Aug. 21, 2025
127: Hysterectomy | 4 Weeks Post Op Update
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Reaching the four-week milestone in my hysterectomy recovery journey feels like crossing an important threshold.
In this episode, I discuss the remarkable physical transformation that has occurred – pain has decreased significantly, mobility has improved dramatically, and my energy levels have surged. Simple movements that caused discomfort just two weeks ago, like rolling over in bed or tying shoelaces, now feel natural again.
The four-week check-up with my surgeon brought validation and unexpected revelations. We also discussed guidelines for safely returning to exercise (stationary cycling is now approved!) and intimate relations😉, conversations I deeply appreciated for their practicality and candour.
For anyone facing similar recovery challenges, I've learned invaluable lessons: don't rush the healing process, avoid comparing your journey to others', and keep your mind engaged with projects when your body needs rest.
This recovery experience has deepened my gratitude for my body's remarkable healing abilities and the excellent medical care I've received. If you're navigating your own healing journey or supporting someone through theirs, I hope sharing my experience offers insight and reassurance.
Reach out via email or Instagram if you'd like to connect – I'd love to hear your story or answer any questions about this profoundly personal journey.
Links:
sonya@sonyalovell.com
Sonya on Instagram - @sonyalovell
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WEBVTT
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Hi everyone and welcome back.
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It is week four of my hysterectomy recovery and today I want to give you an honest update on how things are going.
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We're going to talk about the progress I've experienced, what challenges I feel like I've come up against, other surprises that I've come up along the way as well.
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Now, as always, I want to remind you that this is my personal experience.
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Now, as always, I want to remind you that this is my personal experience.
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Recovery always looks different for everyone, so depending on the type of surgery, your health going into surgery and a whole lot of other individual factors.
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So please don't take this as a template for what yours should look like.
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Think of it instead as one woman's story in real time and if you're recovering yourself, considering the surgery or just curious about what this journey can feel like, I hope you'll find something useful or relatable here today.
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So let's get into my week four update.
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I thought I'd start off by talking about some of the things I've noticed physically in my recovery since I did my last check-in, which was two weeks ago, Definitely have noticed that I have a whole lot less pain.
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My pain has reduced significantly over the last couple of weeks when and when I was experiencing pain was things like rolling over in bed.
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I'm a side sleeper, so rolling from side to side, I was finding that there was some discomfort and pain when I was doing that.
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That has decreased significantly.
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I have a whole lot better mobility.
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Things like tying up my shoelaces.
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I either get down into a half kneeling position or I have my foot propped up so that I can reach it with one knee bent on a bench or something like that seat height.
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What else have I noticed from a mobility perspective?
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Up and down stairs is way easier, getting in and out of bed, up and down off the lounge, things like that.
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I've just, you know, really come leaps and bounds in what I could do two weeks ago versus what I feel I can do today at four weeks, and I definitely have a whole lot more energy.
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My energy has definitely increased.
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I really haven't had the need for any afternoon rests or naps.
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Definitely in the last week the week before that, I have a feeling there were a couple of afternoons where I did kind of find myself having a bit of a lay down on the lounge in the afternoon watching a little bit of whatever I was streaming on Netflix or other platforms at the time just because I felt that I needed to really still take that kind of structured rest time in the afternoon.
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But in this last week so this has been completely week four, so I'm at the end of week four now definitely have not had that need at all and that's, I think, also a result of my sleep has got a whole lot better.
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My sleep was really disturbed really up until about halfway through this week, to be honest.
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So for about three and a half weeks that shuffling from one side to the other I had to kind of wake up to then really strategically wrong myself over from one side to the other, so that was disturbing my sleep a lot.
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I was getting up to have glasses of water and then popping back into bed before I could fall back asleep again.
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And you know what?
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My body is still removing toxins from my systems.
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It takes a long time to get things like anesthetic out of your system.
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I was on some heavy pain meds immediately after coming out of surgery.
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Also, the other thing I noticed because I am someone that wears an aura ring, so I track a lot of my vitals on a daily basis One thing I noticed was my resting heart rate was significantly elevated and that has started to come back down and reset as well.
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So that is all going to play into why my sleep is finally feeling a whole lot better.
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One thing I'm really, really happy about is I have experienced no bleeding whatsoever post-surgery bleeding whatsoever post-surgery.
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So since my discharge from hospital to today, four weeks, literally to the day later I have had no bleeding, which I was really surprised by.
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They definitely prepared me when leaving hospital and leading up to surgery that I could expect to experience some bleeding after post-surgery and that might even go on for a few weeks.
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So the fact that I've had no bleeding has been absolutely fantastic.
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To not have any bleeding at all is just such a relief, so that has been a real win.
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I'm really, really happy about that.
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My swelling has completely gone down around my incisions around my belly.
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I no longer feel like I've got any bloating gas or any lingering swelling anymore either.
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I don't have any tenderness either around those incisions.
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They have healed really, really well.
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They look fantastic.
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I have shared an update photo on my Instagram account, so feel free to go over and check that out if you are interested.
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I'll link my Instagram account in the feel free to go over and check that out if you are interested.
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I'll link my Instagram account in the show notes.
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What else?
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That's probably it from a physical perspective, in terms of what I've experienced and noticed differences in from when I did my last update, which was two weeks ago.
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I am definitely still very focused on pacing myself, listening to my body.
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If I did feel that I needed to have a little rest because I'd overdone it, then I absolutely still would, but I just haven't felt the need to do that, which I'm super, super happy about.
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From an emotional perspective, I think I've experienced a lot of relief.
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You know, as I just talked about with you know, not having any bleeding, you know that has been a huge relief for me.
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I very much feel like I made the right decision in having the surgery and I'm going to fill you in in a minute on my four-week check-in that I just had with my surgeon.
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That has all led me to feeling really solid and strong in knowing that I've made the right decision by having this surgery.
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A lot of relief that I am so much more mobile, that my energy has increased and that I really truly feel well on the road to recovery now, whereas two weeks ago I was probably feeling a little bit more wobbly about all of that and I really still felt like I had quite a bit of recovery ahead of me, whereas now I feel like I've got over that big hurdle, which is fantastic.
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I'm incredibly grateful that my body does heal so well.
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I'm grateful that I had such an amazing surgeon and was so well cared for when I was in hospital post-surgery calls that I had with my surgeon's office, emails that I had with her when I had questions, grateful for all my friends and family that gathered around me and looked after me so, so well.
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I am very, very grateful for everything that my body is able to do.
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Recovery from such a big and invasive surgery.
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It really does blow me away how well our bodies are able to adjust and recover when they need to.
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So that has been something that I've been thinking about a lot is how grateful I am for everything.
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But with that in mind, I am still feeling some impatience around not being able to do as much as I used to be able to do.
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From a physical perspective, I am still a couple of weeks away from being able to lift anything heavier than six kilos is the guideline, so I'm not carrying bags and bags of supermarket shopping from the car into the house and then up onto benches to unpack Things like that.
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I'm really still struggling a little bit with just feeling impatient that I can't do what I would normally expect my body to be able to do, and I also, you know, I'm impatient to get back to the gym.
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I love the gym.
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The gym has been a really big part of my life for a very long time and it's really interesting reflecting on why I'm feeling that impatience.
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What is it that I'm actually missing?
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And for me it's not even so much that I'm missing catching up with friends because I go to the gym with them, or the environment of the actual gym.
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I really, really miss being hot.
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I really really miss being sweaty.
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I really, really miss being in that state where I get really huffy and puffy and I'm doing hard things that I know are hard at the time, but they're really good for my body and they're really good for my brain and they're really good for my mood.
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So I'm missing the ability to do those things.
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So that is where my impatience is coming from.
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In regards to daily life, so where I'm at on a day-to-day basis.
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With all of that in mind, I was back to driving after my two weeks.
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So pretty much when I recorded my last episode for you, which was at my two-week point, I'd been back to driving for like a day or something like that.
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For me, being able to go back to driving was huge.
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It just gave me a whole different level of independence and freedom and ability to go and do some things that I'd been wanting to do to really aid my recovery as well.
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So I've been getting out on much longer and faster walks.
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I really progressed pretty quickly from being able to go out for those short walks that I was talking about two weeks ago to being able to go out for over an hour.
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My pace has picked up.
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I'm pretty much at the same pace that I would have been walking prior to surgery.
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Uphills is the only time I've kind of found I've been able to get my heart rate up a little bit and feel like I'm working a little bit harder.
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So I've really enjoyed being able to do that.
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That has been a staple in my day.
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Obviously, I'm back out and about socially.
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It's been fantastic to go and catch up with friends in coffee shops versus having them come and see me.
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My nutrition.
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I've really kept a bit of a laser sharp focus on that.
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I am doing a lot of meal prepping on a Sunday.
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If you follow me on Instagram, I'm sharing some of my photos over there of the types of things that I meal prep.
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What I tend to do is I meal prep for breakfast and for lunches on a Sunday that are then in the fridge for me to get during the week.
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So I find that the meals where I let myself down from a nutrition standpoint and this isn't just post-recovery, this is like in life in general will be when it's breakfast or it's lunch and I don't have anything prepared, I go and grab something that's probably less than ideal from a nutrition standpoint.
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So for me, it's really important to meal prep and it's meant that I've been able to keep my nutrition really on point in this recovery phase, really focusing on high fiber and my protein, all to really aid my recovery as well.
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So that's been something I've really kept focused on.
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In terms of returning to any kind of work, I am going back to my speaking gigs in the next week or so.
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I definitely feel within myself I'm ready to go back to work.
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Now that's been.
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I definitely wasn't feeling within those first two weeks, but now, at the four-week point, I really feel that I'm ready to get back out there.
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I have no physical limitations that will prevent me from being able to do my work, so that's a great feeling to know that I'm definitely ready to do that.
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Again, I'm really grateful that I was able to give myself all of this time to get back to that point and wasn't in a situation where I had to go back earlier than I was probably physically and emotionally ready to.
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The other thing that I have been doing to support my healing is I have been doing a course of cryotherapy in a cryotherapy chamber and some red light therapy.
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I thought that I would talk a little bit about why I chose those particular complementary therapies to help me with my healing and my recovery, because they're probably therapies that a lot of people really aren't familiar with, but they have a lot of science and evidence behind them, which is one of the reasons why they're therapies that I choose to invest in for myself, to really aid my recovery and getting back to life as normal as quickly as possible.
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So if we talk about the cryotherapy chamber for a moment not for the faint hearted, I will admit.
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It is three minutes in the chamber and the temperature I've been doing minus 140 degrees, so some people start at about minus 130.
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I am a little bit hardcore and I do minus 140.
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Three minutes is the max amount of time that you spend in the chamber for that.
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So my tips for you if you are someone that is ever keen to go and try some cryotherapy, choose a really, really, really good song to play, so there's speakers in the chamber.
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Find a track that you can really kind of throw yourself into.
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For me, it's something that I know all the lyrics to that I can kind of dance to because it's cold in there.
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So, yeah, good track to listen to whilst you're in the cryo chamber is my hot tip.
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So why cryotherapy?
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Okay, the scientific evidence behind it shows that it is really good at reducing pain and inflammation.
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It accelerates recovery.
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So that is going to be in this point for me.
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I'm talking about recovery from surgery.
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If you are an athlete, you're someone that goes to the gym on a regular basis.
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Really great for accelerating recovery from big, heavy training sessions.
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It does a lot for stimulating blood circulation, which is obviously really important from a post-surgery perspective.
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It improves your skin health and it can improve sleep as well.
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So there's a whole lot of other benefits, but they're the ones for me that were really key to choosing cryotherapy as one of my complementary therapies.
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The other thing that I've been doing alongside that so I do them consecutively is some near-infrared light therapy.
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I go and do light therapy first, so that's about 20 minutes full body near-infrared light therapy, followed by the three minutes in the cryo chamber, so it's about a half hour in total that I'm doing once a week with these.
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The light therapy is amazing for accelerating wound healing, so obviously with my incisions, that was really important to me.
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It reduces inflammation, it can improve scar appearance, it does a lot to stimulate collagen production again enhancing blood circulation and promoting tissue repair.
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So this is a real key for me to have my incisions heal my internal tissues healing as well as they possibly can.
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So these are all reasons why I chose to spend time and invest some money in these types of complementary therapies to really help me recover as quickly and as well as I possibly can.
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If you have any questions around cryo or the light therapy, feel free to reach out to me.
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I'll pop my email address into the show notes.
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Okay, cool.
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So let's touch on my four-week check-in that I had with my surgeon and I actually had that yesterday.
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So the good news was I got a big thumbs up and I even got a high five from my surgeon for how well I have recovered, how well my incisions look, how quickly they are healing and how my skin looks, which is all fantastic news.
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Some interesting things that came out of that.
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She took me through a more in-depth pathology report.
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So I'd received a message from my gynecologist about a week after my surgery just to basically to tell me that I'd got the all clear from my pathology.
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Most importantly at that point it was from a cancer perspective, so that there was no evidence of cancer in any of my tissues.
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So that was great news.
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But one thing my surgeon, dr Rao, did do is take me through my pathology report in a lot more detail.
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There were a couple of things that came up in that that I wasn't expecting.
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That did come as a surprise and again lead back into me being really grateful that I did move forward and have the surgery.
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There was evidence of adenomyosis in my pathology.
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Adenomyosis is a condition where the Adenomyosis is a condition where the cells and I may not get this 100% right, but this is my understanding that would normally only grow inside your uterus.
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So your endometrial lining start growing.
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They stay within the uterus but they move into the muscle that is making up the exterior of the uterus and that, for me, had resulted in my uterus being enlarged, and obviously that is a growth of cells in a place where they're not supposed to grow.
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It was most likely the cause of why I was bleeding prior to my surgery and, remembering that I was eight years post-menopause, so that was a really interesting finding and made me really grateful that I had chosen to have this surgery.
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The other thing that came up, which is not of concern and would not have been a concern moving forward there were a couple of benign serous cysts in my fallopian tubes.
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So great that they were benign, but also great from my perspective to know that they've also been removed.
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So there is no concern for me moving forward about whether more of those develop or whether they do in fact turn cancerous at some point in time as well.
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I had a question for her which was around from my exercise perspective, if you have listened into my previous episode of my update post two weeks.
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One of the things that I had talked about in that was a frustration around guidelines for returning to exercise.
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So I had a question for her around when can I restart getting onto a bike to start to be able to get my heart rate up a little bit, to get a bit sweaty and feeling like I was getting a bit huffy and puffy?
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Obviously, I'm not about to jump straight into spin classes or anything with high resistance, but what I wanted to know was would I be able to jump on a bike and just roll my legs over, even if it's just for 30 minutes, half an hour an hour, just as an alternative to walking?
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Because walking's great, but if the weather's bad which hey, I live in Sydney and we have had a run of really, really wet weather and it doesn't make it enticing to go outside and go for a walk.
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So if I know that I can jump on an exercise bike and I can spend the same amount of time on that as I would have done going out for a walk, that is really, really helpful for me.
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So she gave me the okay to do that, which was fantastic.
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I'm really excited to be able to add that into my exercise movement plan.
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The other thing that she brought up and we talked about in quite a bit of depth, which I was so incredibly grateful for and not expecting, was some guidance around returning to having sex post-hysterectomy.
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So she admits she's very conservative about giving advice on when, from a timeline perspective, to return.
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Her advice to me was look, I'd still love you to wait until you're past the eight ideally week 12 mark.
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We then talked about some tips that she had to make that return to having sex as much of a positive experience as possible, but also a good experience for me physically post-surgery.
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This is a really good thing to remember because this will be relevant to anybody, and that was use lots and lots of lube.
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You use lube.
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Make sure your husband's got lots of lube on him as well.
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Her advice was he wants to be able to get in and out as smoothly and friction-free as possible, particularly the first couple of times.
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So the big thing you have to remember here is that prior to a hysterectomy, your vagina was attached to your cervix, which was attached to your uterus.
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Now my vagina is basically like a pocket.
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It's been stitched closed across the top and it has been attached to other ligaments to hold it in place.
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So obviously when you are post-surgery, all of that tissue is still healing.
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It makes sense that if you're having sex and you were not using enough lubrication and therefore there was any friction, if you imagine the penis coming out of the vagina, you don't want to have any dragging effect.
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You just want to make sure that there is as much lubrication as possible, that everything is slipping in and out as smoothly as possible.
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I hope that that is helpful and I found it really helpful to have that conversation.
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And again comes back to me being really grateful that I chose such a great surgeon to have my surgery with.
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So what have I learned over the last four weeks?
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I've definitely learned not to rush, that the body has an amazing ability to heal itself, but we have to assist our body by giving it the time that it needs.
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So not rushing into doing things because I just feel like I want to do things, and particularly in that little danger zone period, which is where I've just come out of between that week two, week four, where you're energetically feeling better.
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Mobility-wise, I've been feeling better, but there is definitely still a whole lot of internal healing going on and it's really important not to get ahead of yourself and rush back into things too quickly because you have this false sense of being able to get back to normal.
00:21:54.075 --> 00:21:57.766
Definitely not to compare my recovery to anyone else's.
00:21:57.766 --> 00:22:14.338
I've had many, many conversations with friends, with people that have reached out to me on social media, that have shared their recoveries, and it's been such an important lesson that every single person's recovery is very, very different.
00:22:14.338 --> 00:22:18.228
The choices that they make in that time are very different.
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The type of surgery that we all have is very different.
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The reasons for having surgery is very different.
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Really good lesson to learn to not compare my recovery to anybody else's.
00:22:28.895 --> 00:22:42.507
The other thing that I learned and I'm really glad that I thought of this ahead of time and had prepared for this, and that was for me as somebody who likes to be busy, somebody who likes to be doing, likes to have work to focus on.
00:22:42.507 --> 00:23:05.977
I'm so glad that I had some projects lined up that would keep my brain busy in this period of time where my physical body hasn't been able to keep up with what my brain has been capable of doing, if anything was going to get the better of me in this period of time where I've been physically slowed down was my brain had not physically slowed down.
00:23:05.977 --> 00:23:15.803
I also had some great shows that I had purposely put on hold and waited for this post-recovery stage to watch and catch up on.
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That has absolutely been a godsend as well, alongside some great documentaries and some great podcasts as well.
00:23:23.068 --> 00:23:38.558
So that is one of my biggest tips is, if you are someone that is looking at moving into this surgery or you're about to have surgery and you're in that kind of preparing stage, definitely make sure you've got some activities lined up that will keep your brain busy.
00:23:39.721 --> 00:23:42.425
Okay, so that is it for today's episode.
00:23:42.425 --> 00:23:50.428
Thank you so much for listening and for holding space, as always, for this very personal story that I've chosen to share with you.
00:23:50.428 --> 00:24:03.000
If you're someone who has been through a hysterectomy, if you are preparing for one or you're supporting someone else on this journey, I truly hope that my experience has offered a little insight or reinsurance for you.
00:24:03.000 --> 00:24:10.362
But again, just a reminder that your body, your choices and your recovery are entirely your own.
00:24:10.362 --> 00:24:13.596
There is absolutely no one right way to do this.
00:24:14.959 --> 00:24:22.240
If this episode brought up questions, reflections or you just want to share your own story, I really would love to hear from you.
00:24:22.240 --> 00:24:28.099
You can reach out via my email, which is sonja, at sonjalovellcom.
00:24:28.099 --> 00:24:29.502
Sonja, spelt with a Y.
00:24:29.502 --> 00:24:33.239
Again, I will add that into the show notes.
00:24:33.239 --> 00:24:34.962
You can follow me on my Instagram.
00:24:34.962 --> 00:24:36.685
You can just search Sonia Lovell.
00:24:36.685 --> 00:24:38.577
That's what my Instagram account is.
00:24:38.577 --> 00:24:50.240
Again, will be linked to in the show notes and if you found this episode helpful, please consider leaving a review or sharing it with someone who you think will benefit from hearing it.
00:24:50.240 --> 00:24:58.792
Please take care of yourself and I will catch you for the next episode in another two weeks, which will be at my six-week recovery point.
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