Surgery is set for this Wednesday morning and the anxious panic has already begun. I realize that this is something that I need to do and something that is supposed to make me feel better in the long run, but frankly, I'm scared that I'm just going to hear bad news after the surgery is finished. Realistically, the only good news that can come from this is that they were able to clean me out a bit and I should be good for a *few* years until I need to get it done again, as endometriosis is a disease that cannot be cured or ever entirely removed from the body. Thus, it keeps growing and spreading about my various organs--huzzah, huzzah. Furthermore, the surgery is being done by a mildly frightening looking robot surgical machine...it looks like this:
I mean...really...I'm going to be unconscious under all those probe-y pokey looking things while the doctor plays a fairly realistic video game to remove all the lesions and cysts... No bueno.
If you're at all curious-- endometriosis is a progressive disease that affects 5-10% of women. It is characterized by the presence of endometrial tissue on the ovaries, fallopian tubes, or other abnormal sites, causing pain or infertility. Mine presents with both dyspareunia and secondary dysmenorrhea; this makes life a bit of a living hell. Additionally, my endometriosis is paired with both adenomyosis and endometritis.
Supposedly, this surgery will increase my chances at becoming at least mildly fertile, though my doctor is not very hopeful about that bit.... I found this handy flowchart that illustrates this whole process:
I followed the pain side as I have yet to even attempt getting pregnant. The path I've followed is Pain > Moderate to severe > Laparoscopic diagnosis [wednesday] > Surgical excision and ablation of lesions [wednesday] > Immediate postsurgical therapy with danazol, OCPs, GnRH agonists or progestins [post-surgery].....somewhere between pain and the laparoscopy I had to sit through an internal ultrasound...which, incidentally, hurts like hell.
Anyway, I'll stop bitching for now. Gotta get some sleep as I'm headed to Bethlehem tomorrow with Leigh Ann for this Knitting event thing at a local brewery :) I'm excited.
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