The Morning After…

“I did it! I’m alive! One surgery down!” Those were my first thoughts when I was coming out of the anesthesia yesterday and I opened up my eyes to the nurses at my bedside. I just had an overwhelming sense of gratitude. Having never been through a major surgery, I was definitely nervous going into it and being a nurse I had so many fears that I would be the person to experience some random complication. Because I believe in Christ, I don’t fear death, but I think my biggest fear is something happening to me and the thought of Titus and Asher growing up motherless. These trials we are facing are definitely causing me to surrender these fears to God and are a constant reminder that I have to trust that He is sovereign and good. 

The surgery itself went faster than we even expected. From the time they rolled me back until the time that Dr. Yap found Keith in the waiting room was under an hour. The surgery was a robotic assisted laparoscopic hysterectomy with the removal of both ovaries and fallopian tubes as well. You can see in the picture that I have five small incisions and the dots around them are where they numbed areas and pinched up skin to insert equipment. I look down at my belly with these incisions and see that it’s no longer the flat stomach I had before kids or my round, pregnant belly. What it is now, though, is a reminder that I just decreased my chance of ovarian cancer by over 90 percent. I may not have my uterus anymore which housed the two babies we lost to miscarriage and then our precious boys for nine months, but in return I feel like I’ve done the first step of what I need to do to ensure I’m around to watch them grow up. 

Recovery has went well so far. After two hours in recovery, I got to my room about lunch time. By 5:30, I was tired of waiting on the nurse to come get me up, so I got up on my own and Keith and I went for a short walk in the hall. I went for another walk before bed and then got a few hours of sleep in between the IV beeping and the nurse coming in and out. The worst part has been the bloating and gas pain. In order to see everything during surgery, they have to inflate your stomach with gas to expand it. It takes a few days for all the gas to reabsorb into your body. This morning, I’m up and using the bathroom and finally got to eat food and I’ve gone for a walk. The doctor came by and said everything went great and she didn’t see anything abnormal. They will do pathology though to make sure there were no cancer cells anywhere. We should get that report in a week or so. We are waiting on discharge papers now and will hopefully be going home soon. I’m sure the pain will get a little worse once I become more active and it’s going to be hard to not lift the boys for two weeks, but I’m looking forward to being at home in my own bed tonight. 

Thank you to everyone for your prayers and support! We will keep you updated on my recovery. 

-Laura