#like how am I supposed to make dr appts when I work 9:30-5:30

[k0nami-kid]

making BIG moves (asked my therapist if they could help me sort my shit out so I can get some adulting done instead of being stuck in an executive dysfunction hell spiral)

[robustcornhusk]

hysterectomy recovery

probably just going to do the first week, since so far it’s seems mild? and i guess i’ll throw in the followup appt i’m supposed to have eventually.

having said that, i can still write excessively about it

descriptions of bodies, pain, fluids, etc below

day 0:

we got home around 7:00pm, i want to say. the first thing i noticed on getting home was how much more mobility and energy i had this time rather than last time? like, last time it hurt to get up off the couch, i had to roll out of bed rather than sit up in order to spare my abs, i could only shuffle down the hall. this time, none of that. my abs were a little sore, but really, just a little.

cohuman went out right away to fill the scripts that had been included in my discharge stuff, because damnit, they’d sent off my prescriptions to the wrong pharmacy. 

(no one at the hospital asked where i wanted them to go? so they sent it to a nearby, but kinda not-good pharmacy, rather than the nice delivery pharmacy i prefer. the not-so-great pharmacy is not so great because they close kinda early, it’s really rundown, there’s usually a long line to drop off and pick up scripts, they don’t call when they fill your script, and a couple of times when i’ve walked home from there people have assaulted me in the street.) 

cohuman managed to come back with the Prescription Ibuprofen (???) and the stool softener (colace?), but they weren’t able to fill the oxycodone script or the Prescription Tylenol (???) script. (dr. rowen wanted me to have plain-oxycodone rather than the kind with tylenol mixed it, so that i could try to stick to tylenol and ibuprofen and only add oxycodone as needed)

one of my other housemates was home and served as Responsible Adult Supervision while my other other housemate ran out and got me some gatorade to drink. as soon as housemate came home, it was 7:30 I think? so I took the colace, 600mg of ibuprofen, and at 8, (it having been 4 hours since i was painkillered in the hospital) i took 2 tabs of my old hydrocodone. I also totally downed the whole bottle of gatorade and a bottle of soylent since by calories for the past 24 hours had been “two graham crackers” and “a mini can of gingerale”. (i kept asking for more water please, more ginger ale please, i’m so thirsty, my mouth is made of sand, please give me more to drink)

someone asked if i had weighed myself before and after; it turned out that i gained 6lb, which sorta makes sense: i went from being hella dehydrated to having been pumped full of iv fluid and gatorade and soylent and hadn’t been able to urinate.

i was attempting to talk to people via laptop, but i kept falling asleep, so after a bit cohuman + housemates were like “we’re not letting you drop another laptop, go to bed”, despite it being only 8:30. but getting in bed woke me up again, so i did try to talk to a friend, except i kept falling asleep during that, too. whatever. 

laying down, it seems, moved something around, and so i got stuck in a 15-minute cycle of lay down, sleep for a few minutes, “hey, i have to pee”, go to bathroom, sit there for a bit doing exactly that (but so slowly), lay down in bed, ... this went on for like two hours.

cohuman tried to transfer my scripts from (bad pharmacy) to (nice pharmacy); unfortunately, it wasn’t possible to transfer the oxycodone script due to it being hella controlled.

right before cohuman and i went to sleep, for real, at 11:30, i took more pain meds (2 hydrocodone) and some otc stuff to help me sleep. i woke up like … 6 times anyway, to pee, but it was fine. it went from being “oh my god, i have to sit here and strain to get it out” to “this is a lot slower than usual”.

day 1:

i woke up and sat in bed for a bit being all it’s sore and i don’t like it it and then cohuman was like “take your drugs?” which helped a lot. having said that, this is more like my level of pain at least a week after top+lipo, i think. 

i got a robocall from the hospital being like “do you have all your information? we’re going to give you a robo-survey except it’s actually not going to be used to inform us what we can do better next time, but instead we’ll have nurses call you if you answer bad things like ‘i was confused by what was going on at the hospital’” but they didn’t say the “except it’s not actually” so when it said “Oh, you were confused by discharge instructions? we’ll have a nurse call you” i had to figure out how to say NOOOOOO because i really don’t want more phone calls thanks.

even after drinking another 40oz of fluid, my mouth was still really dry? 

one of the things they handed us on the way out of the hospital were more pairs of the mesh underwear and a bunch of maternity pads. i had been annoyed at the time because it seemed that they didn’t have any adhesive and just kinda ... floated around, fell in the toilet, etc. i discovered this morning, while getting dressed, that they /did/ have adhesive and just the nurse last night hadn’t bothered to take the adhesive-peel off.  

dr. rowen also called to make sure i was doing okay: told me the surgery went well on their end, asked if i was having difficulty with urination, said i should schedule a follow-up appointment in 4-6 weeks. 

housemate’s datefriend is working from our place and being my Responsible Adult Supervision today (and probably tomorrow). with the aid of my Responsible Adult Supervision, i managed to walk over to the pharmacy and not get harassed on my way there or back and successfully retrieved my Actually Prescribed Painkillers. the line was long enough that i did have to sit on the floor, though, while waiting, because i was sorta dizzy.

took 1 additional oxycodone at noon; took another 600mg of ibuprofen at 2. experiencing a little bit of running-cramp like pain in my right side, and a little bit of pain in my shoulders. at 4 i took two oxycodone; at 8 i took another 2. 

it seems the pain has been ramping up a little bit over the course of the day; sorta crampy and my shoulders hurt and it’s probably the gas that they put in me that’s doing this. 

i felt good enough to make lunch (Responsible Adult Supervision came with me, which was actually a mistake, because it meant I missed a package by three minutes) and to make dinner (tomato soup + waffled grilled cheese sandos; also a mistake, because we were eating right after i took pain meds and i accidentally dropped my phone in the soup).

also there are goofy pictures of me in a cat kigurumi with a cone of shame.

around when cohuman and i were going to sleep, 11-12ish, i was actually in a fair bit of pain and it sucked: in my shoulder, around my ribcage, right side of my stomach, The Place Where My Cervix Used To Live. So at 11:45ish, I think, i took two oxycodone and the advil and the tylenol, then cohuman and i watched anime together until it kicked in enough to sleep

day 2:

felt better when i woke up; cohuman told me to take some gas-x because apparently that’s a Good Thing for post-laparoscopy gas pain; i took ibuprofen + 2 oxycodone right when i woke up, at 9.

picocat decided to sit on me this morning which never ever ever happens so i allowed him to press his little toothpick legs into my tender and sore abdomen for 15 minutes. i love this cat.

housemate’s datefriend is battling a sinus infection with codeine, and i’m recovering from surgery with oxycodone, and what i mean is there was No Responsible Adult driving the car today. the metaphorical car, i mean, i just sat on the couch all day.

i made weenie noises at my weenie cat all day, because he was super cute most of it and sat next to me on the electric blanket that a friend brought me last night .

at 1pm it hurt, so i took 2 painmeds; i was sorta sleepy and dizzy all afternoon but the pain went away until around 5. i took 1 then; i also pretty quickly felt kinda sick? i laid down on the couch and sorta slept with picocat (he never does this) for an hour until it felt better. 

cohuman came home near to 9; i took an advil right before we ate dinner. i didn’t have much of an appetite, though.

most of the pain i experienced today was in my shoulders, i think? 

day 3:

i took one pain object right when i woke up, at ~9:30, though this might not have been necessary. (also colace and gas-x) and i took advil at 2. the pain seems to have mostly stopped! hooray! 

rainy, though, so i didn’t actually do anything today.  my housemates and i alike were trapped inside for a nice day of anime (yuri on ice!), curry (tofu katsu, i cooked), and zaireeka.

my throat/the back of my mouth was still hurting, and in one specific spot only, so i took a lot in the mirror. it wasn’t from the surgery; it was a blister from me burning the shit out of my mouth with the soup i ate on day 1. i have no idea when it will stop hurting, but hopefully soon.

i am still bleeding from The Place Where My Cervix Used To Be, but less. it hasn’t really ever been much. the hospital-provided maternity pads remain not very good. the hospital provided mesh underwear also remains not very good. if it were more than hardly any blood, i would care.

(while going to bed, a little bit of pain again, but it stopped like 30 minutes after i tookm more advil)

day 4: 

advil at 10 and at 4, probably again at 11 for sleep. it’s not strictly necessary but also why not? pain today was /minimal/. the advil at 10 was pre-emptive “what if it hurts when i get up?”; at 3:30 i noticed a bit of mild, mild cramping, which is why i took the 4pm dose.

like, the day of surgery when i woke up was peak pain i think, which was on par with “the worst menstrual cramps i had ever had, but not more than that, and also they gave me the good drugs”; today was “hey btw your uterus used to be here, do you miss it? no? okay we’ll see ourselves out”. 

the worst part has been the shoulder pain! (holy wow that was awful at first.) and that’s mostly gone. today i got a couple of occasional twinges.

24 hours out from my last dose of *codone, the gastro-intestinal effects began to become undone. i regret eating curry for dinner. i think my doctor said to call if this hadn’t happened by the end of day 2, but also i was pretty sure it would happen within a day of going off the pain meds, so whatever.

i had expected to be swollen for a few days after surgery, but i wore my normal clothes on day one (to get meds) and today (and my pants nearly fell off...) so maybe not so much, at least not outside of my midsection.

i was pretty sleepy all day but i think that’s just because it was rainy and i was warm and stuck inside. felt a little nauseated at one point but it might’ve just been the heat (electric blanket, sweatpants, normal blanket...). the like, mental fuzzyness/sleepiness without the actual wanting to sleep part seems to be gone now.

day 5:

ibuprofen morning and evening. i didn’t have very much pain during the day, but had a little bit when i went to bed. 

this is probably TOTALLY UNRELATED to how last night i was like “you know my doctor specifically said that non *iv sex is totally fine, right”

also i pulled a muscle in my shoulder and it probably has nothing to do with how i spent 5 days on the couch with a lapdesk and the world’s worst posture. 

day 6:

so over this halfassed bleeding. so over these hospital provided pads. i should like... go to walgreens or somewhere and get some not terribad ones, but also i can’t bring myself to buy 50 (or 30, or 20) or something that i need 5 of.

day 14: 

i am still bleeding. 

pads are the worst and the wings keep wingdingin’ around and they rotate 90 degrees in my clothes and fold over and turn upside down and fuck it i hate these so on day 8 i just started bleeding on my clothes. fortunately, blood washes right out of my hella-synthetic underwear (thinking back to the long times i would spend scrubbing underwear as a teenager... cotton underwear feels like a conspiracy.). 

did i mention the blood also comes out in big, thumb-sized clumps. because it does exactly that. like tbf i have kinda small hands so my thumb-sized objects are like not so big, but nonetheless, it was a little alarming the first like... 10 times.

it’s almost convenient, like a period egg. except they keep coming and coming and coming. the rest of the time it’s just a little bit of blood.

i’ve noticed that after orgasm, it seems there’s less bleeding for~12 hours.

i’ve not been taking any painkillers, including ibuprofen, for obviously-surgery-related pain, though i occasionally get a momentary twinge where my cervix used to be. i’m getting cramps when i walk or bike too fast (like running cramps, in my side, not intestinal or uterine). my doctor okay’d me for biking after a week, as long as i promised to not go too fast.

another side-effect i didn’t notice immediately: sitting up for long periods hurts. i have horrible sitting-up-straight muscles to begin with because i slouch constantly, but like “sitting up in a movie seat to watch rogue one” left me in deep pain at the end on day 10.

so i guess i was taking ibuprofen for surgery-related pain, but it was a few steps removed. that’s been mitigated for now, by doing any sort of writing work laying down with my tablet and a piece of paper masking-taped to a lapdesk. it works.

day 21

still bleeding! (though fortunately, no more clumps.) still occasionally getting awful but brief pains where my cervix used to be!

so done.

day 29/followup

the bleeding stopped sometime over the weekend.

mostly not in any pain. when i walk like a mile or two i feel kinda squiggly on the inside, like a running cramp, minus the pain.

had the four week followup! the cohuman came with me, for both moral(e) support and also being the Insurance Dealing Human. doctor seemed apologetic that i had bleeding until the weekend, then i got to have my one and only speculum-aided exam (since all the stuff they did while i was under turned out negative. good. the not-bad outcome.).

the exam took all of two minutes: scoot up, a little further, all the way to the edge, don’t fall out of the stirrups, oh you fell out of the stirrups, that’s my hand, that’s the speculum (hey cool it has a flashlight attached!), you’re going to feel some pressure (YEP), going to swab with a qtip and it might feel weird (YEP), okay, we’re done.

(”hey so i don’t have a cervix, and i’ve seen pictures of what it looks like when there’s a cervix, but what does it look like now?” “like a wall of flesh”)

(i got a speculum! i really wanna see what my wall of rococo flesh looks like)

there is some silliness with insurance because they took the ovaries and that means it couldn’t be done as a plain ‘ol hysto. gotta get that sorted, with letters.