Thursday, November 20, 2008

Don't blame me if this grosses you out

I am serious! This is my blog so I can write whatever I want to and if you read it and say to yourself, 'wow, that is so much more than I wanted to know' you have only yourself to blame because I warned you.

I had another appointment with my fertility doctor today even though this procedure had nothing to do with infertility. I had to have an LSIL removed which stands for low grade squamous intra-epithelias lesion. I was anxious most of the day because I am such a baby when it comes to this kind of thing. I have never had a cavity, a broken bone or stitches unless it was during surgery and I was knocked out. I took Tania with me of course, who got to hold my hand the whole time!

As soon as the nurse left the room for me to get changed into the oh so flattering sheet, I started looking at the instruments that they had laid out for the procedure. Tania finally made me quit looking at them. So the doctor comes in and explains everything to me step by step. As always, he tells me to relax. How easy is it to relax when your feet are in stirrups and you are about to be given four shots of Lidocaine in the vagina? The shots definitely hurt and I started crying but the tears were more from the fear and crazy imagination than from the pain. I was so scared by that point that I asked the doctor if I was going to hear the scissors when he started.

I laid there crying with Tania holding my hand and the nurse giving me a tissue. The doctor kept talking to me through the process and at one point I told him that I felt something tugging and he said it was the needle for the stitches. I told him that I didn't want to hear about the needle so he then said that he meant to say that he wasn't using a needle. Everyone else laughed and I told him I was laughing on the inside. He actually is very funny; I just didn't feel like laughing at that moment. The stitches seemed to take much longer than I expected. He had told me that it would only be one stitch so I figured it wouldn't take that long. It turns out that what he meant was that it would be a running stitch which means it is technically one stitch but it is the equivalent of many stitches.

As soon as he was done the nurse cleaned me up a bit and then left for me to get changed. When I stood up, Tania told me not to look at the table so that is exactly where I looked. There was a lot of blood. I mean A LOT! Tania left so I could get cleaned up and dressed. Believe me if there had been a way to get out of there without ever standing up I would have. The cleanup was unbelievable. In the time that it took for me to clean up, get dressed and go to the restroom, I needed a new liner. Even now, four hours later I still have some bleeding.

I had planned to go to work tomorrow because I wasn't anticipating a lot of pain, but it turns out the 'aftercare of the site' is more intensive than I expected. For the next week, every time I use the restroom, I have to clean the area with a syringe and blow dry it. Are you kidding me? How am I supposed to do that at work??? So I called and told my boss that I will not be in tomorrow but I hope to go in on Saturday because the office will be empty so if I take my blow dryer no one will know, hopefully.

I go back next Wednesday to see the doctor again. He should have the results of the biopsy by then. Fun, fun, fun!

1 comment:

Carlyn Kay said...

that sends shivers right down my bottle!