TMI Alert

This post is mainly for my nieces, who wanted to hear how this turned out. The rest of you, feel free to ignore/skip. Ferreals.

It's spring break at the House of L, so we're pretty casual around here. Trying to play and relax and do good things, all at the same time.

But there is one thing of note: last Tuesday I had an endometrial ablation. My mother and all three of my elder sisters ended up with full or partial hysterectomies because their periods in their late 30s and 40s were so long and so hard. From the moment I heard about EA, I wondered if it might work for me instead of a hysterectomy, if my periods got out of control like theirs.

• My mom always said that as soon as her period ended, it started up again. Whenever she went out of town, her period would come. Whenever she had an important event approaching, her period would start. Like it knew. Like it wanted to make her miserable.
• In my case, my cycle went from a pretty reliable 28-30 days to a pretty reliable 18-21 days. Which sucked quite a bit. I'd have one week of period, two weeks off, one week on, two weeks off. I don't know what my mom's actual cycle was (I was, like, 4YO at the time) but even mine kind of felt that same way, that just as soon as it was over it was starting again.

• My sisters had heavy, heavy periods with lots of clotting. My mom would bleed through a pad in a matter of five minutes.
• I hadn't thought my periods were especially heavy, until I was talking about this a few weeks ago with a friend who had already had EA. She recommended against an ablation unless I had actually heavy periods. I mean, the 21-day thing was enough for me, but when she said that I started evaluating: I realized that I'm using the biggest tampon available, and on my two or three heaviest days I'm having to change it every 2 hours. My GYN said, "That's a really heavy period." Plus, as you know, I'm past childbearing and have been spayed for 5+ years. There was no reason, IMO, not to tame/cut down/end the cyclical bleeding.

I had to find a new GYN, and I went in and consulted and set it up. There were two options: in a hospital with general anesthesia as an outpatient (more expensive), or in the office with valium and three kinds of pain meds (for just the price of a copay!!). I went with option two.

Public Service Announcement: For the record, if any of you are ever considering this procedure, I would really recommend option 1.

Per procedure instructions, I took 600mg ibuprofen with breakfast. I took a Valium and two Percocets one hour before the procedure (about an hour after breakfast). When I got into the exam room, they gave me an injection of yet another painkiller that was supposed to last 6+ hours. (Also, an injection of something for nausea, because the Percocet was not my friend.) My stupid achy shoulder has never had such a blissful day of no pain at all. And believe it or not, the procedure was fine. The actual ablation (I had NovaSure) wasn't even what I would call uncomfortable. A pap smear is worse. (Thanks to all those drugs.)

But even doped up like that, the 6 hours post procedure was unlike anything I've ever experienced. The closest thing is labor. But without the 30-second breaks between contractions. Hard, hard cramping. And a little nausea—not enough to make me throw up, but enough to put me off any and all food. And of course I couldn't keep my pain meds up if I didn't have anything in my stomach. Finally I decided if I could choke down a single piece of toast, I wouldn't make myself take any more Percocet, just three more ibuprofen. That was at about the 6-hour mark, and after that, all was peachy. The cramping really slowed down, I slept well (lovely Valium!), and by the next morning I was back to myself.

But see, if you did it in a hospital with a general, you could skip that cramping. In fact my local friend who had EAs did just that, and she doesn't even remember the first six hours post-procedure. See how that seems like the right way to go?

I was supposed to have "watery discharge" for up to three weeks. It freaked me out, then, that there was no discharge to speak of for days. Finally Saturday morning there was a little bit, and now I'd say I'm experiencing as predicted. Yay for expected results. It'll take a few cycles (because of course, the hormones are still in there churning away, just hopefully my endometrium isn't going to build up) before we know how it all shakes out. Fingers crossed.

So that's how I spent the first week of my spring vacation, and the truth is I didn't even make my bed once. Maybe I should do that today?