Post-op

It's been almost three weeks since my surgery. The actual procedure went smoothly, no complications. When my doctor came to speak with me right before the actual surgery, she asked what I would want her to do if when she got in there, she found my right tube to be damaged as well. Did we want her to take that one too? I honestly had never even considered this, but reluctantly said yes, knowing full well it would completely alter our fertility plans for the future. Thankfully, that right tube ended up looking fine and the left tube is gone forever. Thank goodness.

The recovery has been okay. Just in the past couple of days, I have started feeling like myself again. One of my incisions is pretty much healed, the other two not so much yet. I surprisingly got my period this week and that was excruciatingly painful since I'm still healing. I knew I was getting ready to ovulate right before surgery, but really thought having the procedure would have told my body to put that on hold for now. Since I was all drugged up and in pain anyway, I clearly never felt the actual ovulation pain right after the surgery. But I must have because exactly two weeks later, there was my period. Silly body trying to act all "normal" despite so much trouble.

I had my follow-up appointment with my doctor this week. They had sent home some pictures from my surgery that my husband and mother had tried their best to explain to me based on what they had been told after the procedure. But my doctor carefully went through it all with me and gave me even more pictures and a copy of the operative and pathology reports too. She removed a little bit of endometriosis, but that didn't really seem to be an issue. She did find and remove two fibroids in my uterus. Not all that surprising either. But she did say when they sent these fibroids for testing, it showed abnormal thickening of the lining of my uterus. Not cancer, less that 1% chance of becoming cancerous, but still not ideal for a pregnancy. It's called simple hyperplasia and mine is the best type to have as it's nonatypical. So yet another diagnosis. And as frustrating as it is to have yet another thing wrong with me, it is also another reason to be thankful that I chose to go back to the fertility doctor and was able to have this surgery. We never would have known about this and could have simply tried again with just the same sad result.

No wonder I've had so many failed pregnancies. So many reasons that lead to losses, it's amazing I've never really had trouble getting pregnant despite all this.

So our next course of treatment is four months of progesterone therapy. She was going to simply put me on birth control for these four months, but it's nearly impossible for me to take an effective birth control pill with my Factor V Leiden since I can't have estrogen. So she opted for the progesterone pills. Each month, after I know I've ovulated, I will take the pills for 10-14 days. This should help thin out and improve the lining of my uterus without completely throwing off my cycle. We still want me to continue ovulating and having a period in the meantime, but not to try to get pregnant at all during these four months. After the four months, my doctor will do an endometrial biopsy (thankfully an in-office procedure rather than surgery again.) And then we'll know whether we can start trying again at that point.

Part of me was sad we can't start trying again right away. I mean, I'm not getting any younger and I never imagined wanting to have my children so many years apart. But then again, it's freeing to know that at least for the next four months, we can kind of relax and just enjoy our life as it is. No worrying about possible pregnancies or losses. We can appreciate our little family the way it is and be thankful in that.