So what actually happened?

 

New Year’s Day set the scene for what 2016 was to bring, with my first visit to A&E in 20 years, but apart from the drunken Eastern European guy in triage beating up the coffee machine for looking at him, it was pretty plain sailing. Following scans and tests I was diagnosed with a big fat fibroid which was competing for space alongside my already swollen manky baby oven, hence the pain. I was put on a lovely cocktail of mind altering drugs and referred. I researched and found my amazing new foof doctor who agreed to give me a full hysterectomy, something that my last consultant was reluctant to do due to my age (apparently there was still baby mileage in me), but if you’ve read my previous blogs you’ll know the above is just one of many nasties.

The first week in February see a return to hospital for a CT scan to better understand exactly what my surgeons would be letting themselves in for. The CT scan involved drinking a litre and half of something that can only be described as “satans urine” an hour before the procedure and a cannula being placed into my arm so dye could be pumped through my body. This is the weirdest sensation I have ever had as it floods your body with warmth and you automatically want to pee – thankfully no puddles!

March see me visit the hospital twice, once for a large camera crew to visit my bottom and then for my pre-op assessment. I’d had a colonoscopy before and the procedure itself isn’t really a memorable one as you’re sedated, however, it’s the words “bowel cleanse” that should send you running for the hills. I’m not actually too sure what they put into the medicine that you need to drink the day before the procedure, but a note to world leaders, forget nuclear missiles, just pump some of this into the water of the country you’re thinking of starting beef with, it sure as hell will be more effective! It’s not the toilet seat indentation on your bottom you need to be afraid of, it’s the fear of ever eating or drinking again once you’ve had the world fall out of your bottom. As for the pre-op, it seemed a doddle in comparison, pee and blood tests, observations and an ECG, then the obligatory “have you ever” type questions, but a lot more tame than those which I’m used to when alcohol is involved.

April was the main event, my de-gibleting, de-foofing or cut n shut, just some of the endearing terms I gave to my operation. I wasn’t too worried in the run up as I’d arranged quite a few nice things with family and friends to take my mind off everything. I’d packed 3 bags with the contents of my entire house. Bag 1 contained a sparse array of necessities for straight after my op, you know, hair straigteners, full make-up and Gucci sweats – NOT! Bag 2 was lovingly called my NHS bag, not knowing if I’d be living out of a locker next to my bed with nowhere to lock valuables and lastly bag 3 which resembled my 2 week vacation bag for my private room complete with fluffy slippers, satin robe and cigarette holder. In all seriousness there’s a very useful packing guide on the Hysterectomy Association website, whose resources became my bible and remains so.

The day before the operation, I had to do the dreaded bowel cleanse again as they wouldn’t know until they’d unzipped me what needed chopping, so even if I could’ve slept through the nerves, my bottom wouldn’t let me. Thankfully I was first in to theatre that morning, so I was quickly and efficiently popped on a gurney, given a sexy pair of anti-embolism stockings and gown, tagged around various parts of my body in case they chopped something off they shouldn’t and next thing I knew I was waking up in recovery what seemed like 5 minutes later. All went really well and much better than planned, hurrah!

I was taken up to the gynae ward initially to a 4 bedded room and prodded every couple of hours to ensure I was still alive. It was only a few hours later that I realised something wasn’t quite right as although I was self administering morphine it felt like I had a 1400 rpm spin cycle going on in my tummy. Despite several checks with the nurses with real tears and snot, it wasn’t until 3am when the night nurse realised that my drip had stopped working in recovery and I’d spent the last 12 hours with no pain meds. Boy was I not happy. To make things worse at 6am I had 2 newcomers to the room, a very upset woman who had just miscarried and had no support and me being me did all I could to soothe her and someone who I’m sure had been on Jeremy Kyle several times who was telling her friend she wished she’d brought her methadone in (she was pregnant) and called the nurse a c*** when she gave her an injection! A thoroughly pleasant experience all in all! This is where my complete saviour, Faye, who is my consultants secretary came in to her own, within a couple of hours she had secured me a bed in the private ward and I was quickly moved up to my own little white cell with more niceness and drugs than I could shake a stick at.

I had my pee bag removed after 24 hours so was able to roll out of bed with my little red handbag (tummy drain) and morphine drip and pee in the privacy of my private bathroom. I had daily visits from my 2 lovely consultants, was given exercises from the physio and started wobbling around the ward several times a day to get things “moving”. I had another minor blip on day 3 where I was a bit sick – wow the pain of retching after tummy surgery was incredible, but thankfully my nurse quickly came in and wrapped a big towel around my tummy and pulled hard to support me why I was at one with my paper bowl. Peppermint oil/tea was a godsend, as was cosy things (fluffy dressing gown, pillows, and blankets). Five days later all my dressings, tubes and needles were removed and I was able to go home with my new designer tummy to sleep and start preparing myself for a proper recovery.

 

 

Going under the knife

My experience with hospitals has been quite varied over the years and I must admit I’m no newcomer to frequenting their premises. My first operation was at the ripe old age of 8 when the school secretary came to drag me away from my turkey twizzlers in the school canteen telling me my parents were waiting for me. I went into hospital that night not having a clue where I was or why I was there. The nurse kept telling me the next day I was going to visit the theatre! As you can imagine I was pee my pants excited thinking I was going to see Jack and the Beanstalk, but all I can remember is a big white room, a small prick (!) and waking up many hours later with 2 tampons shoved up my nose and a pile of evil sharp toast looking at me, having been told I was now void of tonsils and adenoids. I think this must’ve been the adult S&M version of Jack and the Beanstalk.

Fast forward several years later, when I woke up one morning feeling absolutely dreadful with a lovely yellow hue that would’ve given the characters in the thriller video a run for their money. Off I went to hospital where my illness was a puzzle for a good couple of weeks, until I was finally diagnosed with glandular fever and hepatitis. Although I was kept in isolation due to my unexplained effervescent glow, it’s a time I will never forget, not for the illness, but for the geriatric fruit loops I shared the ward with. There were 3 significant characters; the travelling commode man, who would wheel himself up and down the ward with his PJs around his ankles shouting “nurse I’ve finished” almost hourly; the bedhopper, a man who apparently thought everyone was his wife and got in bed with them for a fumble (I was lucky to escape that one); and lastly, my favourite, “Bob”, he was in the room opposite me and would sit and bang his head against the metal bedhead shouting Bob,  Bob,  Bob for several hours a day….. The whole thing has turned into an act for my darling Brother Gary.

The last random unplanned episode at the mercy of our beloved NHS was a burst appendix. I was a very poorly lady for a long time, and again, post op I was shoehorned into a ward with geriatrics. However, it was a very different experience to before, the last geriatric ward made my new inmates appear quite sprightly and almost “Cacoonesque”. The new ward had the Omni-presence of the grim reaper, it was like a brutal game of “Guess Who” between the two of us as one by one they were wheeled out with a thin sheet over their limp bodies. One of the longest occupants, now don’t get your hopes up, we are talking 3 days, was a very elderly lady who was opposite me and used to get told off hourly by the nurses for playing with her foof! I’m sure really she was just trying to get her catheter out, but not great when you’ve got visitors and she’s got her ham sandwich on display…… Still at least she went happy!

I’m in no way a hater of the NHS and know how lucky we are to have such a service available to us in the UK. However, with a couple of bad experiences under my belt, and a brand spanking new diagnosis of endometriosis, I decided to bite the bullet and pay out for private medical insurance. This allowed me to have a further dozen operations (mainly on my foof) in the comfort of a lush private room with Molton Brown toiletries and a wine list to boot! Unfortunately though, this hasn’t allowed me to meet further characters such as Bob and foof lady to add to my repertoire and therefore share with you.

My last big operation under private care was 7 years ago, when what should’ve been a fairly straightforward operation ran into problems and I ended up having a further 2 operations to correct this with a temporary brown handbag for 9 months (ileostomy). The thing that made that year bearable was the amazing medical team and aftercare I received. Therefore, I was very apprehensive and emotional when my consultant moved my most recent op from private to NHS. I knew it was going to be a big, tricky op regardless of whether it was NHS or private, but it was the aftercare which was just as important to me as the operation itself. Unfortunately, my opinion of aftercare on the NHS hasn’t changed, lets just leave it there for now! I was just extremely lucky to have a great ally in my  consultants private secretary (my super hero Faye) who was able to quickly secure me a bed in the private ward of the hospital within 24 hours where things improved significantly. No wine list, but I could throw up in the privacy of my own room with a lovely attentive nurse rubbing my back.

The Done Couch

So I’m finally on the done couch as my Hysta Sisters would say (yes there really is a thing for all you womb bearing beings).

I must apologies for my tardiness over the last few weeks, I had grand plans to post a little snippet of randomness every couple of days, in the usual Andrea style, but unfortunately she has been M.I.A, locked in a padded cell of drug induced brain fog and daytime TV. Unfortunately, this is the same daytime TV that has the possibility of making me bankrupt. I’m sure that Phil and Holly are colluding with Royal Mail and that each day after the fashion and beauty segments have finished I receive a lovely bundle of nice from my grumpy postie, who has taken to not even waiting for me to get to the door now, she just throws it in the porch, rings the bell and runs away like some deluded game of knock down ginger (actually is there even a postie……). Still, at least I’ll have lots of lovely things to give to the charity shops in 6 months time.

So the operation was a huge success and I’m half way through my 8 weeks recovery – how the hell did that happen? It was apparently all fairly straightforward, but the best news was from one of the surgeons, who was looming over me when they brought me round in the recovery room telling me I didn’t need a “poop bag” after all as they’d managed to scrape my internal organs and adhesions off my bowel. Yummy I hear to you cry. I think I may have licked his face with the excitement. But this is great news, it means my stay in hospital was much shorter and recovery will be more straightforward – also no 2^nd operation later down the line to reverse the process. Hoo-bloody-ra to my fab surgeons, they can scrape all they want!

Thankfully, the weather is being kind to us here at the moment, so I’m currently sitting in the garden with my laptop, propped up on pillows, typing this little ditty, working on a killer tan for my return to public life. I lost a lot of blood during the operation (which is fairly normal for me as I’m a bleeder), and have been on nasty iron tablets since the operation. I therefore resemble the whole cast from the Addams family, including Cousin It! However, I know I’m getting better as I’ve started craving filthy grape juice; a sure sign the Chappers is back.

The last couple of weeks have also made me realise how much pain I was in before my operation, I’m on literally no painkillers now when I could rarely get through a day without some heavy duty opioids or NSAIDS beforehand. I still walk like I’ve pooped myself, look 9 months pregnant and take a good minute to get out of the chair, but I’m getting better each day and don’t regret a thing.

I promise the next lot of blogs about the trials and tribulations of hospital life and recuperation are on the way in a hope they will help those about to join me on done couch and wanting to shake their pom-poms as a fellow hyster sister.

Oh must go, today’s delivery is here wonder what this is……

Just say no…..

If you’re 5 years either side of the age of 40 and British you will understand the title to my blog, if not, please ask someone who is as it spoils the fun!

I have had an amazing response to my last blog and thank you all for your kind words. I have also had quite a few ladies contact me to ask more specific questions about what is normal and what they need to do next. Therefore, I thought I would make this blog more informative with some handy tips along the way.

I’ve not met many women who sail through every month like those hideous sanitary protection ads, but we all know our bodies, so if you think that your ladygarden is behaving badly, be that very heavy bleeding during your “Penelope’s”, random bleeding, unbearable pain etc., it’s time to see your GP.

Where do I start?

Firstly, I’d always recommend keeping a diary for at least a couple of months of everything you experience. Well, not everything, but everything about your foof and symptoms. Think of the sort of questions your GP is going to ask you:

• How regular are your Penelope’s
• How long do they last
• Do you bleed in between cycles (how long/how much)
• On the scale of 1-10 how severe is the pain at certain points during the month
• Is there pain during bedroom aerobics (not in your hamstrings……)
• Do you take any drugs to cope with the pain and are they working

Your GP will take you a lot more seriously if you rock up to his office with the above information to hand. Also load yourself with any information you can gain from your Mother/Grandmother as chances are they will be very similar.

Treatment will initially depend upon a number of things, whether you’re on any form of hormone treatment already, whether you’ve had children and your age. Chances are you will be offered blood tests and the pill /coil or something like mefanamic acid and told to come back in 3 months time, sometimes this will mean taking the pill uninterrupted for 3 months. Just remember it is your body and you can “just say no” if you don’t feel this is the right treatment for you. Do push for further tests, this could mean waiting c. 5 months for a referral to a gynae in the UK unless you have private medical insurance.

Selecting a gynae

Chances are if you’re NHS you will be referred to a gynae known to your GP, but again, you do have a choice here, do your research. A quick gynae search in Google of your local area will show you all their bio’s – it will also state if they work for the NHS, if they do you should be able to request to see that specific gynae if you make a good case. For me I wanted someone who was heavily involved in new research as I knew they would be prepared to try new procedures and not go for the easy “cut and shut” way out! Something I wished I’d have known 20 years ago. If you’re private, the world is your oyster, but chances are it will be exactly the same gynae, with just a shorter waiting list and you’ll see them in an opulent office with a plush walnut desk with a free cup of coffee thrown in, it’s not as if he’s going to use more KY Jelly upon inspecting you!

What happens next?

Once you’ve had a firm hand shake from your gynae and again gone over everything in detail as you did with your GP, he will want to give you an internal examination. Cue the spotlight and random objects being pulled from drawers – it’s no different to a smear test, so nothing to be scared of, yours is probably the 5th foof he’s seen that day and sure all he’s thinking about is his golf handicap, not how amazingly symmetrical your landing strip is.

You will probably be referred for various tests, most common being trans-vaginal (eugh I used that word) ultrasound where they pop a condom, ten tonne of KY onto a wand and pop it in your foof. If they see something that needs further exploration this could then progress to a CT scan and then the most radical being an exploratory laparoscopy under general anaesthetic, where they make 3 incisions around your abdomen and look into your ladyparts with a camera (don’t worry it’s very small and they won’t have the BBC sound boom there!). Again, your gynae may wish to start you on various drugs before progressing to tests, but that will all depend upon your symptoms.

A few days later you will have a sure-fire diagnosis and hopefully a personal treatment plan. You will be asked to come back in several months time for a follow up consultation, again please ensure you document the highs and lows of your treatment as you may not hit the jackpot immediately and you may experience initial mood swings which then tail off after a couple of months. Hormones are powerful buggas!

Unfortunately I don’t react well to vast changes in my hormones so drug treatment didn’t work for me. Therefore I chose to go down the pain clinic route and have been on a mixture of NSAIDs and opioids (mainly Tramadol) for several years in between operations. However, I gave them all a good shot and  I didn’t have my first operation until about 4 years after diagnosis of endometriosis initially. This then gave me 2 years of perfect Penelope’s, so it can really work. Most of my “foof friends” have gone a lot longer than that, but of course I have to be different!

Please beware of forums, most are full of nutters doing the “poor me” thing so they will get a response from Brenda in Doncaster saying “there, there, you’re a strong woman, your vagina is a temple and all men are bastards”. I quickly swerved these upon realising I wasn’t going to get anywhere. However I do have to praise the Hysterectomy Association and their amazingly informative website and FAQs (if you ever have to go that far).

One thing I can say is keep pressing your GP if you do not feel you are getting anywhere, I’m not saying sit in his office every day as he will brand you a “nutter”, the more evidence you can give him about how taking something has helped etc., will make his job easier in treating you and taking you seriously.

All about me….

Unfortunately my condition is off the scale now and my operation scheduled for 12th March has just been cancelled. I could be in for a long wait to finally get rid of this pain, so I remain at the disgust of Zammo and continue to stuff my face full of opioids, so I’m just saying “yes”………

 

 

Penelope Pitstop

Unfortunately my experience of periods has never been a good one, usually 3 days of howling on all fours biting the headboard for a very different reason…  What troubles me more than my actual period is the advertising. Cue a beautiful petite teenager running through a city in white jeans or laying on the beach in a skimpy white bikini. Erm, hello, no matter how ergonomically designed my beautiful “crash mat” is, nobody wants to look at my “wings” from the other side of the swimming pool, in fact people would try to throw me in the pool thinking I had my own built in lilo.

So, periods, or “Penelope’s” as my friends and I refer to them. Penelope is another word like foof (referred to in my earlier blog), a random made up nonsense of a word that has no relation to what it is actually describing. However, it’s much nicer than a lot of other terms, “I’m on”, what does that even mean? We don’t have a switch and if we did, mine would be permanently off!

When planning a holiday, my friends and I often ask each other if anyone is bringing Penelope with them. But Penelope isn’t that bouncy PE teacher who lived in a netball skirt 365 days of the year. For me Penelope is the equivalent of the dark destroyer, wrecking everything in its path. Holidays have been cancelled, plans put on hold and sick leave type of wrecking.

I’ve always had a hate/hate relationship with Penelope, and a story very similar to a lot of you reading this no doubt. Forced onto the contraceptive pill at 15 by a GP to stop the pain and heavy bleeding without a second thought as to what it was actually doing to our poor underdeveloped bodies. Our Mothers were none the wiser, they were the “pill generation”, where I personally think a lot of gynae issues started. Forcing an overdose of oestrogen or progesterone into our bodies is going to have some long term effect surely. I’m a true believer this is where my gynae problems stemmed from along with my penchant for cow by-products! Think about it, our cattle are being pumped full of hormones to promote faster growth, that crap has gotta go somewhere, oh and guess what, we are consuming it, not just in our meat, but in dairy also. What impact are those extra hormones having on our bodies? My research in this area has led me to a very interesting finding. A very dear friend of mine who has suffered from endometriosis for many years stopped eating red meat and consuming dairy products for a year as part of their thesis, within a few months her endometriosis had cleared up, proven clinically.

Through advances in medical technology they are now able to identify gynae issues, but years ago I’m sure we never had this sheer scale of gynae disease and childlessness. I’m thankful however to that technology, as I’ve just spent the last 3 months with the hubble telescope rammed in certain parts of my anatomy, and we have a conclusion……..

I’m 2 weeks away from having my final visit from Penelope before I go into hospital to have a full hysterectomy, bowel resection and temporary ileostomy and although an extremely risky procedure due to complications, I can’t wait. 20 years of evilness and 12+ operations have done nothing to help relieve what I go through each month, so I’ve found an amazing surgeon, who has very safe hands!

Ironically, my lovely girlfriends sent me through a bunch of flowers the other day to celebrate and commiserate the life of my foof, and the lady who made them was called Penelope (see pic above). If only she knew what she meant to me!

So for any boys reading this, if you come home to find your significant other in bed on all fours whimpering, don’t slap her butt and think it’s your lucky night. Refill her hot water bottle and bring her a nice cup of tea, she will thank you for it.

“That” Word

“Vagina”, there I’ve said it, that grown up word for what I like to refer to as my “foof”. However, foof is neither offensive or clinical, but a very endearing way of being able to refer to our lovely lady parts in public, without having to say “vagina” quickly and under our breath.

If saying the word “vagina” in public was an act, it would be symbolised by gesticulating our hands wildly towards our nether regions, whilst rolling our eyes and over pronunciating said word, resembling  a hybrid of Jamie Oliver’s tongue that had taken over Jonathan Ross’s mouth!

OK, I think that leads me to introduce myself, and tell you why I chose to write about such a random subject. I’m Andrea or Andi to most friends and family, I’ve lived with severe endometriosis for c. 20 years with other random gynae issues joining the party – PCOS and more recently adenomyosis and fibroids. I’ve had over a dozen operations to try to improve my condition, as well as some evil drugs that have turned me into a raging banshee at times, very endearing.

I’m just about to undergo the surgery to end all surgeries, no that sounds wrong, what I mean by that is, this has to be the last as it’s all being scooped out and popped in a pickling jar! Still waiting for the call back from Damien Hurst about the artistic display…..

So, here’s my very frank and honest blog of everything you wanted to know about fixing my “foof”!

 

Welcome lovely you!

Thank you for reading my blog. This is a lighthearted look at my personal journey through the trials and tribulations of owning a temperamental, often badly misbehaved, Ladygarden!

I’m hoping that as well as making you smile I can help those going through a similar experience or could go through a similar experience and have been unlucky to stumble across my blog. Mother Nature can be a nasty bugger, but all is not lost.