Surgery Details

As promised, here is a more detailed account of my surgery.

We checked in at 9:00.  My nurses, Marianne and Derek (a nursing student), were fabulous.  After I answered all of their questions, gave some blood, and had my IV started, they let J come back with me.  My surgery was scheduled to start at 11:00, but Dr. B had told me on Monday that he would probably be running a bit late because of some logistics issues.

Eleven came and went.  Sometime around 11:30 or so, another nurse stopped by to tell me that my surgery was going to be VERY delayed.  They weren't going to be able to start until 1:30ish.  Ugh.  I was SO hungry!!  Poor J, he was hungry too...but he was a trooper and didn't leave me to go eat lunch.  Such a sweetie.

Finally my OR nurse, Pam, and Miranda, my nurse anesthetist came to take me back to surgery.   We had a laundry list of things we were going to try to accomplish with this surgery:
1.  We knew my uterus was heart-shaped on the inside.  Dr. B was going to remove the septum in my uterus if the outside of my uterus was normal shaped.
2.  He was going to check the inside of my uterus for any polyps or fibroids.
3.  He was going to check for adhesions and endometriosis on the outside of my uterus.
4.  He was going to evaluate my right tube.
5.  If he could locate a cyst in my left ovary, he would remove it.

This was the outcome:
1.  My uterus is heart-shaped on the outside as well as the inside.  There was no true septum to remove.
2.  The inside lining of my uterus looks good.
3.  He removed adhesions and endometriosis.
4.  My right tube did not have a hyrdosalpinx.  It was twisted and kinked with adhesions.  This is why the dye wasn't going through the tube correctly.  He was able to remove the adhesion and release the tube.  He checked the tube with some dye and it came right out of the tube like it was supposed to!
5.  He removed a large cyst from my left ovary.

Everything went very well.

We didn't get discharged until 7:00.  Dr. B wanted to admit me, but I begged him not too!  My sweet little nurse Paula packed us up a little snack pack to take with us.  We stayed the night in Little Rock at the Hilton, just a few blocks from the hospital.  The hotel even gave us a hospital rate!  At 9:40pm, Dr. B called to check on me.  He was very worried about us going all the way home, so when I told him we were staying in LR he was very relieved.  He told me that if I had any trouble during the night I could go to the ER and tell them to call him in.  Thankfully I had no problems!

I have been resting well at home.  J is doing a great job of taking care of me.  I will go back next Wednesday for my follow-up appointment with Dr. B.

Dr. B told J that he couldn't find any reason as to why we are not getting pregnant.  Dr. B said that if we wanted to, we could try to conceive naturally.  However, his suggestion based on the fact that our insurance deductible is already met for the year, would be to proceed with IVF.  J and I both agree on this.

Basically, we will take the whole month of October to recover from surgery.  Then we will start the IVF process at the first part of November.

Thank you again for all of your thoughts and prayers.  We take comfort in knowing how much all of you support us!

xoxo