Pre Op Preparation for the Single

Hello Sisters,
Like many of you, I spent a lot of time on the Internet researching every possible detail about my hysterectomy. I am an independent, single, working professional and I live more than 7 hours from my closest relative. I am a very private person but even I acknowledged and humbly accepted that I needed a little help from my co-workers and their spouses.

It is wise to be proactive to prepare your home in advance if you live alone and know that you will have little or no assistance after your surgery. As always, do the best that you can. Here is what I did:

1. Buy fruits, vegetables, and low-fat healthy microwavable meals as well as a few comfort foods and fun treats. Prepare your favorite nutritious meals in advance and freeze them. Store them in the plastic Glad or Ziplock containers so that you can throw them away if you want. Consider buying crystal light to flavor your bottled water, ginger ale, apple and prune juices for constipation and cranberry juice to ward off a UTI if you had or still have a catheter when you return home. Pull-top soups (like Progresso) are easy to heat and eat or maybe you prefer to eat cereal when you don’t feel well. I bought two boxes of “fun” junk cereal that I don’t normally buy and haven’t eaten in years. I just finished the box of Captain Crunch with Crunch Berries tonight… no I did not eat the whole box in one day! LOL. Pain meds tend to make you really nauseous so, like me, you may have to simply ask yourself, “What will I eat… regardless of the fat and calorie count?” You need to have something in your stomach when you take your pain meds. Your stomach won’t know the difference between a piece of toast or Hostess powdered donuts, if that’s what it takes (wink, wink)

2. Clean the house to the best of your ability prior to surgery. Change your sheets and set out a comfortable pair of pajamas to change into when you return home. Be sure to clean off surfaces like tables, waist high shelves (see #4), and especially the night stand in the bedroom or tray in the living room or wherever you will spend the majority of your time recuperating. You do not need the additional stress of trying to clean and make room to be comfortable when you should be resting and healing.

3. Pretend that you are elderly and that you fear falling and hurting yourself. Remove all of the hazards from your home that you reasonably can. Pick up all of the throw rugs, scatter rugs, pet beds or toys and bath mats from the floor. If they bunch up because you shuffle around instead of picking your feet up when you walk, they could catch on your feet and you could potentially slip or even fall and it will not be pretty. If you absolutely must have a floor mat to stand on after your daily (yes daily) shower, no not bath… see #5.

4. Elevate everything that you will need to at least waist level so that you won’t have to try to bend over (not recommended) or struggle to get to it. This includes spare sets of linens (towels and sheets), any and all of your hair styling products like your curling iron / blow dryer, all of your HBA (health and beauty aids including medications and heating pad, etc), and spare sets of loose clothing such as easy to pull on tops and bottoms and whatever you plan to lounge (but not lay) around in all day. Place the folded clothing and linens in neat stacks on top of your dresser or dining room table, if you have to. It will never fail that as soon as you touch one thing… something else will fall on the floor. Same thing for the laundry basket (one guess who does a single woman’s laundry for her?) pots and pans, bottled water, utensils and food on lower cabinet shelves in the kitchen.

5. After your surgery you will notice that a lot of things will mysteriously fall from your grasp to the floor where you can’t get to it. Invest in one of those grabber tools. If you must use a floor mat to stand on after your daily shower use the grabber tool to place it on the floor and your foot to straighten it out if you have something to hold on to for balance. Once you have finished using the floor mat, promptly use the grabber tool to pick the floor mat up and hang it up somewhere.

6. Ensure that you have direct, clutter-free paths to the important parts of your house such as the bed or recliner, bathroom, kitchen and front or back door. My apartment is ranch style (all on one level). I have a queen size bed and knew that I would change my sheets at least once a week so I moved my bed away from the wall and centered my mattress an equal distance from the head and foot board. That way there was space and I didn’t have to struggle to strip then remake my bed. Move the furniture now while you are able to. Is your house on multiple levels with the bedroom and bathroom upstairs and the kitchen and washer/dryer downstairs? Plan ahead and do the best that you can.

7. Strategically place chairs where you may need to rest. I put a kitchen chair next to my bed and another chair pulled out and turned with a pillow on it for me to sit on in the kitchen when I was waiting for my food to heat in the microwave or cook on the stove. We are used to standing there and think nothing of it but after your surgery you will need to be creative and conserve your energy. I also ordered a Carex universal bath seat from Amazon to use in the shower. They a similar one in the hospital. If you have a medical supply store nearby it will save you the shipping time.

8. This is relative to the individual… start immediately to get into the fittest best shape that you can before your surgery even if you do nothing but walk. Walking is important to your recovery. Strengthen your arms too while you are at it and check out the you tube videos that teach you how to use your arms and upper body strength to safely get into and out of bed with minimal stress to your healing abdomen. Do not fear walking the same day of the surgery (or anything else) if you have a PCA pump where you can give yourself a dose of fast acting pain meds. Just be careful getting out of the hospital bed

9. Want to know four lessons from this surgery that you can apply to life in general? You ready? Well here they are… One- you ARE stronger than you think and you will get through this, Two- once the surgery is behind you and you know what your limitations are, you can and will adapt and then press on with your life, Three- nothing lasts forever… not the pain, not the fluctuating emotions, not the hot flashes (eventually we will enter menopause), and Four- There can be no TESTIMONY unless there is first a TEST! Hundreds of thousands of women have a hysterectomy each year in the United States alone. This site and others like it would not need to exist if this procedure were without risk (it is after all a major surgery) and especially if there were fewer unpleasant side effects and combinations of complications. But guess what? World-wide, we women come together and learn from the experiences of those who have gone before us and then, after our own surgeries, we return to give back to others when we share our individual hysterectomy experiences. Each and every one of our experiences resonates with someone out there. Tears of joy are brought on by validation of our thoughts, feelings, concerns and even our questions; no one is made to feel stupid. Psalm 56 comes to mind…

I highly recommend the guided imagery (pre surgery) and positive affirmations (post surgery) from Belleruth Naparstek. I purchased the Successful Surgery from the Health Journey website or you can get a similar one Relaxation and Wellness for FREE FREE FREE from the Healthy Living to go Audio Library at Kaiser Permanente. I also recommend the relaxing natural sounds produced by Joe Baker which are sold for the very reasonable cost of .89 or .99 cents for an hour thirteen minute MP3 recording on Amazon. You can sample all of the sounds first then just purchase and download the ones that you like. I made a playlist of Belleruth Naparstek’s imagery and affirmations mentioned above along with the Ocean Waves and Thunderstorms by the Sea. I listened to my iPod shuffle from right before the anesthesiologist knocked me out, through recovery (with the nurses removing and reinserting my ear buds after assessing my pain level, lol) until I woke up in my bed after surgery witha dead battery. Speak to your doctor at your pre op appointment. My doctor encouraged using the shuffle with positive affirmations on it but my anesthesiologist needed to be reassured that I wasn’t blasting it and that I had the volume low enough that I could hear her over the recordings, if required.

Post op, especially the first two weeks after I got home, whenever I got fearful and upset I listened to my iPod shuffle with the above MP3s that I put on it for my surgery.

Be well my Sisters…