Need Ideas to Tell Others About Getting a Hysterectomy

I have no idea what the divinci robot is.

A hysterectomy is a personal decision made by you and your doctor. Keep that in mind. It is YOUR body.

A good website to check out hysterectomy is www.hystersisters.com Be prepared for some graphic questions, a lot of very positive stories and a lot of scary things. Balance that out in your head. The site scares some people but it is there for informative purposes. I thrived on that site when I was waiting for my surgery date.

I had a complete hysterectomy in 2001 at age 40. For me....it is the best thing I ever did. We had completed our family (1 child). I chose to take evverything out and be done. I wear a hormone patch and I've never looked back. I have No regrets at all. I am FREE, I feel GREAT, I look great!. I did not suffer the extra weight gain, swelly belly and things that you will hear that will scare you. I never gained weight and my only side effect is that my perky 34C boobs have popped to a perky 34DD. I LOVE that. I did follow Dr. directions faithfully, I wore a binder, I used vitamin e oil on my horizontal bikini like scar and you can hardly see it.

Go into it with a good attitude, lots of information, educate yourself. You do seem very young to get this surgery but there must be some medical reason your dr has talked to you about it.

You will need some help, especially with little ones. You can't lift things and you need to take it easy a while. No driving for 2 weeks. I did not have anyone come it...my hubby just took a few days off the road and worked from home.

Best wishes to you. Congrats on your new baby.

You can still experience cramping even when the uterus is removed and that's considered normal. If you remove the ovaries as well and that would be sending you into early (and very abrupt) menopause and a hormonal nightmare. You might consider something like the mirena iud instead. Most experience little to no bleeding after about 3 months. Talk to your Dr. about what options are out there. Honestly, unless there is a solid medical reason to remove your uterus and or ovaries, I'd avoid it at all costs until you are much older if you can.

I had one almost 3 weeks ago and the recovery is not easy. I am still pretty tired and have not been able to go back to work yet. I too have 3 kids and had lots of help and still it takes time. One of my main concerns would be to make sure you have someone that helps you with everything, EVERYTHING the first 10 to 15 days. You will have a newborn, if you breastfeed you will not be having your periods so maybe you can wait until the baby is sleeping through the night to do it. THe recovery is very hard, even with a laparoscopic surgery and you are very young to be taking hormones so I would really explore all the possibilities.Good luck!

It's not always an easy recovery. I had a hysterectomy with extensive abdominal muscle repair/tumor removal in January. I'm still pretty exhausted. As another mother of 3, I just want to make sure that you are prepared for the fatigue that will come right on top of the fatigue of being a new mom.

There are some people that bounce right back, but it's just as likely that you could be out of commission for quite a while. My OB didn't want me to drive for 6 weeks, but that is probably due to the fact that I was unable to have the procedure done laproscopically. There is no guarantee that you won't end up with an open procedure, though, so you might want to prepare for a longer recovery.

Every surgery has risks and possible complications. Getting used to the new...ahem....equipment has been hard. You know that the surgeon makes you a new one, right? Things do feel different. I absolutely had to do it, but wouldn't have chosen this route if I had had any choice. I tried a lot of other things first. Good luck. I second the awesomeness of the hyster-sisters site.