My Recovery From Surgery and Starting HRT

It has now been over 13 weeks since I had my surgery to remove my one remaining ovary, tube, appendix, omentum (no I didn’t know what that was either) and to sample my lymph nodes and womb to check for any spread of dodgy cells. I realised I hadn’t actually written about any of it since then so I thought I would talk about it today.

It has absolutely flown by since then and the whole time I was in hospital feels like some kind of dream (or nightmare) now. My recovery at first felt really slow and I spent most of my time in bed; it was difficult for me to move at all and hurt a lot so I took painkillers and slept as much as I could. I also kept getting these kind-of choking fits, especially during the middle of the night, which really hurt my stomach and was a lot of fun.  I do remember the same thing happening after I had my other ovary removed years ago. I think it was my body trying to clear out my lungs after the surgery, and that has mostly stopped now.

The first few weeks after my op was bloody awful in all honesty – so much pain, not being able to sleep and having to wake up to turn over every time I needed to as I had to shift myself in stages and hold onto something! Part of my wound kept leaking for weeks, anything other than a loose dress was too tight for me to wear, I couldn’t lift anything and couldn’t drive which was a pain in the arse. I had to go in the car a few times to go to hospital and doctors appointments and obviously leave the hospital and it was horrible having the seatbelt across me even with a towel against me and every bump in the road hurt!

It all, understandably, made me quite down and I felt quite sorry for myself a lot of the time! I hated not being able to do anything with, or for Ava, hated not being able to go with her for her first day back at school and hated not being able to wash my own hair or feet (I couldn’t bend enough to reach them!).

But it slowly got better until I was only really getting internal pains as I started to do more and more. It really bloody hurt sometimes and even leggings were still too uncomfortable for me to wear which was really annoying as it got colder!

The pains have mostly finally stopped now other than when I do a bit too much or pick up a child too much! But I think that’s just everything still healing inside as it can take a long time. I can also now wear my beloved leggings again on the school run (oh, the things that excite me as a boring old adult!) and this week I put my belly button piercing back in without it hurting (still clinging onto my youth though)!

It feels so freeing to be pain-free and be able to lift my wonderful nieces and nephews again — it’s such a relief after what felt like a long time recovering. I have another appointment with my consultant in a couple of weeks and a blood test next week which does make me nervous, to be honest, but hopefully, everything will be back down at normal levels now and I can have checkups less often.

My scar is okay I guess. After the pain had lessened it suddenly bothered me more and it will probably continue to do so until it starts to fade and my tummy settles down a bit. At the moment it seems to stick out one side of my scar more than the other and I have a bit sticking out at the top of my scar above my belly button now!

The scar itself is still pink obviously and that part of it doesn’t bother me — what gets to me more is the staple scars each side of the main cut because it means I have dot-shaped scars all down either side and that pisses me off because they look worse than the bloody actual big cut right down my belly. I was really hoping those bastard things wouldn’t scar but they have; some have started to fade a bit though and it is what it is, hey!

HRT-wise, it’s been fun. I’m using the patches, which at first were a faff and kept coming off before they were supposed to, but I’ve got better at putting them on so they stay on now. They’re annoying things though; they get any fluff or whatever from clothes stuck all around the edges, and the patches are clear so they always look a mess.

Also, there’s a bloody big shortage of the ones I’m on at the moment and I’m only on a month’s supply at a time at the moment (I have to change them twice a week) so I’m struggling to find any chemists that have them in stock and I’m having to go further afield each time. I’m going to make a doctors appointment so that I can discuss how I’m feeling on them and try to get a much longer prescription.

The scary thing is that I don’t know what happens if I do run out and can’t get more. I don’t know if I would immediately get menopause symptoms or if I’d have a bit of time, and I hate not knowing. We’re not taught enough about the menopause, and only learn anything about it when we reach that stage ourselves, and often then it’s only from doing our own research, and that really pisses me off. I’d like to do something to try and help change that, but I’m not sure where to start yet. We need to be so much more informed when it comes to these major things that happen to our bodies and can really affect our lives.

I do think the difference in hormones has affected me — I’ve been feeling very emotional and hormonal at times, particularly later in the day and it seems to come out of nowhere, but I do feel like I can cope better with feeling more tired and being able to get up and get on with things even when I’m absolutely knackered, which is useful. But again, I don’t know enough about it all. I don’t know if they might try giving me two patches at a time to balance hormones or try something different, or what. I need to speak to my doctor obviously, but I just find not knowing enough about it all so frustrating.

Anyway, that’s probably enough rambling on for one day, so I will stop there, but I’m sure I’ll have more I want to say soon.

Thanks for reading,
Lou xx