Procedure turned Surgery

I drug myself out of bed yesterday morning at 6:00am and headed off to the hospital for my surgery. We had a hard time finding a babysitter for the kids, so we decided that I would go to the hospital by myself, and Ben would be there when I woke up from surgery. That way the kids would only need to be at the babysitters house for about 2 hours.

For some weird reason, I really wasn't that nervous. I was the most nervous for the I.V. I HATE those things. It wasn't too bad this time though. I talked with the doctor, talked with the sandman (the anaesthesiologist) and then they wheeled me into the freezing cold surgery room.

The last thing I remember was the sandman saying that he needed to make sure my I.V. was working. Next thing I knew, I was waking up with Ben by my side. As with the last D&C I had, I was shaking all over. I just do that I guess. It makes my body ache all over, but this time they gave me some stuff to stop the shakes. Hooray.

Then I realized that my tummy hurt, in fact, I felt like I had been stabbed. I looked at Ben and he said, "um, they had to do a little more than just the D&C."
Come to find out, I had a hole in my uterus. I am waiting for the doctor to call me today to find out how that hole got there. I don't know if he made it during the D&C, or if it was already there before hand, or if it occurred when I gave birth to our big baby William... who knows, but they ended up doing laparoscopic surgery to fix it. Laparoscopic surgery is where they insert three things into your stomach and perform surgery like playing a video game. They look at a screen and maneuver their three things around in there. For me, they burned the hole shut, or that is what I think I heard they did anyway. I will never understand why doctors explain everything to you when you just wake up from surgery. Seriously. They did show me pictures of the hole though, and it was pretty big, and really disgusting.

I now have three holes in my stomach. One of them is right in the middle of my belly button. It has stitches in it. The other two are taped shut and I can't tell if they are also stitched or not. There is too much stuff around them. It grosses me out to look at them right now, so I will wait and see if they are stitched when I am not so sore and when they don't look so nasty.

Ben had a surgery done the same way last year, so here is a picture of his tummy after the surgery. Believe me, you don't want to see a picture of my tummy right now, it is still pretty raw looking from the surgery. It does look thinner though. I think that thick lining actually made my tummy bigger. Weird. But basically, my tummy looks the same as Ben's in this picture. Stab wounds, bruises, and everything in between.

I don't have that giant white patch of gauze though. Ben had a tube coming out of his stomach, luckily, I didn't. His surgery was worse, way worse.

My stomach is very, very sore, and I can't stand up straight yet, but I have some great pain meds, so I have been sleeping a ton. I will have a two week recovery instead of the two day recovery that the D&C was supposed to be. Boo.

The doctor also found that the lining of my uterus was extremely thick. I thought I heard the nurse say it was like being three months pregnant. I could be wrong though, I was still in a fog when she was talking. With the D&C, he pretty much scraped it all out.The doc is pretty sure this was the cause of the bleeding. For some reason, he thinks my body was having a mis-fire of estrogen and progesterone which signals the lining of the uterus to shed. I am still very confused. I will be grateful when the doc. calls so it can all make more sense.

I am relived that the surgery is over though, and I am glad I didn't know what was really going to happen until after the fact. I am hoping I can recover quickly, the problem will be fixed, and I can get back to life quickly. I have some painting and fall decorating to do. ;) I LOVE FALL!

Speaking of painting..I finished painting Mary's room last week and it is ADORABLE!!! I just have some touch up left to do. Pictures coming soon. And, oh boy, do I have a story to go along with this paint job. But, I need to heal up for a while first. Stay tuned...