Hysto complications

CW / TW: hysterectomy, hospital, traumatic experience and complications. .

TL;DR: I got a pelvic abscess 12 days after my hysto and had to be readmitted to the hospital, and now I’m not sure if I should postpone my top surgery which is scheduled for December. .

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I was hoping to kind of process my experience with my transv*ginal hysto (no laparoscopy, no external incisions) and hopefully get some support. The complications I had were apparently very rare. I have known dozens of people who have gotten hysterectomies, and all of them had completely uneventful surgeries and recovered quickly. I am generally in really good health, and I’m not sure why I had complications.

None of my close friends or family were available to take me for the procedure, so one of the trans guys I met at a local support group offered to go with me and stay with me after surgery. I thought he was a pretty good guy, but I’ve only known him a few months. I was up at 4am and asked him to be there at 6am. At about 6:10am he called me and said he was running late. He kept telling me “don’t freak out” and I wanted to be a good friend and laid-back about it, so I just tried to chill out and not get upset. Fortunately I had built in extra time, so we weren’t late, but we cut it way too close for my comfort and it was nerve-wracking for me. We got there in time, so I tried to just be gracious and let it go.

While I was getting prepped in pre-op, my friend made “jokes” to my nursing team about diverting my pain medication. I was shocked and wanted to say something, but they had told me previously that they would cancel my surgery if I didn’t have someone with me. So even though I felt like his “joking” was EXTREMELY inappropriate, I just didn’t say anything. Then he started telling me about his colonoscopy procedure and how he woke up in the middle of it. I was really upset and asked him to please stop talking about that because I was scared of waking up during my surgery. He started laughing and mocking me, saying sarcastically that he was the “worst friend ever” and that “you’re never gonna let me come with you to the hospital ever again”. Again, I tried to just laugh it off and let it go, but I felt really unsafe and vulnerable.

After my surgery, I woke up in extreme amounts of pain. I was writhing and begging for the nurses to do something. The nurse ordered me to lie still and that I would have to “figure out how to deal with a certain amount of pain post-operatively”. My friend, who has zero medical training, got in my face and started trying to “coach” me, telling me to take deep breaths and to focus on him. I was too out of my mind to tell him, “For Christ’s sake, go get the surgeon or get somebody else, I can’t handle this level of pain”. Finally the nurses saw how upset he was making me and sent him out of the room. Dude just sat in the waiting room like a goddamned lump, did absolutely NOTHING to try to contact anybody or tell them that my pain wasn’t being managed appropriately. It took over an hour before I was transferred to my hospital room, and then another hour after that before they administered more pain medication and my pain was finally brought under control.

I had to stay overnight in the hospital because of some other conditions I have, so they wanted to keep me for monitoring. When he brought me home, his car has a racing-type suspension and I felt like I was being transported over dirt roads in a jitney or something. It was agonizing to be jostled around like that right after surgery. He didn’t bring any pillows or anything, and I already had enough shit to worry about, so I had forgotten to bring any. When I was at home, I was still out of my mind from the anesthesia, but I kept counting my pain meds because I was afraid that he might try to take them away from me based on the inappropriate jokes he had made to the nursing team. He had also tried to convince me to not take any oxycodone, which had been prescribed to me, because of the risk of addiction. I don’t think he did take any, since I still have some left.

I tried to talk to him about the experience at the hospital with being denied adequate pain relief post-procedure, but I also felt very vulnerable and didn’t want to criticize him or come across as high-strung or ungrateful. He had to take time off work to accompany me to the hospital. As I called the hospital patient advocate to complain about how I was treated post-operatively, I said “bye-bye” to the patient advocate as I was hanging up the phone. He said, “DUDE, do NOT say “bye-bye”, men don’t say that.” At that point, him policing my gender just felt like adding insult to injury. He went home after staying with me for 24 hours, and I had someone else come stay with me after that.

I had to stop taking the oxycodone 4 days post-op because it completely stopped my GI tract, and I switched to alternating between Tylenol and ibuprofen for the pain. Starting about 5 days post-op, I started to have excruciating, 10/10 pelvic pain. It occurred randomly, as well as anytime I had to go to the bathroom. If my bladder got too full, it felt like my bladder was pushing on the surgery site. Same thing with my GI tract. I couldn’t take any more oxycodone because of the GI side effects. I almost completely stopped eating and was taking large amounts of magnesium, Ducolax, psyllium fiber, and Miralax. The only way I could have a bowel movement was if it was totally liquid, and even then I had extreme pelvic pain every time.

I tried to tell my surgeon about the intense pain I was having. He told me it was normal and that I would have to get used to it. I thought I could get ready to go back to work, but I was still running a fever (99.9 F) and felt exhausted. More than once, I would just break down sobbing because I felt so terrible. My surgeon said that as long as my fever was below 100.4 F, I was okay. My partner saw how much pain I was in and begged me to go back in, but I said that the surgeon said I was okay.

One weekend, 12 days post-surgery, my fever spiked from 99.9 F to 101.5 F. I immediately called my surgeon’s answering service, and he got back to me right away. My surgeon called in a prescription for antibiotics and said that it would probably take 48 hours before I started feeling better. 48 hours after surgery, my fever was still over 100.4 F and I was crying in misery. Finally when i started having intense dizziness, I called the surgeon, and they immediately readmitted me to the hospital.

Turns out I had a massive pelvic abscess at my surgery site, almost 8 cm in size. The emergency room evaluated me for sepsis and administered Flagyl and other IV antibiotics. The OB/GYN surgeon evaluated my surgery site and said that although the sutures were all intact and the incision site was good, she could feel fluid in my pelvis. They did CT scans of my pelvis and what felt like dozens of blood and urine tests. Thank goodness it was caught before I developed sepsis.

After I was admitted to the hospital inpatient, I had to go to Interventional Radiology, where they sedated me and put a catheter in my back, near my sacrum, and drained the abscess. I had to stay in the hospital for 4 days. I was so scared, and in so much pain, and I felt so alone. I was just released to come home a couple days ago.

I am scheduled to have my top surgery in December, 3 months after my hysto. I had previously been really excited for top surgery, but now I’m really scared. I have short-term disability coverage at work, but now I’m not sure if I should push to get top surgery, or reschedule it. I had been hoping to get it this calendar year since I’ve already met my out-of-pocket maximum for 2018.

All my friends and family are urging me to postpone my top surgery. I have such terrible top dysphoria, and I’ve been looking forward to top surgery for so long. Does having complications with one procedure mean that I might be prone to complications in general? The surgeon gave me prophylactic pre-surgery antibiotics. They did the surgery in a top notch hospital. I followed my pre- and post-surgery instructions to a T.

Anyway, thanks for reading such a long post. It was a really scary and traumatic experience for me. I feel better, but I’m terrified of having another relapse or more complications. My hope is that I will do the right thing with my top surgery, whether that’s having it as scheduled, or whether that means rescheduling it.