Three-year Anniversary

August 24 will be the third anniversary of the day I was taken from an outpatient surgery facility following my rectocele to the emergency room of a hospital. I survived the night but wasn't sure I would wake up in the morning. When I fell asleep, a blood transfusion had been started. I came to peace with knowing I might not wake up.

I haven't reread my earlier posts. The hindsight is that I had a "frozen pelvis"...shut down by endometriosis...that had gone unidentified since the late 1970s. After surviving that ordeal, I placed my hands in the surgeons of Penn State Hershey Medical Center. I was experiencing pelvic prolapse and Dr. DeLeo had treated it as three separate issues rather than look at the big picture. She had also done the surgeries in the wrong order to relieve the pressure from the pelvic floor.

The ob/gyn surgeon at Hershey Med performed a hysterectomy which he believed may have made the cystocele and rectocele unnecessary. But, of course, I hadn't seen him first. Less than a year after the rectocele, I experienced another prolapse. The Hershey Med surgeon said Dr. DeLeo had used a procedure not recommended for my type of prolapse. His procedure was abdominal surgery with 4 days in the hospital. Finally, after starting to recover from that surgery, I was able to see the bladder specialist. He referred me to outpatient physical therapy which healed my issue without further surgery.

Somehow my bladder was only holding one ounce of fluid instead of the normal 20 ounces. The "women's therapy" was exercises as well as use of a painless probe that measured strength and also stimulated the internal muscles.

I've been on disability for about a year since I was unable to return to work. Healing from almost three years of barely moving is no easy task. What has worked for me is aquatherapy. It began with a shoulder problem but since I found I could move so easily in the water, I am also conditioning/rebuilding the barely used and atrophied muscles. Strength is slowly returning. New muscles are felt as new exercises are introduced. I can stay awake for a day without a nap.

Because of my history of trauma, my mind/body stored the aftermath of the transfusion and subsequent abscess as trauma. I'm still holding 20-30 pounds of trauma weight when my weight should only be about 100-105 because of my height. I've lost inches with aquatherapy from April through now but have put on 1-2 pounds. That battle to lose the excess weight has begun but has yielded no results yet.

I see where I made the first mistake but I can't go back there. The pelvic prolapse has impacted my life in many ways. I should be grateful to be alive. I have new hopes and dreams and know they can be realized, yet I always question whether I have the energy it takes to achieve them. So baby steps and one day at a time are still the rule.

I found a website today for the Endometriosis Online Arts Project. I'm providing the link for others who might be interested. Now I'm off to do an art set expressing my feelings about endometriosis.

But she's the doctor...she knows

As Dr. DeLeo told me I had no evidence of a rectal prolapse but clearly had a bladder prolapse, I was speechless. I was pretty darn sure I knew which orifice was my rectum. The definition of the prolapse was that the bladder pushed into the vaginal wall causing pressure to occur in the vagina. I had no problems with urination. Since my body has always been weird, I figured maybe the bladder had caused pressure over to my rectum? I didn't ask those questions. I didn't speak of the photo out of embarrassment.

"Why would my bladder have fallen out?" The doctor assured me it was common in women over 50, especially women who had lots of babies. When I informed her I had never given birth, she was silent. She said she would be unable to repair the bladder the next day when she did the colonoscopy but scheduled a date for the cystocele, an outpatient procedure.

Walking out the doctor's office with Brian, I sarcastically noted that my bladder must have prolapsed on the walkway into the office. Surprisingly, since that visit, I no longer noticed the rectal prolapse but did have increased frequency of urination. Whatever happened, she must have been right. The colonoscopy went well, or so she said. For some reason I didn't get photos of my colon like Brian had after his. I didn't think much about it at the time.

With the cystocele already scheduled for June 29. I returned to my full work schedule not thinking much about the surgery. The cystocele went well. I had very little pain. I was discharged with a catheter that would be removed a few days later. My thinking was that she did an excellent job with minimal pain. The catheter was removed in Dr. DeLeo's office during the afternoon of July 3. The morning of July 4, the rectal prolapse returned.