Mommin' It Up!

June 3, 2015June 3, 2015

Burning Up

Here we are, two weeks post-op and into menopause. The good news is that I’m crying less than I was at this time last week. Maybe that had more to do with the medication/overall stress surrounding the surgery than hormones, I don’t know, but knock on wood it seems to have leveled out.

This week’s exciting development has been hot flashes. Specifically, hot flashes at night. I wake up pretty much on fire and drenched in sweat. It’s just about as fun as it sounds. Fortunately they seem pretty short lived, or at least I am able to go back to sleep fairly easily. It is a strange sensation, though, because they seem to come on so fast and nothing helps them pass – I can tear off my covers and still be just as hot as I was under them. It also feels kind of hard to breathe. Very odd.

My doctor recommended evening primrose oil supplements, and I started taking them last night. I’ve also ordered some ~~snake~~ essential oils that are supposed to help. We shall see.

Overall, though, I am feeling pretty good. I am still sore and move pretty slow. As I told my dad yesterday, my grandma could beat me at a foot race at this point. But I am trying to move a little more every day without overdoing it, which is proving to be a bit of a hard balance to strike. I’m using my Misfit Shine activity tracker and yesterday hit a post-surgery high of 2500 steps. Needless to say, that’s not much, and it is weird to not be able to do the things I want to do. I can’t even unload the dishwasher because I can’t bend over repeatedly. But, I know it’s temporary and this has given me a whole new appreciation for my overall good health. I’m looking forward to being back to normal!

May 27, 2015

Honey, You’re Going Through The Change

This is totally me right now.

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/an-Tpr62bY7thbbuJ/fried_green_tomatoes_1991_evelyns_going_through_the_change/

But let me back up a moment!

My surgery (total abdominal hysterectomy bilateral salpingo oophorectomy – aka they took out all my parts) was a week ago today. The surgery itself was more complicated than they had anticipated, as the endometriosis had progressed quite a bit since December and was attached to all sorts of stuff it shouldn’t have been attached to. And evidently I am a bleeder. So I required the surgeons to really work for their money that day but they did an awesome job and cleared it all out for me and everything turned out just fine.

The first 24 hours afterwards were a bit rough. Jenny arrived to visit shortly after I arrived in my room – before I received my pain medication… which, for some reason, was fairly difficult to acquire. She almost started a #giveEmilydrugs campaign on Twitter, but fortunately it didn’t come to that.

An unfortunate side effect to having surgery so close to one’s bladder is that said bladder becomes very sore and unable to expand to its usual capacity, so the first night I had to go to the bathroom pretty much every hour on the hour. And as those of you who have been in this situation can attest – getting out of bed to do so is no easy process! I had to have Andy unhook me from contraptions on my legs and manage my IV cart and magical ball of pain medicine each time I had to get up and then hook me up to everything when I got back in bed, only to do so again 45 minutes later. It was great fun! But I was so thankful to have him there with me, because calling for the nurses and having to wait on them every time would have been much worse. And he was a great sport about it.

The following day I was feeling better but unsure about whether or not I was ready to go home, which my doc had said was a possibility. Fortunately, she made that decision for me when she came to check on me – my hemoglobin was pretty low because of all the bleeding I did the day before, and she wanted me to stay an additional night. That was definitely the right thing to do and by Friday morning when I was released, I felt ready to go home.

Everything has continued to improve – I am getting up and around pretty well, my pain has been very well controlled (although I am beginning to run out of Percocet and it makes me nervous… I am rationing them out very carefully at this point!) and my friends and family have been taking great care of me.

Right now I’m sitting on my deck with an iPad, a book and a cup of coffee – hard to complain about that.

I am a bit, how should I phrase this, emotionally fragile at the moment, though, and have had a couple breakdowns over very minor things… hence the video above! I don’t know if it’s hormonal at this point or just a result of all the emotional and physical stress from the past couple of weeks, but I have been crying a bit more than usual! But probably still way less than Jenny does on a good day. So it’s all perspective, right?

Anyway, thank you all for the support, prayers and well wishes. It means a lot to me! And now I will knock off this mushy stuff before I start crying again.

May 15, 2015

Here we go again. Probably.

So, my surgery is scheduled for this coming Wednesday. On the one hand, after months of waiting I am so beyond ready to get the show on the road. On the other, I still have 9 million things on my “Surgery Preparation” to-do list, and now I’m running out of time.

Probably, I mean. I am probably running out of time. I am so traumatized by the postponement of this whole thing two months ago that I have a hard time believing it is actually going to happen. I keep thinking of things that would screw it up. Yesterday, for example, I stumbled over a curb and nearly fell off my cute wedges, and my immediate thought was “If I break my ankle, I can’t have my surgery.”

On the third hand, I feel like I am making far too big a deal out of this whole thing and I should just get over myself. I worry that this stupid surgery is all I talk about and that everyone is tired of hearing about it. (So what do I do? Blog about it. Again.) I also feel an immense amount of pressure (completely self-induced, btw) to bounce back right away. A few days ago I started researching post-op exercise plans, trying to determine how I can get ~~back~~ into shape asap.

That particular google search led me to an article about just how many internal stitches and clamps and staples and paperclips are involved in total abdominal hysterectomies and what exactly can happen if one tears, and let me just say it is not pretty.

But! The good news is that in just a few short days, you won’t have to hear me drone on and on about my upcoming hysterectomy. By that point, I will have moved on to being self-absorbed about my recovery. And then menopause.

I do wonder what that will be like – menopause. I mean, what if after going from estrogen-overload to complete estrogen deprivation, my personality completely changes? (Not that it’s ever been particularly sparkling, so maybe that would be a good thing). I could become No Filter Emily and say whatever comes to mind. Basically then I’d just say everything that I now only text to Jenny, and though I might make a whole lot of enemies, it would be quite entertaining. Or I could become Mean Emily. Ergh, I am pretty sure that’s already happened. If I come out of this more grumpy and irritable, my husband and kids will probably be on the next bus out of town.

Or absolutely nothing will change and I will have to come to terms with the fact that there’s not a surgery or medication or diet that will make me any different from what I am. And what then?