Well, that sucked.

I'm on day two without a uterus. It's been a rough couple of days.

The surgery itself went perfectly, it was probably the easiest yoink of the day. It was the absolute freak-out my body decided to have after that was the issue.

The biggest issue was my blood pressure. Pretty much the minute I came out of anesthesia, my blood pressure went up in the 210/120 range, and stayed there no matter what, so I was admitted for the night on the heart ward for observation.

Second biggest issue was my bladder, which needed a foley catheter for around 10 hours after the operation. It didn't go to sleep with the anesthesia, I was well aware of it the whole time, it was just swollen and shifted to the right thanks to the inflammation in my abdomen, so I couldn't release anything.

Third biggest when it came to actual danger but number one for me was that they pump your abdomen full of air for the surgery, and that made me so nauseous until my body decided to release it, which took laying flat, and switching from laying on my left to right side every half-hour or so. Though, my BP went back down to normal after a night of belching every time I rolled over.

Because of that, nothing more than small sips of anything would sit on my stomach, so I got real dehydrated. Now, I'm a hard enough poke that I have Vascular Access on my chart for basically anything that involves needles. My veins roll like gas station hot dogs. And I was so dehydrated that not only could they not even pull from either of two IV sets (one in each hand), but anything they did get congealed immediately. That got me two more bags of saline... and also four lab techs and a whole lot of pokes. To where my right hand blew up like a balloon after they removed the IV yesterday, it's gone down considerably but is still a little puffy today. And taking out the left IV made one of the lab pokes start to weep, that took all night to finally congeal. It soaked the gauze they put on it.

And, of course, the anesthesia leaving the body coupled with the hormonal shock gave me the sweats and chills for about 12 hours post-op. I sweat out a lot last night, too, thankfully without the teeth-clattering shivers.

And the shock gave me leg tremors until yesterday morning, which my nurse said are pretty severe as tremors go. Ironically, we passed a billboard driving in from the OTHER hospital system (which I'm also connected to, so I do have access to this) advertising a new sonic treatment for essential tremor, which I may ask my PCP about when I see her in a few weeks. Mine really only manifests when I'm stressed physically or emotionally, but hey, if I'm a candidate, I'd love to dial it down.

Pain-wise, I take bone pain better 😅😅 The high-dose Ibuprofen works better than the Tylenol, which, duh. And I have Oxy if it gets too bad. As for bleeding, it was pretty intense for the first six hours or so post-op, but I'm not even spotting right now. I'm told spotting is my signal that I'm going too hard for the next few weeks, and considering I'm not moving too fast right now, no spotting is a good sign.

Am I happy I did it? Fuck yeah. I survived, I'll heal, and I don't ever have to worry about the family cancer or having another period again.

How did the cats handle it? I am told Penelope, Violet, Hamish, and Milosh spent the entire time protesting my absence. Violet and Milosh are still mad at me, despite being extra cuddly. I would like to start camping and travelling again, but with this co-dependent crew...

And as a final lol, my discharge paperwork had this big warning about how they used a medicine in anesthesia that makes oral contraceptives ineffective for a dose or two, so I'd better use a condom if I don't want a post-op baby... you know, for the sex I'm not allowed to have for six weeks, because they just removed my uterus and cervix. That was pretty funny.

Oh hey, no more pregnancy tests before my nerve root injections, either! Whoo hoo!