TAH Long Surgery

I decided to reschedule my surgery for May 14 from June 5. I was scheduled to have a LAVH. The gyn/onc said they usually schedule her surgeries to be about four hours. Long enough as is! My surgery was scheduled for one in the afternoon. I was praying for it to be a piece of cake. The surgery took nine hours!!!!

It turned out the doctor found A LOT of scare tissue around my cervix from my cone biopsy and/or my C-section I had three years ago. She found that my bladder was pretty well fused to my uterus. She told me that she tried to be careful about the cut but she ended up cutting my badder. She called in an urologist to fix the problem, he described sewing up my bladder like a clamshell. They had to do an x-ray and run dye to check for leaks.

My LAVH turned into a full abdominal hysterectomy, but she reused my C-section incision site for that, so no new scar there :-).

I am now stuck with two catheters for at least a month, a regular one and a suprapubic in case I have blockage in the other.

I stayed in the hospital for three days post-op and was well taken care of (I'm now being well-taken care of at home ).

On the bright side, all my paths came back negative for cancer, though they had to remove my left ovary because it was full of cysts. They did find endometriosis in my cervix which could have contributed to my scarring.

I would like to know the experiences of anyone of having to have a LAVH converted to a total abdominal and having to have a bladder repair.

That's a long surgery! Make sure you rest rest rest so you can heal properly! Best wishes for a good recovery!