called for a nurse, but she didn’t know what to do.  Luckily Ron was able to get me simmered down and breathing as best I could.  He was pretty pissed off.

No matter how much common sense says a person should get rest and healing in a hospital, one never does.  You can’t get a lick of rest in a hospital.   As soon as I could go to the bathroom normally, we hit that nurse button and got the hell out.

So here are the photos my doctor took of my insides.  She is such a wonderful doctor and I’m so grateful to have her working so hard for me.

The white things are the ovaries.  One of them is fine and the other was covered in black endo growths.  All the black stuff is endo.  It doesn’t look like much does it?  Ron said they were described as being the size of eraser heads.  So having that stuff on the outside of the bladder is like being pinched on very sensitive tissues.  And that’s only the stuff you can see.  I can’t imagine how much microscopic stuff there is!

Again there are my ovaries and also the pancreas (left) and liver and bowel (right.)   Happily my liver and pancreas show no signs of endo.  My bowels look fine but based on how it feels, I think there is some small stuf on there.

Here are my fallopian tubes and the dark stuff is actually dye.  The doctor flushed this dye through my tubes to check for blockages that could be endo sitting inside.  Since the dye went through, theoretically there isn’t anything in there to prevent an egg passing through.  The fertility docs will want this information.  The first time I did this was last year and the dye did not go through.  That’s when they found the Mullerian defect and cut away the wall that was growing inside my uterus.  Fun stuff!

Here’s my swollen belly.  This is the fourth time I’ve had my belly button cut open.  I’m afraid it’s not going to look very pretty by the time we’re all done.  I had a new cut around my hip so that’s a new scar.  The third incision was over the pubic bone but I’m not going to post photos of that.  Ewww pubes.

I have follow up appointments and fertility consultations within the next week.  I’m excited to see what the next step is.  I honestly think if we can pull off a pregnancy, we’ll just do one.  Someday we can adopt if we want two kids but I believe that putting myself through one pregnancy is enough.  I guess I have my limits and this is one I have set for myself.  I’m scared to be a mom of a little baby but I miss doing mom things so much.  I know it will all be worth it.  And if I can’t have one, I’m completely happy to adopt. 

And I hope you all will attend my Going Away Uterus Party someday.  I fully intend to celebrate the hysterectomy when it’s time!  Can you imagine, Pin the Ovary on the Tube game?  Come on!  It will be hilarious!

Well that’s all for my reproductive system for now.  My joints have decided they want to give me hell so I’m feeling pretty shitty today.  More to come on other subjects soon!

 Tschus!

 PS:

When searching for images of endoemetriosis, I found this site that sells “colloidal silver” remedies for everything from a spider bite, to endo, to dandruff.  Wtf?  Has anyone heard of this?  Not that I’m surprised by drinking silver mineral stuff doesn’t sound like a good thing to me.  F’in quacks. 

This entry was posted on 19. July 2010 at 15:16 and is filed under Endometriosis, Health. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.