This is going to be the second part of my personal experience with ovarian cysts and endometriosis. I left a few details out because they could be considered graphic to some readers. If you have any questions please feel free to email me! I would be more than happy to answer discuss anything pertaining to this topic!!
Post-Surgery
I woke up in a different room. I was groggy which meant I was already crying. All I could see were nurses running around and beds next to me. I was calling out to anyone who could hear me, and a nurse came over. All I kept saying was,
“I have to pee.”
She checked and told me I had a catheter in, so I was peeing freely. I guess I didn’t listen because I just kept repeating myself about needing to pee. She held my hand and next thing I know I wake up in a large room with my mom and a couple of nurses around me. I found out that something had gone wrong during my surgery and my doctor would be by as soon as she could to talk to me. I also found out that I was now in the maternity wing because they were more equipped to deal with my recovery.
That’s when my mom told me that because my cysts were so big, I had to have a c-section. I would be out of work for about eight weeks and recovery was going to be more painful.
Once my doctor came around, she told me that I had three cysts on my ovaries. I had one on each ovary that had become so large that they connected my ovaries together. It looked like one large ovary instead of two. Then one had also connected to the lining of my large bowel, so they had to do a surgery to separate that. Once they had removed those two cysts that had found there was a third one hiding along the backside of my ovary. All together the three cysts were roughly the same size of a small newborn baby. I should have been showing more signs and been in much more pain. My pain tolerance was so high that if it hadn’t been, I could have taken care of the cysts a lot sooner; and prevented the invasive surgery because the c-section I had was the worst-case scenario.
I was lucky in that none of my cysts were cancerous and that she was able to save my ovaries. But now I was going to have to constantly stay on birth control because the only time that my cysts wouldn’t affect me was while I was pregnant and then going through menopause. ‘I also had a thing called endometriosis which can cause the tissue that makes up the lining of the uterus to grow on the outside of the uterus or on other organs of the body. (http://obgyn.ucla.edu/endometriosis)’
This could cause me to need surgeries like the one I just had for the rest of my life. I spent the next two days in the hospital which would have been awful except that I got to see all the newborn babies which was a plus.
The doctor told me everything I would go through physically during the recovery process. No tampons for a while since it would be dangerous. I would be bleeding often, similar to what a woman who just gave birth would go through but on a smaller scale. I would be sore of course and I would have to go on daily walks to prevent blood clots. Just around the house for the first two days, working my way up to around the block. I had glue (I don’t what the medical term for it is but it’s heavy duty) holding my incisions together so they would heal more seamlessly. I had four incisions. My c-section one, and then the three laparoscopic ones. It was going to be a pain in the butt, but I would feel better soon…
Check back soon for my last part!