Showing posts with label health communication. Show all posts
Showing posts with label health communication. Show all posts

Saturday, October 13, 2012

Day 1 (Saturday) - Part 3

Consider this my intro post! Where you get to meet me (quite intimately from here forward) and learn more about uterine fibroids (if you aren't already well acquainted with your own, hehe).

Me (Sara): Age 33; about 5'5" 130lbs; African American/Caucasian mix.

Fibroid: Buried away within my torso was a grapefruit-sized fibroid (non-cancerous tumor) growing off the back of my uterus.

Needless to say, this was not comfortable. It was causing constipation, very frequent pees, and discomfort during sex. All of these were interfering with my every day life, though I was convincing myself otherwise since I wasn't having the more pronounced symptoms like super heavy periods and intense cramping.

Interestingly, in my web searching prior to surgery, I hadn't come across this CommonHealth blog post before now. It is a great explanation of the exact procedure I had (though I had a different surgeon--you can meet Dr. Elizabeth Gagliardi here, and hear her talk about fibroid removal here):


The other video in the post actually takes you through the medical/robotic steps of the surgery. I didn't post it because it makes me a little squeamish, but it is a great visual of what happens.

So that's the intro: who I am, what I had, and what I did about it.

From here on it's going to be about my experience in recovery mode.

Day 1 (Saturday) - Part 2


I'm starting this post-surgery blog for several reasons:
  1. I just read an online post by someone who went through the same procedure as me, and found it helpful to read about her recovery experience now that I'm going through the same thing. Maybe others will find something helpful in one of my posts.

  2. I hope this will help pass the time as I recover. I'm told a 2-6 week recovery period, though I pray to be back to work after two, even if I have to keep taking it easy. (I'm going stir crazy thinking about it!)

  3. I'm a health communicator and feel that I cannot go through an experience like this without somehow documenting it.
More soon on getting to know me.