The good part

Stage 1

One time, my menstrual pain was too much, so my mother decided to take me to the immediate care in the area as it was a weekend. Nothing against them, but they were no help. The male doctor said it was period pain and he couldn't do anything for me. Tylenol to the rescue again?!

Then the day came that changed everything! After my soccer final game, I was in extreme pain, so we took a trip to the emergency room. I was scared but knew there was nobody else. When we got there, we waited forever! But once I was in a room, I explained my situation, and they ran lots of tests on me. The doctors knew something was wrong from the ultrasound. They asked if I had an OBGYN; we said yes; they called her at midnight and talked to her about their findings. We had an appointment in three days.

Before my Surgery

Stage 2

At the OBGYN appointment, they took new ultrasound images. The doctor described a normal uterus as looking like a horseshoe or a pearl. Well, mine looked like a heart. She wanted to confirm with the main surgeon.

So one of the head doctors decided to come and see me. She wanted to check to see if there was a clear path for the blood to leave my body during my period, and you could say I failed that test. There was a piece of tissue blocking the exit point for the blood, and only portions of the blood were leaving during my period, which was not good at all.

They decided I needed surgery, but before that, they wanted to make sure that they knew everything that was going on inside, so they ordered an MRI.

Stage 3

After that, my OBGYN decided to stop my period until we figured out the next steps. This was when the doctors said that the only way they could fix the problem( removing the tissue blocking my exit) was with surgery. They also were going to try to reconstruct my heart-shaped uterus and make it into a normal one so I could have a normal period

Once I got the MRI, they found out I had only 1 kidney. We learned that there is something called Ohvira, which is a complex condition where women with double uteruses will most likely have only 1 kidney. (we did not know how important this was until we visited a kidney specialist in the months that followed)

The Day of my surgery

The day of my surgery, we arrived at the hospital for my surgery at 11. I was very nervous, as expected, but they had to delay my surgery until 1, which was a long time to wait. I went into surgery, and little did anyone know what they would find in me. The doctors used a camera to see my organs to perform the surgery (laparoscopically). This minimized the amount of cutting and recovery time. During my surgery, they found something called Endometriosis. This is tissue that is similar to the tissue inside of the uterus, but it grows on the outside of the uterus. This tissue on the outside thickens, breaks down, and bleeds with every menstrual cycle. However, because it is trapped outside the uterus, the blood has nowhere to go. The doctors had finally found the source of all my pain. The endometriosis was so severe that they had to burn it off my uterus and surrounding organs, and that ended up taking 7 hours. My original surgery would have taken 3-4 hours.

After 7 hours, I finally woke up and was in pain from everything they did, but I learned about everything that happened while I was asleep. I ended up having a fever shortly after and had to remain in the hospital for 2-3 days. During those days, it was very, very difficult to walk, let alone get out of bed. Because of the severity of my surgery and being asleep for that long, not all of my organs had woken up from the anesthesia at the same time. I was on a strict liquid-only diet and almost returned back to the hospital a day after being discharged. My colon was not "awake" and I kept throwing up all the medication. Also, let it be known that the hospital food is not very good (no offence to the chefs). But also, while under anesthesia, my lung branches were closed, so I had to use this breathing machine to reopen all the branches to not get pneumonia.

Have any questions?

If you have any questions, feel free to contact me.