Part 2: The Recovery

Recovery, oye.  I am blessed with a wonderful husband who woke up first thing the morning after the surgery and CLEANED the entire house so I wouldn't be tempted to even  lift a finger.  (My fingers were pretty much the only moving part of my body that functioned actually).  He slept on the floor in our living room for the first 2 weeks after the surgery since I couldn't sleep in the bed.  My awesome Mom came up to Rexburg on Friday as well to help us out in any way she could and my sister Melanie came up for a couple days as well.

Coming out of surgery I didn't expect the recovery to be horrible, I had been told that I could potentially return to work in 3 days so I thought everything would be pretty smooth sailing.  However, that was not the case.  I was physically incapable of doing anything for myself for a solid week and a half.  As in I needed help to even sit down on the toilet, to get dressed and especially preparing food, even the simplest food like chicken noodle soup or mac and cheese.  For those of you who know me, you know this was torture because I am a fairly independent person.

We started marking my progress by how many "laps" I could make.  A lap consisted of doing my "penguin/granny" walk as Brock calls it, around the kitchen, down the hallway, around the bedroom, our office, and then back to my bed on the couch.  Doing that once or twice was enough to knock me out for another hour or two nap.  I reverted back to an infant state of sleeping, eating, taking laps, maybe thirty minutes of a movie, and back to sleep.

I had pain in my throat for a few days from the breathing tube, that turns out wasn't all from the breathing tube, haha.  When they do any kind of abdominal surgery like this, they literally blow that area up like a balloon with a gas. It stays localized during the surgery, but there isn't really a great way to get it out, so for the next week the gas floated around between my rib cage, collar bones, shoulders etc, talk about a weird (and by weird I mean painful) sensation.

The side effect that lasted the longest was the swelling.  Once I did get back to work after about 2 weeks I lived in maxi skirts thanks to the wonderful Leanne Barlow.  After a few days one of my co-workers asked me why and I told them my stomach was too swollen for pants.  He gave me a funny look and I couldn't help but laugh because it was a "is that what they are calling fat these days" kind of look, so funny.  But there was a lot of internal swelling and it was so tender with any kind of pressure so I didn't wear pants other pajama bottoms for 6 weeks.

At six weeks I thought I was feeling pretty good.  I was no longer taking any pain meds, I was in pants, I was back to work full time.  The next step was to start exercising again.  Sitting for 6 weeks did me no favors so between that and the fact that they tore apart my entire core during the process of the surgery, I was one weak duck.  (As in I tried to vacuum at one point and could hardly push my dyson.)  So what did I do?  I attempted to work out, emphasis on the attempt.  I tried to run, I made it about .7 miles but probably walked about .4 of it.  I attempted to do situps and couldn't even do fifteen.  Not that I have always had an incredible body, but I have NEVER even been sore from doing situps, even if I did 60+, they just never phased me.  It was possibly the most discouraged moment of the whole surgery ordeal as fitness is such an important thing to me.

So I put the running shoes away and continued to just take it easy for another five weeks.  At eleven weeks I worked up the courage to try again.  This time I took a running buddy (who actually was in the labor and delivery room just above me while I was in surgery) and we tested ourselves.  We ran a straight .75 miles.  It wasn't much, but it was progress.

Since then, things have pretty much been on the up and up.  I got lectured by my doc 5 months after the surgery for working out too much, so I have spent the last few months trying to find a balance where I can workout without inflaming the scar tissue which causes a lot of pain and tends to throw me into panic mode.  I still literally celebrate every day that I am pain free.  These days are the days that I don't worry the endometriosis is growing back, that I don't have another hidden ectopic pregnancy, that I don't question if the pain is from scar tissue or some other thing like appendicitis (I'll be honest, I wish they took my appendix out during the surgery so I wouldn't stress) or a cyst of some sort.

I don't share all of this as a woe is me or plea for pity, if that is what I was going for, I would have posted this all when I was actually going through it.  I post this because in order to learn and grow in life, we have to go through times like this when we are made weak and helpless.  It is when we can see these moments and be humbled and appreciate them, that we truly learn and grow from them.  Which leads me to the life lessons I learned as a result of all of this.