Still not sure

Quigley, I will be a sister with you on May 16th!! I also have not had horrible debilitating symptoms, but have come to realize that the daily not knowing if I am going to be bleeding or not, if it will be heavy or not, if I can handle the cramping or not, do I have enough supplies with me to last the day at school or not.....it was just all wearing me down in every way. I am a full-time student at 47 in nursing and all I could think of was how was I going to handle the clinicals this fall when I feel lousy for more than half of every month. I had been unable to handle BCPs as I get older - the hormones just don't mix well with my hormones, and last year we tried Mirena to stop the bleeding - it has helped to slow it but I still bleed in some way for 15 to 20 days of every month. Cramping is still bad, mid-cycle pain as well. My last ultrasound was 2 years ago - one decent sized fibroid at that time. My next will be May 15th...so won't know for sure what we are getting rid of until the day before surgery. From the way I feel, I would feel pretty confident my fibroid has buddies by now. My nurse practiioner suggested a hysterectomy last year, but also offered the Mirena as an option since it has helped many women in her practice. I helped me some, but not in the way we thought - that I would have no bleeding at all until the 5 years was up and at that point I might be menopausal anyway. So my LSH is on May 16th, one week after finals. While I am scared about some of it (that they will find something they are not expecting), and worried about recovery and being a good patient, I know in the long run I will be glad I had the hysterectomy. I have found that how the lower part of my body was feeling each day was defining my day, and the days I would wake up and feel good were getting fewer and fewer. I don't spend days in bed with horrible pain, but it is wearing to just feel crappy all the time.

Good luck with your surgery and we will run into each other for sure in post-op.
Mary Beth

Hi Mary Beth
Sounds like you've tried lots of options. Yeah the little darlings have a way of creating their own friends don't they!? I don't even KNOW how many I have- when my doc said "multiple" I asked... so... how many are we talking about here??? He didn't even know!! He said the radiologist just indicated "multiple" on the report, with the largest being 4cm and one dangling. I guess when there are too many to count they just say multiple??
I totally relate to that feeling of just not knowing what the heck to expect each month with your period. At least mine have, until quite recently, been fairly regular - calendar wise- just very unpredictable pain and bleeding wise. And in the past year I've started getting flu like symptoms with it too which is hard to control with just Advil or Tylenol.
In a way I feel like I'm giving in too soon to the surgery route. My doctor did present drug therapy options but also pointed out that he usually sees it as a delaying of the inevitable surgery in women our age group or younger- I'm 47 too. I guess if we were about 5 years closer to menopause it might work out to keep things under control until nature takes it's course and shrinks them by starvation!
I just opted for the surgery without even trying any of the drugs.
What I'm a little uneasy about tho is that he did not give me the option of a Laprascopic procedure. Presumably because my uterus is so enlarged (12-14 weeks preg size at last exam) and the number tumors. But since stumbling around on this site I've discovered that women are having that option with larger uterus size than what I have.
So I'm still feeling a bit like...have I really done all my homework here and exhausted all other possibilities to abdominal hyst???
Anyway... here I am rambling again.
Please keep in touch Mary Beth and I wish you all the best with your health!!
Hugs
Wanda

Hi Wanda,
I don't know how large my uterus is since I have never been told at my appointments. My nurse practitioner (my usual OB until I needed surgery) has always said my uterus is not particularly large. This is based on the ultrasound from 2 years ago and her physical exam this year. I have always wondered if it is deceptive with mine because I do know it is retroflexed. so while I don't think it is "tall", I think it is causing most of my lower back pain. She told me she thought I was a good candidate for LSH because my uterus is not that large. 1/2 hour later when I was talking to the surgeon (who delivered my son 16+ years ago), he said that although she had told me that a prerequisite was a smaller uterus, he said that he and his partner (who are the only 2 in the practice doing this procedure) have successfully removed quite a few significantly larger uterus' with the laprascope. I watched the live surgery on MedLinePlus of an LSH and that helped me to understand the procedure a lot more. With the morcellator, they basically turn the uterus once it is disconnected from everything, like an apple on a stick and the morcellator pares it down, small strips at a time. So I think the size of the uterus determines more likely the length of time the procedure will take. I am sure that the amount of experience that the physician has with this newer procedure (which has actually been around for about 8 years or more) is the biggest factor in their being willing to take on a bigger uterus this new way. As of my appointment when I scheduled in March, he had done 60 procedures with this method, and he said many of them were large uterus', so he seemed to be telling me that a larger than expected uterus would not preclude having the LSH. That made me feel better. I figure by May 16th, he will have done several more with this method, and every new case adds to his confidence (and his partners) in handling slightly different scenarios with this procedure. It does help that I saw him at many appointments through both pregnancies and then he was my assigned Dr. after delivering my son for several years until I switched to the nurse practitioner since all I really needed was an annual exam. He does most of the surgeries in the practice these days, and also did my tubal ligation 14 years ago.

Good luck with your procedure and I hope this helps. Since I have tests and finals coming up in the next 2 weeks, I won't have much time to get too nervous until right before surgery. I know that by later this summer I will probably feel better than I have felt in years. I had considered the hysterectomy last year when she suggested it, but felt I needed to try everything else first, so I went to Mirena. In hindsight, I think if I had opted for it last summer I would not have been able to have the LSH. So maybe things have a way of working out.
Mary Beth