life after the LEEP

First I want to say that I got the pathology results back, and they got it all out! And no cancer! Yea!

From about 4 days post-op until last week, I had seemingly random junk leaking out of me that had me freaking out about every other trip to the bathroom. Your period? Blood clots? THAT IS NOTHING. LEEP leak is abhorrent, totally freaky, and uh, it smells terrible. I can't believe I just admitted all of that on the internet. BUT. In the spirit of being honest about this whole deal, because my doctor was not, and so hopefully this may help someone in the future, I'm telling the truth.

After freaking out a few times, I googled the shit out of "discharge after a LEEP" and after reading more medical sites that simply say that after having a LEEP you will spot like a normal period- after digging around and cursing the liars, I found a forum full of ladies giving the nitty gritty out to each other in support. And it was exactly what I was looking for, the truth.

Now, I won't go into detail- you may think I have already, but I have not. I don't want you to lose your lunch. But I will say that as far as the average comment went, I was somewhere in the middle. I definitely did not have it as bad as some of the women, and if I did I probably would have taken myself to the ER because the shit they were saying was CRAZY. (I figured that if more than 5 women had the same symptoms than that deserved an average.)

And the pain. Oh, the pain. I took vicodin for 5 days. Then I ran out. And I panicked. And I thought about getting it refilled. But it made me so foggy, so emotional, so not myself, that I didn't want to take it anymore. So I braved it and just took ibuprofen. It took a whole WEEK for me to kick that vicodin out of my brain. I seriously couldn't do ANYTHING while on it- no sewing, no reading, nothing that required brain activity. I watched TV for a week and a half. I was SO bored! (normally I watch TV all the time, but I am usually also sewing, stuffing, embroidering, blogging or reading while I am watching listening.)

I had to continually take ibuprofen until a few days ago. Just walking up and down the stairs more than 3 times a day made me hurt, and start bleeding again. And lifting the laundry basket. I felt pathetic. But obviously it takes your cervix a long time to heal after having a large chunk removed, with nothing to hold it together, no stitches or bandages.

I still have until the 24th, my next dr appt. to see if everything has healed properly. So the next step is a pap every 6 months. 

I am dying to get back to "normal" life. Having this all happen right in the thick of the holidays and the new year has just been crazy. But I am SO grateful that it's over- it's out, it's not cancer, I'm ok!

Hopefully, this will be the last post about this horrible subject. And I really, really wish that the medical profession would be honest about it. I can google other medical problems and get detailed symptoms, what to expect afterwards and so on. It seems so strange to me that nobody is straight up, especially since the after effects can be so scary and honestly, strange.