Part 5: Total Hysterectomy with Bilateral Salpingo-Oophorectomy

*Disclaimer - this next part of my story discusses cancer and the raw, emotional experience that we went through as a family. If you are not in a place to read this please skip ahead to other posts, I’ll have a disclaimer prior to any post that includes this topic moving forward. I’ve been in your shoes, it’s ok to protect your heart by not reading every story put out into the world.*

According to the Cleveland clinic, the definition of a total hysterectomy with bilateral salpingo-oophorectomy is “removing your uterus, cervix, fallopian tubes and ovaries.”

According to me, I’m basically a blow-up doll now.

Go ahead, you can laugh. It’s funny.

I had no reason to understand any of this prior to this stage of my life. Now I have to try to figure out how to pronounce salpingo-oophorectomy and I’m still over here struggling to sort out how to say “Gynecological Oncologist.” Never fear, I shall persist! Afterall, I am the girl that when I had knee surgery at age 17 because my knee cap liked to pop out of place while I was doing very uncool things like CATCHING A FRISBEE I made the Dr. repeat what my surgery was until I understood how to say it because I was sick of people assuming I had ACL surgery. (That surgery was a tibial, tubercal, osteotomy and transfer.)

After the massive event that surgery turned out to be, my hospital stay wasn’t incredibly noteworthy.

We understood if it was cancer that meant they would do a full hysterectomy and that would lead to spending one night in the hospital. So, logic told us that I would probably be going home today. You are correct, this is the same logic that told us we would be home by 10:00 the night before. I was catching on at this point that our logic may be a bit flawed. It was painful and scary to get out of bed thanks to the 6” slice up the center of my stomach. I was terrified to use my ab muscles for fear that I would pop the incision open. I expected to sleep a lot, but it was the exact opposite. Menopause insomnia started immediately; hot flashes started immediately. It was wild. Turns out, when you abruptly remove hormones from your body it’s incredibly jarring. One minute you’re a 40-year-old that menstruates and has a cyst named Carl, the next you’re an old lady in menopause and Carl is in a jar.

Jeremy stayed with me for a portion of the morning after he dropped the kids off at school and then he left around lunch. By this point it was clear to everyone that I was in no state to be going home and a second night in the hospital was inevitable. He planned to pick up dinner for me (my favorite from Souper Market – the #2 deal Green Apple Salad and Chicken Paprikash Soup) and him and the kids visited me for a few hours that evening. I wasn’t sure how our kids would react seeing me in the hospital, but let’s be honest they were VERY used to seeing me laying down doing nothing at this point. I was just doing that in a different location this time. There was a dry erase board that the care team would put their names on but my kids took it upon themselves to fill in some blanks. “Diet and Activity Plan: Chocolate Cake!!” “My Care Plan Goals: “Eat more chocolate cake! Get the dog in!” (They were very committed to developing a plan to sneak our dog into the hospital). I spilled chicken paprikash soup on my sheets and spent the rest of my hospital stay assuring the nurses and doctors coming in “I promise I didn’t poop myself, it’s soup.” To which most of them would say “hey we want to know things are moving so even if you did poop yourself that would be a good sign!”

Hospitals have a good way of stripping away all shreds of decency.

Speaking of decency. Part of being able to go home was to have the catheter removed. And to have the catheter permanently removed, I had to prove that I could pee or they would PUT IT BACK IN. Not on my watch. What’s the test? I will pass and I will pass it so hard.

The nurse let me know that she would inject a water solution INTO my bladder through the catheter before removing it. (This way she knows exactly how many mL of fluid are in there). The rule of this fun pee game was I had to pee out 250 mL of the 400 mL she put in. If I could do that, I win. With some apprehension, I told her I was all in. She did her injecting (what a weird job nursing is) and WOWZA. Hands down, top 3 weirdest feeling I’ve ever experienced. But no time to dwell on that, it was my time to shine. She helped hoist me out of the bed. I shuffled over to the toilet, she put down the pee catcher and hot damn! I got out 350 ml! If peeing out a solution that was injected into your bladder were an Olympic sport, I think I would have the gold. At least the silver. Maybe tied for gold but the other person was so in awe of my ability to pee they gave up theirs and made me the gold medalist.

I assumed I would be so exhausted the second night that I would sleep like a baby. But sleep never came. Sleeping in a hospital is hard with all the checking and poking and prodding, but it wasn’t that. I literally just couldn’t fall asleep. I remember giving up and watching something stupid on TV, then finding episodes of Bluey on in the early morning toddler hours and feeling relieved. My kids may have been pre-teen / teenagers, but Bluey is our go to family show, those dogs are hilarious! My daughter even sent me a picture at some point of our dog Klaus in drawn on purple underpants – a nod to one of the episodes where the youngest, Bingo, has to spend a night in the hospital so everyone back home makes this ridiculous movie about purple underpants.

I soon realized my kids should be up and getting ready for school, so I sent a quick text to say “I hope you have a good day at school” and my daughter responded “I hope I’ll see you when I get home!” I knew that meant she was feeling worried that I was still in the hospital. It was even more motivation for me to keep walking around and pushing to get out of there.

I’m going to be honest I dont remember if the pee challenge was my first day in the hospital or my second. And I dont remember if I was able to walk around when my kids visited or not. But I do remember at some point calling in the nurse to help hoist me out of bed so I could walk laps around my room, sit in the recliner instead of the bed, go to the bathroom. Prove to them that I’m good to go. And, thank goodness, after a visit from my doctor on day two I got the go ahead to leave around lunch time. Here’s some advice – bring new clothes to wear home from the hospital. In my infinite wisdom I wore clothes TO the hospital and assumed I would just wear the same clothes home. But, what I didn’t consider is the stress sweating I was doing in the short time I had those clothes on and THEN those clothes were in a plastic bag for 2 days. No ma’am. No thank you. Can I just wear the hospital gown home?!  

…to be continued