1st August 2006
Thanks Wannabe. Things are going quite well. Carey was up this morning for about 30 minutes and had a light breakfast....juice and cereal. One of her meds is Flagyl and that has to be taken with food. Pain seems quite controllable right now. She was sent home with Darvocet-N with instructions to take 1-2 tablets as required every 4-6 hours. Right now....and we're not quite 24 hours post-op....she's taking 1 every 5 hours. The three small incisions don't seem to be causing her too much discomfort. According to her it's more tenderness than pain. She rates the pain overall as a bit like her worst periods but not much more than that. No shoulder point gas pains right now so she hasn't had to deal with that, at least not yet. I slept on the couch outside our bedroom last night with a "baby monitor" on so I could hear her if she needed me. She got up on her own about 1:30 AM for a trip to the bathroom and a Darvocet without any help from me.....scared the heck out of me when I woke up enough to realize she was up but she handled it.
A note about the surgery itself. As you know Carey elected to go the least invasive way she could and that meant Laparoscopic Supracervical Hysterectomy (LSH). The end result, after yesterday's surgery, was that all that was removed was her uterus. Cervix was left since, quite honestly, it isn't removed under LSH and she didn't have any indications that it needed to be. The supposed problem with her left ovary turned out to be a fibroid in the immediate area. Doctor removed that and told me her ovaries were in great shape so she left both. Because Carey had what is described as a large uterus the surgeon had projected 1 1/2 hours for the procedure. In the end it took nearly 2 hours. One of the drawbacks to LSH is that it can be really fast, right there with TAH or LAVH, but can last longer because of the removal of the uterus through the morcellator. The doctor told me after the surgery Carey had a lot of fibroids and they just had to take their time to "chew" them up and get them out. I asked if she considered converting the surgery to full abdominal and she just looked at me and said "no way, that was never a consideration.....I had a job to do and I did it". The doctor can actually be a bit more earthy than that so I've edited her exact words. :)
A note about the surgery itself. As you know Carey elected to go the least invasive way she could and that meant Laparoscopic Supracervical Hysterectomy (LSH). The end result, after yesterday's surgery, was that all that was removed was her uterus. Cervix was left since, quite honestly, it isn't removed under LSH and she didn't have any indications that it needed to be. The supposed problem with her left ovary turned out to be a fibroid in the immediate area. Doctor removed that and told me her ovaries were in great shape so she left both. Because Carey had what is described as a large uterus the surgeon had projected 1 1/2 hours for the procedure. In the end it took nearly 2 hours. One of the drawbacks to LSH is that it can be really fast, right there with TAH or LAVH, but can last longer because of the removal of the uterus through the morcellator. The doctor told me after the surgery Carey had a lot of fibroids and they just had to take their time to "chew" them up and get them out. I asked if she considered converting the surgery to full abdominal and she just looked at me and said "no way, that was never a consideration.....I had a job to do and I did it". The doctor can actually be a bit more earthy than that so I've edited her exact words. :)