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katedownunder · 5 years

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I’ve got 99 problems but a uterus isn’t one

After a few days of pre-op work (blood tests, drinking something really gross that really cleaned me out…), it was operation day.

We arrived at the hospital at 5.30am, checked in and were shown to my room like it was a hotel. I knew I was going to D ward, which I quickly realised was the maternity ward which made me a little uneasy and upset. However they seemed to do a good job of keeping the new mums and the hysterectomy patients far apart and I never saw or heard a baby.

After we waited awhile, my Doctor came to visit me and explained again in detail what she was going to do to me, making sure I understood the procedure and recovery in a clear and concise way which I really liked (or as my husband described it as “she’s very German”). When she was done I had a nurse doing the pre-op check and getting me “dressed for theatre” which if you’re like me and were expecting someone to wheel in a rack of sequinned gowns to choose one to wear to the theatre, you will be seriously disappointed in the shapeless paper gown they make you wear.

After checking my vitals, going through again with me what they were going to do, and what will happen in recovery, I was wheeled off by a guy who said “I’m the transport guy, just like the cable guy except I push you where you need to go”. He was so cheery and upbeat I felt like we were off on a fun adventure together as he wheeled me around the hospital.

When we arrived at the pre-op area (which I found out later was also the recovery area), I met with another nurse who went through the exact same questions I’d already been asked 3 times already that day and met my anaesthetist, a slightly chubby but really funny Chinese man who when he saw me said “are you ok?”. I smiled and sad “um...yes?” to which he replied “aww, no you’re not, you look like a deer in the headlights, let me give you something to relax” and put something into drip thing already in my arm which instantly made me light headed but more ok with everything.

My Doctor then came over to check how I was going and explained again what was happening. More stuff was put into my arm and within a minute they were wheeling me off to the theater (again wasn’t the type of theatre I was hoping). All I remember is thinking “wow this room looks like the surgeries on TV and the movies” then someone asked me to slide onto another bed. That’s it. I then woke up in the recovery area to lots of beeping noises and a nurse asking me if I was ok. I said to her “yeah, I’m just looking at all the birds flying around”. She laughed and said “there isn’t any birds in here but at least you’re not seeing spiders”.

I then sort of drifted in and out. People kept coming to check on me, my Doctor came to tell me it all went well and then I woke up back in my room attached to so many different machines it was claustrophobic. They had me on my back, the side rails were up on the bed, I had a tube for oxygen up my nose, two different things pumping into my left hand, a blood pressure band thing around my right arm, a small remote control in my right hand and the píece-de-résistance a catheter, well you know where. At this stage I wasn’t in too much pain as I was still on some hard core drugs but the feeling of being held down by all the cables and tubes was a really horrible feeling and my back was killing from laying still for so long.

Throughout that afternoon and night I slept on and off. The on, when I could manage to fall asleep. The off, when the nurse staff would come to check in on me. The next day I asked one of the nurses why did people keep waking me throughout the night? She told me that because I was on a PCA they had to check on me every hour. In all the preparation my Doctor and the nurses had done making sure I understood what was happening and what would happen in recovery, they never mentioned this part which I found weird as it was the worst part of all and maybe would have put me a little more at ease if I knew it was routine to keep waking me up every hour.

In the morning, I asked the first nurse I saw if they could take the catheter out so I could walk around. She pretty much laughed and said “haha no that won’t happen today”. When the second nurse on duty started, I asked the same thing. Her reply was pretty much the same “haha you’re so funny. No”. I kept asking every nurse that came into the room if they would let me get up until finally one said fine and unhooked everything from me and let me head to the bathroom on my own and shower which was heaven. I never thought I’d love a shower so much in my life.

As I was up and moving around I started to feel better and around midday and the weekend Doctor came to check in on me. She said the nurses had called her earlier that morning asking for permission to get me up out of bed because I “kept bugging them and wouldn’t drop it”. She was great about it though and said she could see I was doing really well, even made a comment that I shouldn’t look as good as I did this close to the surgery, but said my limit for moving around was going to my bathroom, my bed and the armchair in my room. No further.

I asked her when could I go home and she said she could see I wasn’t the kind of person you wouldn’t have to push to get moving, rather that I’d be the opposite and they would have to try and stop me moving around so much. But she did say if I had a good night, was able to eat breakfast and could do a lap walking around the ward on my own then I could go home the next day, a day earlier than anticipated.

I spent the day doing everything the nursing staff asked me to and didn’t push it. I watched a lot of Netflix (Season 2 of Lucifer FTW), but mostly sat there taking all the drugs they gave me. As I was on solid food again I was eating from their regular menu which was surprisingly pretty good for hospital food. I also couldn’t help but think of this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqGLHluDoe0 because after one day of what felt like quarantine I was considering what I’d look like with a bin for a head (did I mention I was on a lot of drugs?)

That night I slept better, the nursing staff only woke me up once to make me take more pain killers so in the morning when they came to check on me, by 7am I was already showered, dressed and had done my victory lap around the ward to show them I was good to go. It took awhile for them to get all the sign offs needed to release me early but by 9.30am I was outta there and on my way home.

In all of my “I got this” “I don’t need to sit in a hospital to feel better” “my dog is my therapy, let me out of here!”, I didn’t realise just how many drugs the nursing staff were giving me to keep me on a pain free buzz. When I was there, I did notice they would just keep giving me drugs without me asking. I didn’t realise there was a reason for this. When I got home and these constant drugs stopped, oh lordy lord did the pain hit and hit hard. Add to this the pain of moving from the hospital bed to our car and up our front stairs and you have one pretty grumpy person who maybe isn’t the superwoman they thought they were.

I wasn’t sure what drugs to take from what they had given me so in my pain fuelled state decided on all of them which made me sleep a lot and have the most crazy vivid dreams which involved me shopping with my mum and then some how becoming a Liam Neeson type bounty hunter tracking down people smugglers.

Thankfully my Doctor called me this morning (her first words were “I went to check in on you but they said you checked yourself out?” #busted) and talked me through what pain medication to take and when and reminded me to stop doing stuff.

So now it’s just a case of Netflix and literally chill.

#surgery #hysterectomy #endometriosis #periods

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