Hysterectomy, deal with it or something else?

Hi ladies,
My sister in law introduced me to this website since a friend of hers loves it.

So here I am! I’m 33 years old, have been blessed with 2 bio children and 1 step. We are finished having children and I am having severely painful periods coupled with intercourse pain as well as low back/tail bone pain. Doctor suggests a hysterectomy to solve at least the painful periods.

My main concern right now is do I do the hysterectomy or suck it up and deal with the pain!

Thanks for some direction on where to start looking and hopefully I can find peace with my decision!

Katie

I'm only 16 days out, but I can share what my thoughts were in the hope it helps.

I had the same debate. I mean, it's only pain, right? I finally realized this was a bit crazy for me--I was losing days, every month, because my periods were so bad. I was also trying to schedule things (vacations, outings) around them and would panic if it would look like they would coincide. I decided that continuing to live that way would not work for me and to have the hysterectomy. I am already glad that I did and wish I had done it sooner.

My biggest fear is that I may be one of the women who may have painful sex after the hysterectomy. After agonizing over this I realized this was a silly point---Sex already hurt for me because of my adenomyosis, so this seemed to be a non-issue. It would very likely help in this department and if there was an issue, it was the same situation I was already facing. My doctor told me we could cross that bridge if we needed to.

Sucking it up and dealing with pain was what I did for over 10 years because I did NOT want to have a total abdominal hysterectomy for symptomatic fibroids. At the time, TAH was the only surgical option. Instead, I opted for UFE.

I had a LAVH a week ago today. While I was dealing with fibroids, medical care advanced to the point that a laparoscopic procedure became feasible. I also experienced natural menopause. So, I kind of waited out surgical menopause and a medically necessary big incision and got the procedure I wanted in the first place while avoiding the side effects that would have come with it back then. Not entirely a win-win because the trade-off was years of dull pain and bulk symptoms that were always there in the background of normal life and no guarantee that anyone would invent laparoscopy.

Each woman has to make her own decisions. It kind of sounds like you are deciding between periodic pain for the next 20 years vs. one-and-done surgical pain that comes with possibly 20 years of hormonal issues (ovaries stay or go). Nobody can decide that for you - I think you'll make a good decision that's going to work for you.