I had surgery yesterday morning – I got to hospital at 6am and was in theatre on time at 7.30am after all the administrative process were done and I was finished being prepped. There was an additional doctor there observing the surgery who used to be my OB’s boss, but now is doing more research projects – I had signed up to be one of his research participants and he was there on an observational basis because I had been one of their more perplexing cases when we tried 2 cycles of IVF and failed in late 2012.
I remember feeling more anxiety as I was wheeled into the theatre room full of people in masks. I’d been through all of it before, with the IVF egg retrieval, the first round of endometriosis investigation and prior to that, in a different hospital where they cleared out a cyst that had burst (that was my first encounter with even knowing I had endometriosis).
The anaesthetist and his assistant screwed up putting the first canula into my arm, he apologised and tried again, and his assistant then put a mask over my face telling me that they were going to give me something to relax me. After that, I was suddenly in recovery, being coaxed awake by a gentle male nurse who was asking me how I was and my name and date of birth.
I don’t remember much in between that and being moved to my bed, only that I was in a lot of pain, more than the first laparoscopic procedure for endometriosis. They had done an additional procedure, a hysteroscopy, to examine the uterus as a fibroid appeared on one of my scans where it had not appeared during the last round of surgery. Last time my left ovary was stuck to my bowel, and that was the case again this time around. They were worried there were going to be more areas of disease stuck onto the bowel this time around because my symptoms were quite painful this year. Thankfully, that was not the case, and even better, they were able to flush fluid through both of the fallopian tubes (something they were unable to do last time – the fluids were stuck). The left fallopian tube was very damaged and was at risk of being removed, but with the fluid moving through it, the doctor decided to leave it be. The fact that fluid is going through the tubes is a good sign for fertility indeed.
I have one frozen egg left from my last egg retrieval. I have an appointment with the doctor at the end of next week so we’ll do an action plan from there on. Depending on when the egg will be able to be transferred depends on when the IVF clinic is open/closed over the December/January break and also will depend on when my next cycle is due. We’re probably going to do an IVF cycle in January and in the mean time, I’ll be taking some medication to make sure the endometriosis shrinks in my body. The last time I took such medication, it had terrible side effects that made me drown in dangerous moods. Playing with hormones is really like playing god with your emotions and sometimes you have to question whether or not you really want something at the expense of your own sanity.
I’m at home now, sore but recovering and resting well, and I’ll have 2 weeks off work in which to sort out other things that I can around the home. I won’t be able to drive for a few days but that’s ok as I don’t want to go anywhere. I might have a belated birthday party on the 7th of December (my birthday fell on a wednesday and the following week was my surgery) but we’ll see how I’m feeling. Today is a really good day and I am keen to get back into my routine and probably into blogging and writing and seeing if that’s a good path for me to follow for the future.
Thanks for reading, and coming along on this journey with me. There will be much more to tell and more roads to follow. Until next post!
Endo and Liz - an endometriosis journal 