Had my surgery Tuesday; this is Saturday. My experience has so far been good -- I am somewhere between the lady who was doing kick boxing 3 days post-op, and the one moaning that everyone had lied about how easy an LSH was. But more on the kick-boxing side.
I had three fibroids, and in Dec. 2008 I had a balloon ablation because of almost constant, heavy bleeding. The ablation helped a great deal -- reduced the amount of blood, anyway. As time went on, the duration of the bleeding increased, the amount increased (but never, ever to pre-ablation amounts), and it seemed I was constantly crampy, mittelshmertzy.
I went back to the doc and had an ultrasound which showed that the fibroids had grown in the past year. This indicated that my estrogen levels were still going strong. Even though I am 55, and had been hoping to wait until it all just "went away," it didn't look like that was happening. My older sister was still menstruating past 60, and I couldn't see another 5 years of this!
I found this site by googling uterine ablation . . . and what a godsend! I read about the different kinds of hysterectomy, and all y'all's experience with them . . . and decided I would look into hysterectomy, preferable LSH. Visiting my doc; she said I was a great candidate for it, and the rest is history!
Sooooooooo glad I'd read about the shoulder pain thing. That was the worst part of the whole process. I had abdominal discomfort (unsurprisingly), but my shoulder felt like someone had stuck a knife in it. Excruciating! But thankfully not totally unexpected. If someone could discover how to prevent this little side effect, laparoscopic surgery would be the easiest thing ever. (And that person would deserve the Nobel Prize.)
Anyway, I was on Toradol (regularly) and Dilaudid (as needed) in the hospital. Didn't need the Dilaudid much, and it didn't really help with the shoulder pain anyway. The nurses said the only thing that would help was to walk, so walk I did! Wednesday (day after surgery) was the bad-shoulder day. By Thursday when I woke up the pain was gone. At home I am on a 600mg Motrin (4x/day) and took one oxycodone the first two nights when I went to bed . . . and that's it. I do need the Motrin -- get uncomfy w/o it. But still, no pain per se.
I feel kind of guilty accepting meals from generous friends, because I feel so good . . . but we are getting such fabulous food in, my DH and I are enjoying the food to much to confess.
My doc took pix -- before, during, and after -- from the tiny camera inside me. Those were interesting to see, and explained why I always felt the urge to urinate (giant fibroid sitting on bladder) and like I had a bubble in my belly. Also saw my beautifully healthy ovaries -- which we had agreed to keep unless my doc thought they looked funky. Then the after picture with a lonely little cervix sitting there, all by itself. Now I picture that healing up inside of me, and my intestines settling back into their new roomier location. The four tiny incisions on my FLAT belly are in healing nicely. Wonderful!
Thanks so much to all of you for sharing your experiences, and the Hystersisters workers who answered my dumb questions about how to find stuff on the website. (My favorite find was the LVH surgery video, found under Resources on the top right.)
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