I went to the new doctor yesterday.

He was great. Attentive to the whole picture. He asked about my hysterectomy and seemed dubious about it for fibroids and asked how big and I said "one pound--" and I didn't even get to finish because he nodded and said "too big", so he didn't think it was the wrong decision.

We didn't talk about my cyclical bleeding. Mostly the appointment was about my recent bronchitis and asthma/allergies.

He put me on a new treatment - singulair. I'll give it a try.

Then he looked at my tummy and the little infected site. It's not gotten better over the past few days, so I'm glad I mentioned it. I was also running a low grade fever of 99.2 - so this is not a tiny skin infection. He probed it a bit and agreed that it's either a very ingrown hair or a stitch being rejected by my body. Either way, he told me to keep up with the neosporin, to heat compresses four times a day and he put me on seven days of keflex.

The keflex is trashing my bowels, I've had diarrhea since early this morning. I'll start up on the probiotics next week.

Posted by Elizabeth M. at 7:57 PM

Since someone on the HysterSisters site asked, I figured it was time to post my incision photos for the past few weeks.

Unfortunately I stopped taking them for a while since my husband took the camera with him on a couple of trips.

So here is where we left off at week three.

Week 3 - august26a.jpg - the last little scabs on the ends are gone. There are still lots of ingrown hairs in my pubic area and around the incision site. It also itches, and sometimes I made the mistake of scratching without thinking, man did that hurt!

Week 4 - september02a.jpg - all of the scabs are gone and there are no lumps or flaky skin parts anymore. It's a solid purple line now, just a slight indentation from the surrounding skin.

Week 6 - september18a.jpg - the incision has no swelling at all around it. A few hairs are ingrown to the scar tissue (I'm not sure what to do about that yet - you can see them better in this closeup - september18b.jpg). The hard ridge above the scar is gone, though it's still a little puffy there towards the end of the day.

All the incision photos are taken in the morning after I shower. I'm probably holding in my belly a little bit too, mostly so the light will get on the incision properly for the photo. The swelly belly isn't that bad. The pants that I wear in the morning a usually a little tight towards evening. I figure on my bad swollen belly days I gain about two inches and it usually goes away by evening.

Of course this is all just me. In general, I heal slowly. Cuts and scrapes seem to hang around for months. But I'm also not the type to swell up. I had a ruptured meniscus in my knee a couple of years ago and the doctor was confused that I had so much pain until they did the MRI and was still mystified why I didn't get more swelling. If you're the type of person to swell when you twist an ankle or get edema in your feet, who knows what surgery will bring for you.

Any questions or feedback? Feel free to email me.

Posted by Elizabeth M. at 6:20 PM

Here are the incision photos I promised earlier.

There's not much new, but I know some of you are curious.

Day 15 - august20a.jpg - you can see a little bruising still on the top of the incision site and of course the pubic hair is really irritated where the surgi-tape was. I don't know if it's because some of those hairs were ingrown because of the tape or if the tape itself is irritating.

Day 16 - august21a.jpg - there's a lot less of a difference from day to day now.

Day 17 - august22a.jpg - more of the same.

Day 18 - august23a.jpg - not much different except maybe it looks like I'm losing weight. Or maybe I sucked my gut in when I shot this photo.

I know I shouldn't be impatient, but I'd like it to heal a little quicker but thankfully it's not as itchy as it was the first two weeks!

Any questions or feedback? Feel free to email me.

Posted by Elizabeth M. at 6:46 PM

Yes, I have been taking photos of my incision since day four.

They're not as gory as I thought they would be. And for those of you checking out this diary as you prepare for this sort of surgery or perhaps something similar, you might be comforted to see it. I was afraid of a row of staples with a big swollen area or something. It's really not like that. Just a little dark red line - rather like a happy face at the bottom of my belly.

So, here they are (I'm not posting them directly here in case anyone is squeamish, so you'll have to do some clicking - I made them big enough, I think so that you can see some detail.)

Day Four - august09a.jpg - there's a black bruise right above the center of the incision, which I imagine is where they had a clamp or retractor. And there are bruises up the to my hips, which I also guess are from retractors or something. The little lines on my legs are from where the tape on the dressing irritated my legs.

Day Five - august10a.jpg - this photo isn't as good as the rest, I didn't quite get the light right. But you can see the bruises developing ahd black thing above the incision is still pretty visible. My belly was really big that day, probably causing lighting problems!

Day Six - august11a.jpg - there's a huge bruise developing on my hip that shows up well here. But the incision is not as tender as before, simply numb for the most part. A tender spot has also developed halfway between my bellybutton and the incision about two or three inches across. It's like a bruise but there's nothing there.

Day Seven - august12b.jpg - the black bruise at the top of the incision is fading now but the surgitape is also kind getting dog-eared and coming up at the edges.

Day Eight - august13a.jpg - the bruises are almost all gone on my right side and the big one on my left hip isn't nearly as tender anymore. I think my waist is getting smaller and the swelling in my belly during the day isn't nearly as bad as week one.

Day Nine - august14a.jpg - bruising is going away & my hair is growing back. The incision itself is a little lumpy to the touch, a half in ridge at the top of the incision along its entire length, but the bottom doesn't feel like that at all.

Day Ten - august15a.jpg - the itching is bothersome but nothing seems red or swollen so I figure it's all part of the process

Day Eleven - august16a.jpg - the black bruise at the top is almost completely disappeared and the itching is starting to subside.

Posted by Elizabeth M. at 9:18 PM | Comments (11)