Overcome & Fight Like a Girl

Battling Ovarian Cysts, Endometriomas, and Endometriosis

I'm not even sure what day it is anymore. Thursday, the calendar tells me. I went in for surgery over a week ago which didn't go as planned. I have no clue what sort of chaos my little family would be going through without dear friends and family to help. Chaos. There would be a lot of chaos.

Here's how it went according to my memory, however reliable that is...

I had to wait seven extra hours for my OR to be available (hope that person is all right) so our phones were dead and I'd read read read. I'm on Clash of Kings now. I'm into it, but I wasn't into being so thirsty. I was beyond ready and wanting to get things over with.

They finally came for me and when they wheeled me out a nurse was helping Bran charge his phone; VERY luckily Tristan was with his friend and her mom. I canNOT fathom what the scene would have been like had he come with us as planned.

My surgeon was very kind and came to talk to me before the operation. A few weeks earlier I'd had some trouble with the resident who did my paperwork who kept telling me the procedure I'd had done at Brigham & Women's in '04 had to have been impossible. It was so frustrating! Thank goodness Dr. Ukraine knew exactly what I meant because he made edits to the paperwork and discussed other possibilities that could happen given the new (?) information.

...and happen they did...

I went in for a laparoscopic outpatient but wound up with a laparectomy/laparotomy three-day-stay. They prepared, went in with their camera, and saw that it was unworkable. They had to open me up. Google images are fun for that. I can only hope that they found everything they needed to so that when I heal I'll enjoy some pain-free living. and hula hooping.

He promised me he'd do everything he could to save at least one ovary if it was bad; he did, but now I am down to one.

People are asking me how I feel about that but I'm not sure how to answer. We hadn't planned on having more children so I guess that doesn't factor in - but I feel glad if this helps me. Happy, even. I feel a little more sane, too, if that makes sense.  It was validating to know that my pain was really very real.

Mostly it just hurts a lot still. It's hard to keep bending to toddler-level. He's trying to be careful but he misses wrestling and some moves come bursting from his seams when particularly excited.

I wondered if Stormborn was going to forget me but when I hobbled in the door she squeaked and hopped onto my foot. She was the cutest single pound pounce of fuzz I've ever seen fly through the air.

So. all in all...

The hospital is a daze. I was directly under the floor where Tristan lived in NICU. My nurses' name the first night was Preemie. No, I'm not delirious - I took a picture of the board. I was on morphine for a couple of days and never got that pizza feast Bran and I had planned on for my post-surgery binge. Instead I was served a cup of water with a sponge-on-a-stick and I had that for another 24 hours before I got my liquid-sugar feast.

Tris & Bran visited me each day, rain or shine. I got home Friday afternoon.

This is about as ambitious as I've gotten outside of editing photos for Instagram and painting my nails while laying down. When you add up all the days I'm doing way better than when I first came home but day-to-day doesn't feel much different.

I miss my pulsating legwarmers.