Incision Question

I had my hysterectomy/ovary removal surgery on the 10th of this month - and since they had to do it abdominally, I have a bikini cut incision.

It seems to be healing nicely by all accounts of everyone looking at it - I even had a doctor and a nurse look at it last Friday and they both said how wonderful it is looking.

There is no redness, no swelling at the incision site, and I haven't been running a fever at all - not even a low-grade one. My problem is this: I am relatively thin (5'4"/118 lbs) but due to having two children have all that "lovely" excess skin which doesn't exactly overhang my incision totally, but is a little puffy with the surgery and kinda plops over some. I refer to it as feeling like there's a water balloon running the length of my incision about 1 inch above it. My question is that one side of my "overhang" hangs rather loose and what I would gather is "normal" looking all the way until the left side which looks like my skin is glued or adhered to the interior wall causing the "roll" to not be symmetrical all the way across. Is this "pinching" effect normal? Has anyone else dealt with it? Perhaps one side is just healing faster than the other - I'm not sure. It's not really visible unless I am standing so the next time I go in - and I plan to go in this week to have them just visually look at it, I will stand up and ask "what is with this part of my skin that looks like it's stuck to the inside??"

I also have a little bit of a discolouration of my skin (possibly due to the iodine or bruising?) directly above my incision (approx a 1 inch thin section)...but it's not getting any larger or darker. In fact I wasn't able to see it until they removed the steri-strips...then, of course, I didn't see it until AFTER I got home and not at the doctor's office to ask then.

Anyway, if anyone else's "balloon roll" did this and/or the discolouration and it was perfectly normal, I'd sure feel a lot better about it.

Thanks everyone!

Hi ,

I am sorry you are having some concerns about your incision. There have been ladies here who have had some of the same problems or questions here. Here is a link on a thread that I found by doing a Search:

https://www.hystersisters.com/vb2/sho...ght=tummy+roll

Hopefully, someone who is familiar with this will stop by and offer some input on it.

You are still early post-op so hopefully with time and more healing this will not continue to be a problem.

Sending s

Well, I went to the gynecologist Thursday to ask about all of this - and to my surprise the doctor came in (thought it would just be the nurse) and I showed him my incision and asked him some questions and he said that everything was just fine...so that was good. So, I'm hoping everything goes smoothly from this point on. My 6-week check-up will be on the 21st of November.

I tell you - they've been treating me like royalty - I honestly couldn't have asked for more caring people...I sincerely wish everyone who has any type of surgery has the same level of compassion they are showing me. This is the way doctors/nurses/receptionists should treat people.

By the way, because of my level of emergency treatment needed (bleeding out due to severe anemia/5 week long period, etc.) I had to find a gynecologist that was covered by my insurance. My regular one I had been seeing for the past 10+ years (whom I loved) wasn't in my network and as such if I wanted to have him perform the surgery it would have come out of my own pocket/lots of red tape...so I had to "find" a gynecologist literally out of the blue and fast. Luckily I have a friend who is a doctor and I asked him for some recommendations - found this one and I could not have asked for someone better...especially since he knew the whole scenario of why I needed to seek him out. He's been incredibly great.

Anyway...just wanted to pass this all along in case someone wanted to read an update.

I asked my doctor last week about the water balloon overhang and he told me eventually it will go away. My selly belly is totally gone, I jsut have that overhang above the incision. The doctor said it is caused by the way they close you up, they need to make sure it is tight enough.

I too have the over hang, I had my surgery on 10-8-07. The right side seems tighter than the left and in the past couple of days I have had tightness and pain in the right area, pulling too. It can be a little painful. One side DOES seem to be stiched up differently than the other. Anyone else with this?