Sometime on Wednesday evening I realized that I must be a pretty busy mom of three because a hospital stay post op was feeling darn near resort like.? 🙂

I gotta tell you – in the larger picture, this whole hysterectomy thing is working out to be quite nice and I think I will have lovely memories from it all.? (And yes – that may be in small part due to Vicodin.? ;)? Wednesday morning I had my surgery (it was a total hysterectomy removing uterus and cervix but NOT ovaries).? One would think that would be labeled with something other than “total” hysterectomy but not so.? When you have your ovaries removed as well they slap some other title on it.? I was SO GRATEFUL to keep my ovaries.? Yeah!

Anyhow, I had robotic surgery (Da Vinci) and the Dr. said I did really well and it only took him an hour and 15 minutes and I didn’t have near the scar tissue from past surgeries that he thought I would so all was good on that front.? The one bit of “drama” about Wed was that I had a very tough time coming down from the anesthesia.? I am a light weight.? If I take Nyquil I am totally OUT.? I warned the Dr. that I stop breathing a lot on anesthesia and that I always get very sick.? He must have switched my cocktail because I didn’t get sick a bit (which was awesome).? However, I lost my mind.

When Ty was a baby and would have surgeries, he would be a psycho mess in recovery.? Wailing and crying and totally inconsolable.??? I thought that was really weird and his Dr.s told me that some people are just neuro sensitive.

Before surgery, the anethesiologist told me that he was going to give me something to relax me and then he would wait to put me out until we were in the operation room.? He pointed out that I would get to see the robot.? I didn’t.? I rememember nothing except that conversation and I have no memories after that until I woke up at 2:00!? I was out for five hours!? I wasn’t really “aware” much then until 3:30 when they moved me to my hospital bed.? I wanted to stand up and get in the bed myself but when I sat up I felt like I couldn’t breathe.? Instant tears.? Then I was fighting a sense of hysteria.? The nurse looked at me with such empathy and said “This is a particularly hard surgery emotionally”.? Clearly she was assuming I was sobbing over my new state of sterility.? I caused her great confusion (and momentary panic) when I said “Actually I am not crying about the surgery.? I am pregnant.”? I was sane enough to think that was funny (or maybe insane enough lol).? When I saw the anxiety hit her features, I explained.? :)?? Sweet of me wasn’t it?

Jim came in shortly after and I just looked at him and started crying all over again.? I had no idea what was wrong but I felt out of my mind crazy.? The oxygen chord then felt like it was strangling me so I was trying desperately to get it off my neck crying all the while and Jim was sweetly talking softly telling me I was okay – everything was okay – I could just relax – he was going to fix it.? I think I had my brain back by about 5:00 PM.? Is it just me or does that seem like a really long time to be coming off anethesia?? If I was out of surgery at 10:15AM that was about 7 hours of trying to wake up.? Seems excessive to me.

I am now on day four and most everything is good.? My incision pain is nothing – no big deal.? Coughing hurts but not bad at all.? The inside pain is more than I expected so that I would define as definitely uncomfortable.? The worst part has been my lower back.? I can’t get relief there.? When I woke up in recovery that was the first thing I noticed – my lower back screaming at me.? No amount of narcotics in the hospital was helping that.? Jim finally bought me icy hot patches and I have worn them continually and that at least takes the edge off.? Between that and the vicaden, I can rest pretty easily but when the viaceden wears off I am very uncomfortable with non stop back pain.? Last week the chiropracter did tell me that my tailbone was out when I went in for an adjustment and I have been struggling with lower back pain in my sleep for weeks now.? I get about 7 hours of rest and then I toss and turn relentlessly until I am forced out of bed because my lower back hurts to much to sleep.? BUT, getting up solves the problem.? I don’t hurt during the day.? Post surgery, I have not had one unmedicated moment of relief.? So I am now wondering if the surgery exasperated the existing condition exponentially, or if lower back pain is simply where I feel my surgery pain (pain transfer kind of issue), or something related to the surgery?? Don’t know.? I am trying to wean off medicine though and I could easily do that minus this back issue so I am a bit frustrated by that.? I also wonder how much my fibromylagia might be contributing.? On Thursday my fibro flared up really bad.? The perimeter of my entire body felt like a solid bruise.? That is better now but I still feel it some.? I learned from this experience that body stress (ie surgery) is a fibro trigger.? Didn’t consider that aspect before.

On a nice note though…

I am being treated like a Queen.? I am head over heels in love with my husband and am singing “He is soooooooo good” in my head all the time.? Truth be told, his tender and nurturing care over the last four days has been so precious and has filled up my love tank so much that I will chalk up this whole experience to being a wonderful week with my honey.? We never turned the tv on in the hospital and when I was awake we just talked in the quiet.? He has waited on me hand and foot and helped me do everything.? I seriously want to milk this because I am just giddy with all the attention.? Not kidding.? It is going to take a brave act on my part to cowgirl up, get off the meds, and get back to business because I REALLY like being the baby around her for a bit.?? I’ll take some back pain in exchange for the amazing time I have had with my sweet little family.? Very small tradeoff.

And thank you Aimee for arranging some meals for us and to my family and sweet friends who have brought us yummy stuff!? That was so sweet and appreciated!?? This is the first I have really sat at my computer and tomorrow Sweetie is going to babysit me and the kids for a couple of days so don’t know when I’ll be “back” but thought I’d update you while I was still on a viacoden high.? :)?? Off to eat dinner now – that someone else made me.? How sweet is that??? 🙂