Profiles

The NHS appointments section and I know that the date marked my appointment for treatment to relieve heavy menstrual bleeding.

A condition which affects tens of thousands of women in Britain every year.

The procedures carried out were a Hysteroscopy, D and C, insertion of the Mirena coil and a smear test.

They were carried out under general anaesthetic which allowed the medical staff to assess the condition of my womb and to visually check what type of fibroids I had.

All appeared to go well and I spent my 49th birthday recovering quietly on the sofa.

Added to the list ...

Two months later following an unscheduled visit to the Accident and Emergency department of my local hospital, it was found that my womb had expelled the coil.

A seemingly simple solution to the heavy bleeding resulted in a three week stay on my sofa and an emergency appointment to see a consultant gynaecologist.

The outcome of the meeting was to end with my being added to the list for a total hysterectomy with bilateral salpingo oophorectomy.

It was a shock to know that I had come to the end of alternative treatments and as a result would face an instant menopause.

Within the next six months, that’s six periods, I would be having major surgery which would bring with it one of life’s rites of passage.

My feelings were a mixture of shock and relief, soon this condition which had restricted my life for at least five years would be over.

What would the future hold?

My job working for the BBC involves both research and teaching often using the Internet.

Joan at work on the BBC Bus

So the Internet is where I turned for information. I became aware of two things.

That the treatment of gynaecological problems such as mine was undergoing constant revision, (See Nice) there are many more solutions on offer than surgery.

There were very few personal accounts available on the Internet.

My best advice came from my boss and his experiences of his wife’s caesarians. These of course were valid but flawed, my boss is a man.

Resources were either aimed at the medical professionals which left me with the impression that very little research had been done on the outcomes of different sorts of operations, or at the woman soon to be womb less.

The search for answers

On the one hand too much information on the other too little. But where were the personal accounts of what it was really like?

I had been through the child birth process twice and was savvy enough to know that both medical advice and old wives tales could be quite a long way off the mark. Would this experience be the same?

I wanted answers to questions such as how painful, how inconvenient; could it really be true that you could not lift anything heavier than a cup of tea, certainly not a kettle? Would I never vacuum again? Hurrah. Would my sex life change?

As a single woman this would be trickier to test but I never lose hope. What exercises could I do or not? Was there anything I could do to prepare pre op?

I knew that I was comparing my op to childbirth since it was my only similar experience. How close would the experiences be?

I originally came up with the idea of a blog to give myself something to do while I sat quietly waiting to return to work.

As the post operative days passed by all desire to write, work, or think ground to a halt.
Here, just a little later than planned, is my story.