Endo - The trail of devastation. My Pre-Op Assessment

My cat doesn't like Rabbit-flavoured Go-Cat. Much as she is obviously grumpy about this, it doesn't match my day, and she'll need to wait for the Sainbury's delivery that will arrive later on.

Today I went for my 'Pre-Operative Assessment'. It was a good job that I arrived early because I didn't leave hospital until 12.30pm, and I had my own busy clinic starting at 1pm.

The first thing was the weigh-in, which wasn't going to be pretty anyway. I am sure after the 2-day Bowel prep diet, I will have lost another 4kg at least! I had my BP taken which was 130/74 and then I was asked all the medical questions by the nurse - e.g. previous surgery, heart/lung problems, what medications am I taking? etc etc. After this, I had to go and have some blood tests done so that they could do a cross-match for surgery, and check my blood group and iron levels. I then went to see (one of) my Consultants.

The first thing that my consultant asked was what I wanted/how I felt about things. I explained how when I had the endo, I had constant pain and no quality of life, how all this had been going on for years and how now what was important to me was quality of life. The consultant said that sadly the endometriosis has been left for ten years, untreated, and that through no fault of their own, the other 'experts' had just gone in via laparoscopy and then left things. All the Zoladex has done all this time has cover up all the symptoms. Hearing all this made me feel quite devastated just because it is ten years of my life that has been thrown away through other surgeon's ignorance. I am also feeling angry about it.

This consultant said that my surgery is going to be aggressive - to say the least, I'd say. They are apparently expecting me to be 'covered in it' and for all the area around the bowel, ovaries, bladder and ureters to be stuck together. They are going to do a cystoscopy (having a look inside the bladder), A hysteroscopy (looking inside the uterus), then they will do a laparoscopy and remove every cell of endometriosis they can. There is a possibility that I will lose an ovary and that they might need to cut some of my bowel away and re-stitch it, but if they damage it I will end up with a temporary colostomy bag. If they can't get rid of all the endo on the ureters then they might have to put a stint into them (if they cut them). They will do a laparotomy if they cannot access all the endo. They will end up by inserting the Mirena IUD if they think it will the right for me. Finally, there is a possibility they might not get this all done in the one surgery, or it might be too much for my body to cope with, so they might have to do a 'round two' in three months time. I really hope this doesn't happen.

To be honest I had no idea that my surgery could be so involved. But they have ten years of stuff to laser away, old scars from previous surgery to negotiate and adhesions. The consultant said it could take up to 5 hours.

I will be in hospital 2-5 days - probably leaving between Friday and Sunday, again all this depends upon what I end up having done and how well I recover after all of it.

I am also taking part in a study to do with the optimal removal of catheters post endometriosis surgery.

I am still not able to arrive at hospital on Monday night, but they have now agreed I can go straight up to the Gynaecology Ward first thing on Tuesday morning, so I know where I am going to be afterwards, and so I can unpack etc. This is a bit of good news.

Finally, the dreaded Bowel Prep diet means I will be on a liquid only diet for 2 days prior to Tuesday, so that really doesn't sound fun, and am not looking forward to doing it much either.

My head is swimming with all this new information. I know the doctors have to spell it out, but I had no idea it was going to be as drastic as this - but that is because none of the other doctors have done much to me in the past. I can see now that if it wasn't for me trying lots of complementary therapies in the past, especially Bowen that I would be in an even worse mess than now. The Bowen Technique has kept me going all this time, helping with the worst of the pain when I had periods, as well as Morphine.