Surgery Complete

My surgery went well Thursday. There were no surprises, and I was even able to go home the same day. It was a little more painful than I was expecting though. I think that we throw around the term laparoscopic and we kind of minimize the fact that it is still surgery. I am very grateful that we now have the option of laparoscopic surgery. I think that it is awesome that surgery is able to be done in such a way, but I think that we forget that it is still surgery and a drama to our bodies.  The good news though is that even though it was painful, the pain lessens pretty quickly – I’m sure much more quickly than traditional surgery.

I was starting to get around more yesterday. And today I am up even more. Of course now for me I have to make sure that I don’t do too much too soon. If you knew my grandma or my dad, you would know where I inherited my need to be always doing something. If there is a job that I know needs to be done, it keeps calling to me. It is so hard to not just get up and do it. :O)

I have been super tired though so that helps to keep me moving slower. I don’t know if I should blame the effects of anesthesia, healing, hormone changes, or what but I have been super tired. I am hoping that this gets better this week. I am also hoping that this post makes sense because it has been a little harder to put words together the last few days.

One thing that took me by surprise with this surgery was the deep feeling of loss and sadness that I felt. I wasn’t excited about this surgery, but I thought that I had worked through the emotions of it before. Truth be told, I was pretty upset that this surgery might even be suggested last year. From my research I knew it was used some – more in the past than now. I even had the option of doing the Lupron shots last year but I turned them down. I didn’t want to have to go through menopause so young. With cancer the decisions are always hard it seems. You must balance treatment with side effects. You must decide how far you need to go in treatment to do the best you can to kill cancer. But you must know that every step of the way that there will be bad side effects that you will have to live with -some permanently. It is not easy and it takes an emotional toll.

But I had thought through all this already. I had weighed the pros and cons.  I was even in menopause going into the surgery. I wasn’t expecting a lot of surprises. And yet I felt like I had just lost a big part of me. I guess because I had just made it permanent and there was now no chance of going back. I am now extremely glad that I didn’t have this surgery back in May. I cannot even begin to imagine how I would have felt waking up to instant menopause. I would have dealt with all my feelings of loss, the pain and also horrid hot flashes and a big hormone drop. I think that God’s hand was in the details. By doing chemo and then Lupron I was able to go a little more slowly into menopause. Because of this, my hot flashes post surgery have not been very different than they were before. I am very glad of this.

Having gone through this, I would make one recommendation to another woman in my same shoes. If you must make the decision to either suppress or remove your ovaries, give yourself time. Even if you are against the Lupron shots, get at least one before you surgically and permanently put yourself into menopause. Give yourself the extra time to adjust to the idea and the low hormone levels. I am so glad that this is the way it ended up happening for me. I was very knowledgeable about what to expect from the surgery, but it is one thing to know on paper what to expect and another to go through it.