I tell this to any post op patient when they want to start doing too much, too soon after surgery. It’s natural for people to want to get back to their pre-op lives as quickly as possible. We often feel like a burden to others and can even believe that it’s healthier to push ourselves. In our culture we’ve adopted the attitude of “No pain, no gain” and sometimes apply it to surgical recovery as well.
I’m not the type of personality that will just blindly do what someone else tells me to do, unfortunately, even a doctor. I need an explanation of WHY I should listen. This has caused many problems in my 50+ years and with wisdom I’m learning. Unfortunately, in my youth I learned many lesson the hard way.
People always tell you “don’t over do it” after surgery, but they don’t always tell you why. I’m going to tell you one big reason, and share with you the consequences that can happen if you don’t.
I was told not to overdo it after my c-sections (I had 3) but I was young, had new babies, and felt ”weak” if I didn’t just suck it up and do stuff. When my youngest was about a year old, every couple of months I started to get a bowel obstruction.
After an ER visit, a CT scan found that scar tissue had fused one ovary to a kidney and another to my colon. My whole abdomen was a webbing of scars. When I ovulated on the left side, the scaring would pull my colon and obstruct it.
So then I needed a full hysterectomy at 30. That was devastating but it had to be done. The consequences were that my body would no longer produce the hormones needed to feel certain effects of intimacy again.
HRT (hormone replacement therapy) made me feel worse and so I went through rapid menopause within 2 years. This was an emotionally difficult reality and impacted my body and my relationship with my husband. Thankfully he’s a good man and we were able to work things out, but that’s a huge impact to such a young couple. During that surgery they also didn’t realize that they had damaged my colon and it had fallen into my pelvic floor.
Over the next 8 years I got sicker and sicker but nobody figured out why. I would sometimes sleep 16-18 hours a day but still never felt rested. Some doctors blamed my thyroid, because I had had a lobe removed too, but those tests were fine. Some blamed the hysterectomy but this was far beyond what that would feel like. I felt guilty and lazy but I couldn’t find any physical reason or solution to my physical deterioration.
This was all also going on in combination with my other symptoms from my undiagnosed neurological diseases so I was a real puzzle! This was my first real medical mystery and I was sick of going to doctors, only to be told that I was fine.
It got to a point that I just wouldn’t go anymore. One day I developed a “stomach bug” but refused to see a doctor. It lasted for 5 days, in excruciating pain, until finally I spiked a fever in just a couple of hours, up to 102 degrees.
I called my husband and told him I was going to the ER. He said that they were just going to give me fluids and tell me to call my doctor the next morning, but I told him “I think I’ll be dead by morning“.
I’m sure that after so many years of watching me being told by doctor after doctor that there was nothing wrong with me, he thought “here she goes again”.
What nobody recognizes is that, when you live in a constant state of pain and symptoms, you develop an extremely high threshold to the pain and you can often ignore the symptoms until they become life threatening. We are not weak! We are survivors and warriors! My husband has been dealing with a pretty typical “bad back” for about a year and he’s finally understanding this.
I drove myself to the ER and collapsed into the receptionists arms. She ended up being the mother of an old high school friend and she cared for me as such. I was immediately taken into a CT scan and my colon had ruptured. I was septic and almost died.
At the time I believed that I had finally found “my answer” to all of my medical problems and although I did feel much better, it was just another pit stop and distraction before finally figuring out my TCs 8 years later.
ALL of my abdominal problems started because of scarring that happened when I did too much after my C Sections though! This post is about SCARRING and the possible complications from it!
Now, imagine your spinal cord…. The LAST place we want scarring is around our nerves and nerve roots! That’s Adhesive Arachnoiditis! That can become a dreadful thing. I know because I have that too, but mine is mild. I actually had it before my TC surgery but it wasn’t recognized or diagnosed at that time. Because I rested completely for months after surgery though, it did not get worse post-op.
So, not only do nerves take a LONG time to heal anyway (think 3 years, sometimes 5, before you really know how successful surgery was) but also think about scarring before you start trying to push yourself too soon!
It’s best for you AND your family, long term, if you give yourself every chance to NOT end up with AA!
In my years as an admin in support groups, I have literally watched hundreds, if not thousands of recoveries by now. The most heartbreaking ones for me were the members that were recovering well but they decided to push themselves too hard and too quickly.
They believed the “No pain, No Gain” philosophy and would literally be in the gym within 2-3 months, or hiking mountains for miles and miles. They would come into the groups with posts of extreme pride and joy! They were the “athletes“ and “strong ones”.
I had been an athlete myself. I surfed competitively and I played A level tennis. I was active and good at pretty much any activity I tried. I was also fearless and the first one to jump off a cliff into the water, when the opportunities were available! However, with age and previous experience, I learned wisdom the hard way.
Those members would get to a point where they wouldn’t post quite as often, and when they did it was a small update about something happening that was slowing them down.
Eventually they would quit posting all together but because I, or another admin, personally knew them, one of us would reach out and find out that they had developed catastrophic AA.
It wasn’t because of the surgery. It was because of everything that they had done too soon after surgery. We started warning people in the groups and yet there would always be at least one member that was going to do it their way, and get back in the gym.
It doesn’t always turn out catastrophic but the point is, WHY RISK IT? Just be patient and give your surgery and nerves time to heal properly. Resting is NOT being lazy in this recovery! It is allowing yourself to become the best you that you can be, so that eventually you CAN BE an athlete again, possibly!
Comentários