Sometime tonight my real life friend The Big Awill be posting a comment here to let you all know how my surgery went.   Like a dumb ass, I wrote down 20 instead of 2:00 hours for the surgery.  Imagine my surprise when I asked how long and the nurse told me as long as two and a half hours for the procedure.  Whoops! 

So, yesterday afternoon my stepdaughter called me and wanted to know why I was having this surgery again.  Since I have so many health problems, none of us can keep it straight.  I’ll forget to tell my doctors what diseases I have all the time, so this was no biggie that she had to ask this.  After giving her the run down, I thought maybe I should tell all of you, just in case you weren’t sure why I was having this done, and why it is such a big deal.  So, here goes:

• Fibroids – 2. 
• Polyps – To quote my doctor in 2005 “I’m chock full of them.”
• Twenty four years of heavy bleeding – 10 days periods every 21 days. 
• Three failed D & C’s and a failed endometrial ablation.  My periods have come back, now up to four days every two or three weeks.
• Ovarian cysts.  I get them all the time.  Painful and right now I have one that is bigger than my actual left ovary.
• Septate Uterus.  Yep, my uterus has split in half.  Soon to rupture.
• I’ve been peeing out tissue from uterus for the past two years.  They are sure it is not from my bladder.  
•  Adenomyosis, a severe form of Endometriosis, where the genes have gotten mixed up, and the Endometriosis is inside the muscle of the uterus and scarring occurs from the inside to the outside of the organ.  It also makes the entire uterus grow huge.  My endometrium has actually grown back, and she thinks it is also in the, um, lower area, causing severe pain you know when. 
• Tilted uterus.  As if I needed one more thing.  If you look at me closely, you can see how the left side of me sticks out more than the right.  Hubby wants me to ask for it back in a glass jar, lol.  I’ve seen pictures of it, and damn, it is scary looking, all scarred up like a man whose been in battle or something.

The only choice you have when you have Adenomyosis is to yank it out.  No other options.  I’m now having the big tummy cut, so that I can be under less time.  And now I’m keeping my cervix.  I may have to get rid of the ovaries as well because of the cysts.  I do not want to go into menopause at my age, so let us pray she only has to yank one.

Not only is this major surgery, but I have the following concerns:

• Dysautonomia.  My heart rate and blood pressure are not regulated.  It it not good for you to have surgery as a rule.  Last couple of times I woke up from 30 minute procedures gasping for air with a heart rate of 42 and a nurse yelling for me to breathe.  Kind of scary stuff.  The damn doctor didn’t want to put me under and he and his nurses and my gyno and her nurses were duking it out in the hallway.  I gave her a look that said “just do it” and thankfully she won.  I told her no repeats today, that crap stressed me out last October. 
•  Bleeding disorder.  When I was at Mayo they found out that I had an abnormal blood Venus Venom test result – a bleeding disorder, which I can agree with.  When I cut my leg open a few years ago I bleed and bleed for about 40 minutes from a tiny cut.  I have had an ER man nurse who was also a medic in the Army ask me if I had this, since when he took my blood I just gushed the blood all over and had instant, severe bruising.  I’m worried if something goes wrong in surgery than what will this do to complicate it.
• Genetic  issues.  Mayo also thinks I have a rare genetic condition involving a loss of collagen.  It is so rare they don’t even test for it, only two other places in the US do.  So far I’ve lost two inches of height, my heart has mild regurgitation in two valves, hearing loss, my retina is torn in a bunch of places (lattice degeneration), I have the whole split uterus thing, and a million other little things because of this.  I’m extremely worried that something is going to go wrong during the surgery because of my weak tissues and muscles.  I’m really hoping I’m going to be ok.   

Even while writing this, I’m pretty calm.  I wasn’t able to sleep much last night, but that had more to do with the fact that it was in the 90s upstairs and I was sweating to death.  Stupid heat rising.  We have central air, but you’d never know it in my bedroom.  Summers here are brutal, and now that I have my new fan Beatrice is scared of it and won’t come sleep or visit me at night.

I guess I purged all of this just in case there was bad news and I wanted to prepare you in case something happens.  I’m thinking that I will just be sick and puke from going under, as in the past, and that I’ll be ok.  However, I know too many people who have had bad things happen in hospitals from “simple surgeries” so I wanted you all to be prepared, because I am dramatic and crazy like that.

I have no idea how long I’m going to be offline.  I’m staying in the hospital until Thursday, and hopefully by this weekend I will have time to post or at least read comments.  I appreciate all the good thoughts, prayers and kind words you all have been telling me for months now.  Thank you so much for allowing me to vent on here and for reading what I have to say.