Yesterday, at like 10:30 a.m., I became a little less of a woman. A couple chunks of my woman parts are now bobbing in a cup of solution somewhere waiting to be examined in a lab.
The LEEP procedure went surprisingly well. I wasn’t nervous coming up to it (my blood pressure right before the procedure was 109/64, pulse at 65 bpm), and I think my blood pressure only rose when I saw the needle. It was huge, and filled with stuff to numb my cervix. I felt better when Dr. K told me the tip of the needle, the only part entering the cervix, is hair-thin and I would feel tiny pricks at the most as he injected in a circular pattern all the way around the cervix. I felt only pressure by the speculum holding my vagina open. Thank God. The actual cutting part took only 3 seconds or so, while an extremely high-pitched dental drill-like sound filled the surgery room. I had to plug in my ears. And then he re-numbed my cervix, sliced another piece off the top, and was done.
After I was cleaned up, I got to check out the pieces of me bobbing in the sealed cups. I’d kept telling myself that the thought of an ice-cream scoop (as it was described to me) taking out big hunks of flesh was just my imagination, and that in reality, it’d be just a thin splice, but I was shocked at the quarter-sized diameter, inch-deep semi-circle bobbing in there. “That’s HUGE!” I exclaimed involuntarily. “No it’s not!” the doctor said. I was also surprised it floated; I would’ve thought something like that, especially of that size, would sink. It was also pale pink, not red and bloody at all.
He asked if I had questions or concerns and I told him my reservations about the 6-weeks of no exercise thing. He laughed it off and said he never understood that, and that I can walk and be fine immediately after the procedure, just stay off the heavy weight-lifting for about 4 days. Yay! I’m going to Disneyland! All through my “recovery” at Disneyland that day, I had no additional bleeding. I may have cramped a little, but I couldn’t be sure it wasn’t normal PMS-related cramping. Just to be safe, though, I did stay off the more jolting rides. He said that by the time the numbing injection thing wears off, I’d already be over any surgical pain so that I’d never feel the procedure, and he was right.
I did wake up this morning with a tweaked lower back, and THAT’s annoying. So it looks like SOMETHING’s still trying to hold me back from the gym.
Dr. K said he’d email me early next week with the lab results to make sure that 1) it is PRE-cancerous like they’d thought, not actual cancer, and 2) that they got it all with this scoop, which he’s confident of. Well, they should’ve gotten it all, it looks like my entire cervix was floating in there! He said that once my cervix fully recovers, it may be a tad shorter than it used to be, but a gyneocologist examining me in future pap smears won’t be able to tell by looking at it that I’d ever had surgery there. Amazing.
Talked to my mom today, told her I’ve had these few days off, but said it was because my judge was on vacation that these days were offered to me. Didn’t tell her for what purpose they were offered.