Recovery: Week 4 (Aug 10–17)

This week I started feeling even better and more like my old self. At my post-op appointment (at my 3 week mark) I learned that I could take the glue off my incisions if it was loose enough to come off easily and if I could remove it by pulling it in the same direction as the incision (not against it). So now two incisions are bare now and definitely less itchy. I think the glue was creating irritation and now I can rub vitamin E oil on them which has been soothing.

August 10: The glue started peeling up so I trimmed the loose edges. The right-most incision is glue-free!

Left incision

Right incisions. The right-most one was so dry so I started putting vitamin E oil after this which helped.

Bellybutton incision looks like a black hole

Since I was seeing more improvement I thought maybe I could start using my dilators from my OBGYN as a preparation before attempting intimacy. And...the dilators were a mistake. It was a little bit of stretching pain at first, but after that it was more of a raw or burning pain inside which makes sense considering I had a lot of work done around my vagina. The next morning I was still sore and bleeding a bit heavier.

The day after that I felt well enough to go to a family reunion and spent an hour or less walking around. Again, that was too much. I am trying to remember to take it slow and steady and to not get overly excited when I feel good, but fortunately by mid-week I was feeling back to normal. Since I’m tired of bleeding (and it has to be related to the depo shot at this point, not surgery) I’ve started taking vitex to see if that will help stop it. It’s supposed to support menstrual health and there’s limited evidence it can stop breakthrough bleeding. Crossing my fingers.

As far as my pain, my abdomen and pelvis are still sore when compressed, but toward the end of the week I was finally able to wear some jeggings and my LDS garments again. It was constantly readjusting (especially after mealtime), but it was more uncomfortable than painful.

Other symptoms of note are I am reclining less and less and able to sit up straight the majority of the day at work, my acne seems to be improving, and all of my glue came off by the end of the week! It was coming up already and peeled off easily in the shower, but with the glue gone, I started using the butterfly closures to give strength to my healing skin. I get a type of disfiguring scar called a widened scar. Instead of being a fine line, my scars are typically an eighth to a quarter inch thick and quite red for the first several years. Already my scars are twice as wide as they were, so I hope that by tackling this early on I can stop them from widening.