Hello out there in internet land! Just popping by to give you the latest.
For about a year and half I've been dealing with endometriosis. Its a condition that causes uterin tissue to over grow and grow in places it shouldn't. This overgrowth aggrivates nerves and is VERY painful. A few things were tried (hormonal stuff) that didn't work so I was sent of to a doctor who specializes in pelvic pain. This doc tried one more hormonal treatment called lupron. It was great! Wow! No pain at all after I had been on it for a couple of weeks. This is not a medication that can be used longer term so the hope was that after three months of it the endo would be beat back enough that my regular birth control could keep it in check.
Sadly, that did not turn out to be the case. Within six weeks of stopping the lupron I was having pain again. The specialist that I saw told me flat out that she was so concerned about my CF being an issue that she would not operate on me, which is what I would need to deal with the endo for good. Uhg.
Right about that time my mom was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. She was sent to Seattle from eastern Washington for her surgery. Mom is going to be fine, her cancer has a 95% cure rate with surgery alone! While mom was here I met her surgeon and he seemed fantastic, as did the rest of the staff who took care of her at the hospital!
When things had settled down a bit in my life I marched into my general practitioners office and asked for a referal to mom's doctor. After listening to my reasons for wanting it my doc put it through! A couple of weeks later his office called me and was ready to schedule surgery the following week! While I was very impressed by that I told that I needed some time to get this organized. So it was scheduled for the second week of October.
Well, last week I had my total hysterectomy! I no longer have a uterus, ovaries, or felopian tubes and this is just fine by me! I spent two nights in the hospital with wonderful nurses who were only concerned for my care and comfort! They brought a vase for the flowers that someone gave me, they offered my mom coffee and juice, they made sure that my pain was under control and that I was eating. Seriously, I have never had a better hospital stay! There was no worrying about getting my meds correctly and on time, the nurses would just magically appear with the right thing at the right time. Someone came right away any time I needed help with something.
I am now recovering at home with my dad taking care of me, and the cat of course. I'm almost off of the heavy pain meds entirely and getting around pretty well. Dad will be going home on Saturday but after that I have tons of friends that are willing and able to help me when I need anything! It seems weird to say that the most invasive surgery I've ever had has been one of the easiest to deal with, but its the truth!
For about a year and half I've been dealing with endometriosis. Its a condition that causes uterin tissue to over grow and grow in places it shouldn't. This overgrowth aggrivates nerves and is VERY painful. A few things were tried (hormonal stuff) that didn't work so I was sent of to a doctor who specializes in pelvic pain. This doc tried one more hormonal treatment called lupron. It was great! Wow! No pain at all after I had been on it for a couple of weeks. This is not a medication that can be used longer term so the hope was that after three months of it the endo would be beat back enough that my regular birth control could keep it in check.
Sadly, that did not turn out to be the case. Within six weeks of stopping the lupron I was having pain again. The specialist that I saw told me flat out that she was so concerned about my CF being an issue that she would not operate on me, which is what I would need to deal with the endo for good. Uhg.
Right about that time my mom was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. She was sent to Seattle from eastern Washington for her surgery. Mom is going to be fine, her cancer has a 95% cure rate with surgery alone! While mom was here I met her surgeon and he seemed fantastic, as did the rest of the staff who took care of her at the hospital!
When things had settled down a bit in my life I marched into my general practitioners office and asked for a referal to mom's doctor. After listening to my reasons for wanting it my doc put it through! A couple of weeks later his office called me and was ready to schedule surgery the following week! While I was very impressed by that I told that I needed some time to get this organized. So it was scheduled for the second week of October.
Well, last week I had my total hysterectomy! I no longer have a uterus, ovaries, or felopian tubes and this is just fine by me! I spent two nights in the hospital with wonderful nurses who were only concerned for my care and comfort! They brought a vase for the flowers that someone gave me, they offered my mom coffee and juice, they made sure that my pain was under control and that I was eating. Seriously, I have never had a better hospital stay! There was no worrying about getting my meds correctly and on time, the nurses would just magically appear with the right thing at the right time. Someone came right away any time I needed help with something.
I am now recovering at home with my dad taking care of me, and the cat of course. I'm almost off of the heavy pain meds entirely and getting around pretty well. Dad will be going home on Saturday but after that I have tons of friends that are willing and able to help me when I need anything! It seems weird to say that the most invasive surgery I've ever had has been one of the easiest to deal with, but its the truth!
3 comments:
Hey Jess,
How did they diagnose the endometriosis? I've had pelvic pain too, and my mom had endometriosis and then ovarian cancer! I have CF Related Arthritis though that seems to give me random pain all over and tend to ignore pain in my body. So, just wondering about your symptoms and how they discovered what was going on...
For the record, it sounds like your mom's cancer was caught early, which is great!
I'm so happy you got it all sorted out. May your recovery be speedy.
My endo was diagnosed over a period of about a year (yeah, not joking!). I started having pain and went to see my doc. This was a few months after I had an IUD put in. First she checked that and it was fine. Then I was checked for cysts and fibroids or any other weird growths with an ultra sound.
The ultra sound was normal so my doc tried me on several types of birth control pills in addition to the IUD. None of it helped so I asked to see a pelvic pain specialist.
She did a trial of depo lupron on me. Its a hormone injection that induces menopause. Endo is caused by hormones that your ovaries produce so if you turn them off the endo usually gets better. Its the best way to diagnose endo without surgery as well.
So the lupron worked great and the hope was that it knocked back the endo enough for my IUD to keep it under control. Unfortunately that didn't happen. The specialist had said that she would NOT operate on me. She was worried about my CF making me such a high risk patient for surgery. I didn't accept this, I've had many surgeries and I'm still here!
It was about that time that my mom's cancer was found. While helping her with all of that my issues went to the back burner for a while. After things settled down I asked for a referal to my mom's surgeon because he was amazing!
He agreed right away that I was a perfect candidate for surgery!
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