TAH Hyster Recovery from Hell: Prologue

Hi Everyone,
I had my TAH/BSO around 3pm April 6, 2011. Surgery took 2.5 hours and per my doctor, I "put him to work" to remove a great amount of endometriosis. Needless to say, upon immediate anesthesia recovery post-op I was in excruciating pain (which later turned out to be catheter irritation and inadequate frequency of catheter bag emptying) I was in/out all Wed. night crying out in pain, and feeling like I wasn't being taken seriously. So my hospital nightmare began....

I will elaborate on the above journey because while it is distressing to me to think about what happened, I see it is a very valuable learning experience. I was discharged the following Sunday evening, April 10, 2011. And I am home now for a week.

Currently, I am experiencing pretty uncomfortable symptoms of UTI, which I contracted in the hospital, but was only treated with one IV treatment of Ancef the day of my discharge. This helped for a few days, but obviously didn't cure the problem. I didn't have UTIs before the surgery. Anyhow, on top of the UTI, I have been having serious problems sleeping, I get about 2-3 hours of sleep at a time, which is now beginning to seriously weigh on my mental status in that I feel really wiped out and a bit sad today. I am also experiencing anxiety unlike before, due to the "trauma" I experienced during my hospital stay. My recovery has been unnecessarily stressful to the point of distressing until I came home.

As I stated above, I will elaborate in the coming days on what I've been experiencing since the surgery. I just wanted to "check-in" and see what, if any, information about UTI experiences post-op there are here

For now, please keep me in your prayers and thoughts. I am optimistic and getting better with each day...my activity levels are good considering, I've been taking outdoor 30 min. walks every day since I've come home, except for Saturday, when I felt exhausted.
Apart from pain meds, my post-op other meds are Levora for "hormone treatment." It's till too early for me to tell anything, considering I am quite sleep-deprived and also suffering from a UTI on/off for 10 days now.

My follow-up MD appointment is this coming Thur. AM.

I appreciate this site and your support. It means very much to me, since I don't have the family support I very much need. (I am very grateful to have a dear male friend who has done some incredible things for me such as help me with my first in-hospital shower, which I know was not an easy thing...but it made me feel %100 better). I don't know what I'd do without him, because I didn't have the nursing staff support I needed. Anyhow, I will write again in a more chronological manner at a later date.

Thank you all again for being here...really! Bless YOU!

Oh bless you. Sorry you had a bad time I did have a UTI in hospital as I was not cathetered in surgery but 7 hours later but the UTI was not detected until I left hospital and a letter arrived at my gps 4 weeks later so suffered but I put it all down to recovery not knowing it was a UTI. Sleeping did not really settle till 5 weeks post op. My first shower was alone your given a chair to sit on. I had TAH nearly 15 weeks ago but do have ovaries but I don't take pain well so was on meds for 5 weeks. The first 3-4 weeks are very tiring