After yesterday's epic post, I had neglected to mention a very important update on myself. This tends to happen whenever I bring up memories of 2018 and the loss of my mother. I get distracted with those emotions that I still feel so strongly despite 3.5 years having passed.
Before I get distracted again, my big news!
I am with uterus no more. I am a changed woman, but for the better.
Yes, as of 23rd September 2021, I had a hysterectomy to remove my uterus along with some pesky fibroids that were causing me issues over the years. Issues that I had no idea were problems until small pieces of puzzle were put together in recent months.
I'm a bit battered and bruised, well... not bruised, I'm faring quite well actually. A bit uncomfortable but overall mending very well so far.
How do I even start to tell this story?
How did it get to this stage where I had to make such a drastic choice as to lose my uterus to save my life?
I think the best way to outline this memory is from the beginning...
I have always been known as that girl who coughs a lot. Literally years and years of reputation. Because when I start coughing, it will last for 3-4 months. Yep, a very big chunk of the year is spent with me coughing my lungs out.
It doesn't usually start with a cold or flu, I don't even get a sore throat, it just starts one day, and it will linger around for months. If I had to take time of work because of this cough, I would not have any stable job at all.
It became a running joke with everyone I worked with. Oh gosh, there she goes, Mae and her cough...
And then the questions "have you been to see a doctor? taken cough medicine? naturopath? Tried chinese herbal medicine? lungs checked? Tried honey? Honey with lemon? is it asthma? or some random obscure scientifically unproven home remedy..."
What do you think my answer is? No, I enjoy having this irritating cough that hurts my voice and makes it difficult for me to speak, and makes me seem like I am constantly sick when I am not... No, I have not tried any of those obvious solutions that you have recommended because I am a sucker for punishment....
OF COURSE I HAVE FUCKING TRIED ALL THOSE FUCKING THINGS, AND THEN SOME!
I am not an idiot. I do not enjoy coughing my lungs out because everything hurts, my throat hurts, my chest hurts, my abs hurt. Once upon a time, I coughed so hard, I sprained my back and couldn't get out of bed for 3 days. Let me tell you - That was not fun. Coughing for months on end is no fun.
So yes, I have tried many things. I have seen many doctors. All have given me no new information. They check my throat, not inflamed, they check my lungs, it sounds healthy. It's just minor irritation they say, just take some over the counter cough meds or cough lollies, it will go away on its own.
Yes... it does eventually go away on its own... it just takes awhile... months in fact.
I hear what you're thinking now, wait wait, I thought this was a story about my hysterectomy? But you're writing about a cough?
Yes, I know - but hear me out... it's a long story, and I don't want to forget the details.
So, after years of nothing useful from various GPs, I had resigned myself to the fact that I may have to live with this stupid condition for the rest of my life, that was until this little thing called a global pandemic hits us in 2020.
Coronovirus.
Urgh.... the worst time to ever have a cough in public. You become an immediate pariah as soon as a sneeze or cough is heard. Don't let me out in public... but I cannot NOT go to work. I mean, my colleagues are aware of my issue but not everyone in the office understands and it is very understandable for them to be suspicious of someone in the office with a horrible sounding cough.
Fucking covid-19.
So I take a covid test, it returns a negative result and I go to see yet another new GP... and this time, she suspects it might be allergy related. Oh, goodness a new diagnosis. So I get a prescription of antihistamines and ventolin inhaler....
And I must say, it does work to some extent but not completely. It does suppress my cough for a little bit. So for a good 12 months I tell anyone who is concerned, it's just allergies and that gets easily understood. People understand allergies, but they don't understand unknown chronic months long coughing.
So in 2020, the cough goes on from early Jan to April. a 4mth long cough. I am sore.
Skip through to Jan 2021, and the darn cough returns, but so does covid-19... this time around, a good friend's mother had recently died as a result of cancer that had spread all over her body. Her symptom was a chronic cough that wouldn't go away and the outcome was the worst possible scenario. She passed away a few short months after being diagnosed.
Because of covid-19 and my friend guilting me into getting my health checked out, I did return to yet another new GP to see what they have to say...
This time around was a bumbling middle-aged male GP... as I was a new patient of his, and after hearing me out for 2 minutes, he ordered that I get a full blood test as well as an x-ray of my lungs so that he obtains some detail about my health history.
Dutifully, I head off first to the x-ray place because their opening hours were more accessible, and then the following week I headed to pathology to get a blood test thinking nothing much of it.
The x-ray returned a result of everything normal. Lungs and heart all normal - so basically, nothing to see here ladies and gents... move along to the next thing.
I remember it so clearly, I had the blood test on a Thursday, they told me it would be with my GP within the next 3 days so I didn't expect to hear back until the following week, but on the Friday I receive a call from the new GP telling me my blood test results were returned and there were some concerning things he needed to discuss with me in person, was I available to visit the clinic that afternoon?
Now, here I was at work, busy as all fuck, and unexpectedly receive a phone call from the doctor telling me the results of my blood test were concerning and he could only tell me in person? What was a girl to think? How was I supposed to react?
My next thoughts were I have a dinner catch up with some old colleagues that night that I really didn't want to miss (we had just been released from lockdown number 4 at that stage and I was rearing to go out for any reason and I wasn't missing out).
So instead, I made an appointment for 8:30am on Saturday morning. It meant that I couldn't have too late a night, and still had to wake up early on the weekend. Ah well... it had to be done.
So Saturday, 8th May 2021, I head off to the clinic and see a completely different doctor because my usual GP didn't work weekends. This doctor looked at my results and told me that my vitamin D levels were very low, but more concerningly my irons were less than 1, and my haemoglobins were 49.
Without context these numbers didn't mean anything to me. He informed me that normal iron levels should be between 35.5-44.9 so a result of less than 1 was very very bad. And haemoglobins should be between 120g/L - 160 g/L - so 49 is considered dangerously low. In fact, I was at risk of heart failure because irons produce haemoglobins, and haemoglobins transport oxygen around the body. When these are low, the heart has to work harder to pump blood around the body to transport oxygen.
I sat there in shock for a few seconds.
He did a check up of my lungs, he checked if I had other symptoms such as shortness of breath (no), tiredness (yes, but didn't think it was out of ordinary, just normal lack of sleep tiredness), dizziness (no), feeling faint (no), feeling weak (how do you judge this?), pale skin (I didn't think so...).
Then he strongly urged me to go straight the local hospital emergency department as I needed an urgent blood transfusion to rectify this issue immediately otherwise I have a high potential of dropping dead from heart failure.
He wrote me a referral letter and printed out all the test results for me to take with me.
I was in shock, and I didn't know how to react. I walked slowly back to the car and sat there crying for a good 10-15mins. I was scared.
Then I texted Lu to let her know. As we had just been released from lockdown, she was away that weekend in Daylesford I think so I literally had nobody for support. That was a tough moment to get through on my own.
I calmed myself down, and no... I didn't go straight to hospital. I am a practical person, I know how the ED works, I could potentially be sitting there for 8-10 hours, especially with all the covid crazy shit happening. It could potentially be longer...
So, no I didn't take myself straight to hospital. Instead went to the supermarket to get some snacks, then I went home and grabbed a book, a back up charger, bottle of water, fruit, scarf - things that could keep me occupied and not hungry for a few hours. I am born a practical girl.
Then at about 10:30am I made it to the ED reception to check in and prepared for a long wait.
Surprisingly I waited only a couple of hours. I think they came out to get me after about 2 hours, and they checked me out, acted shocked by the results, took another blood test to make sure it wasn't a mistake the first time. And then I waited. And waited. And waited on a bed in ED.
They were afraid that I was at risk of fainting, especially if I went to the toilet, so I wasn't allowed to go to the toilet on my own... but I did use the toilet anyway. Everywhere I went, every nurse and doctor I came across was surprised that I looked not sickly at all. That I wasn't faint or weak. That I was sitting up talking to them, quite alert.
I had heard lots of stories of ED being overwhelmed and I was fully prepared to wait, to not be informed about what was going on, to receive suboptimal service but that is far from the truth. My experience was exceptional. Everyone I came across at the Western General was incredible. Yes I did have to wait, but it was a busy hospital afterall, but not for as long as I thought I needed to. I was informed every step of the way what they needed to do or check.
After the blood test, I sat in the ED bed for literally hours waiting for the results to come back. When it did, my haemoglobins had dropped from 49 to 45, and immediately they ordered blood for a transfusion and transferred me to the short stay ward. By this stage, it was about 4pm, I'd been there over 5 hours.
And then more waiting. This time waiting for the blood packs to arrive. I was to have 3 bags of blood.
By this stage, I knew I needed to let dad know that I was gonna be home for dinner, but I couldn't call him because both my arms had IVs attached and I couldn't bend them to make calls. I could only send messages... I was keeping Lu and Kent updated on what was going on but didn't need dad to be worried. So Lu needed to call dad to let him know. I had Kent on stand by in case he needed to drive me home that night. At this stage, I still wasn't sure if I was to stay the night, or if I was discharged whether I was allowed to drive home on my own...
Waiting for a blood transfusion to finish is one of the most boring things to do. You literally cannot do anything. Just sit there and wait for the blood to drip in. 3 bags took about 3-4 hours.
For reasons I'm not sure of, they moved me from a 4 bed shared ward to a single private room with my own bathroom. Maybe because all the other patients were old men? I'm not sure... but I ain't complaining.
So for the last 2 hours of my stay, I was in a room by myself. It was great. I even got a meal, which was gratefully accepted because although I had snacks, I had not eaten since breakfast and I was bloody starving.
Finally, a gorgeous young doctor came to see me at the end of the night, asked how I felt, whether I knew what caused the low haemoglobins, I told him I didn't... I went to see my GP about a cough, and ended up in hospital for a blood transfusion for something completely different!
He asked if I felt exhausted, short of breath etc etc.. I told him no... not more than usual etc...
He said, gosh, we've never seen someone come in with such low numbers like that, you're quite the miracle. You're gonna feel like a million bucks by Monday, work better watch out, superwoman is coming! LOLs, he was gorgeous.
I was discharged around 10:30pm, and was allowed to drive myself home.
So this epic story turned out to be just the beginning of my hysterectomy journey!
Stay tuned for part 2, and part 3
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