Sliced and Diced

*** WARNING: This blog contains graphic pictures from my surgery.  Proceed with caution! ***

I am super excited to be blogging from the comfort of my own home for the first time in many months.  We have finally had Internet installed at home once again and I am LOVING it!

In my last post, I mentioned that surgery would be happening soon, but I didn't realize it would be happening SO soon.  In fact, it was yesterday!

Our day started around 9:30am and we made it home around 5:30pm.  My laparoscopic procedure was scheduled for 12:30pm, but of course we were delayed about an hour.  It took about an hour, but I had some trouble coming out of anesthesia.  I warned them ahead of time that I tend to be extremely nauseous afterwards and the nurse anesthetist gave me THREE nausea drugs during the procedure.  My first memory is telling the nurse that I thought I was going to vomit and then dry heaving.  They gave me Phenergan which just made me totally unable to wake up.  Oh, I hated it.  I just wanted to be awake and with my husband, but I felt so out of control.

Once I was able to eat some ice chips without gagging and wake up enough, they finally transferred me to a recovery room and I finally got to see the Hubs.  He had so sweetly brought me a big ice water and the nurse got me some crackers.  It took me about an hour to eat a cracker, use the restroom and wake up enough to be able to go home.  In the mean time, Havie had some news to break to me.  He did it with some pictures my Dr. provided him of the procedure and so that's what I'm going to use to explain it to you.

(Before we begin- all of this info came second hand to me by my husband.  My Dr. will go over it all in detail with me on the 4th of April at our next scheduled appointment.)

Turns out the cyst wasn't ovarian.  It was tubal, which is what my Dr. suspected since it had not changed at all in the past 4 months.  He said it was probably left over from the time I was developing in my mother's womb. It was basically the size of a pool ball.

The cyst was constricting and twisting my fallopian tube which basically was not allowing eggs to meet sperm.

Hopefully by cutting a hole the size of a penny and draining the cyst, the fallopian tube will heal and allow eggs to pass through.  At this point the Dr. stated that he expected the ovary to function at about 30%.  He said that number could grow higher, but we are going to start ovulation drugs and spend the next year trying to get pregnant.  He mentioned that there are ways we can increase our odds of timing, but stated we would talk about that at the next appt.

While he was in there, he checked out my right ovary as well.  This was the hardest news of all.  It's hard to tell in the picture, but basically my right fallopian tube is pressed between my ovary and small intestine rendering it and my right ovary useless.  It would require a major surgery to correct.  My Dr. advised against it stating that it would cost about the same as in vitro fertilization and could just cause more damage.  All of the research I've done would agree with him.

As you can see, I am up and about and feeling pretty good.  I basically feel like I did quite a few crunches yesterday.  The side effects from the Lortab are less than desirable- constipation, some anxiety, loss of appetite, and trouble sleeping...  HOWEVER, I honestly feel pretty good and feel truly grateful for an awesome Dr. who performed an excellent procedure.

I had a little breakdown last night.  I guess it was to be expected, but once I got it out I felt much stronger.  30% is better than 0%.  My Dr. will implant up to 3 embryos if it comes to in vitro fertilization.  And even if none of that works for us, we will adopt.  Hope is not lost.  I feel more determined that ever to take charge of my health.  I can increase my odds of a healthy pregnancy by simply taking better care of myself.  I've known it, but I guess seeing how low my chances of natural conception really are have motivated me to do all that I can.  There is so much of this that I can't control, but I am going to do all I can.