If you follow my posts regularly, you know that I had a hard time in the past getting a tubal ligation scheduled, and I've been MIA for the past week or so. Thankfully, that's because after our move, I was able to find a doctor who did the procedure with no problem. But man, I don't know if it's just my body or what, but this was a lot bigger deal than a lot of people made it out to be.
I also learned that Vicodin makes my head so fuzzy that I get randomly dizzy and wicked dry mouth and can't concentrate on anything … but I digress.
Do you actually know what goes on when a woman is having her fallopian tubes tied? Different types? I'll tell you a bit about what it was like, in case you're considering the procedure, or if you've had one, let me know if your experience lined up with mine …
As with my past experiences, I remember them putting meds in my IV, then waking up after surgery. But this time, instead of waking up and feeling nauseous, I woke up and hurt — bad. In fact, I started sobbing. Ouch. It felt like labor pains, but even included serious hip and back pain, since my pelvis is damaged from my car accident, and they had me lying on a flat surface for half an hour or more. They gave me a Vicodin pill, but waiting 20-30 minutes for a pill to kick in wasn't an option, so I asked for more drugs (got morphine through the IV).
I went home and slept. And hurt. That continued the majority of the week. It took ibuprofen and Vicodin to be able to sleep because my ribs and shoulder hurt way too much when I laid down — sounds weird, right? But for laparoscopic surgeries like this, they inflate your abdomen (called insufflation) with a non-toxic gas like CO2 to kind of get stuff out of the way so the doc can see what they're doing. This can end up causing pain even in your shoulders, and my ribs have always had issues if they flex. Weird, huh?
Now a week and two days later, still taking the occasional ibuprofen, I feel kind of lied to. The doctor told me "many women" get the surgery on a Friday and are back to work on Monday … but the paperwork says no driving for two weeks (I did the other day and realized I'm not ready to yet), and when I asked on my blog's Facebook page, most girls said 4-5 weeks for full recovery. Weekend healing my ass! Though my mom swears her surgery was pretty easy on her, I still can't really pick up my toddler or do dishes without hurting, and a "quick" trip to the store was way too taxing still. Boo.
Anyway, there are many methods for tubals: the ones we know where the tubes are tied, or cut and burned, or even cut, burned, AND tied … but there are also a bunch of tools, like Essure (a spring-like thing) and Adiana (a rice-like thing), that go in the tube without surgery and scar it shut, and also clips and rings that they cut off the tube with — that's what I had, the Yoon ring (if you're like me, you'll find the video of the procedure kind of cool). I questioned its reliability, since cut, burned, and tied sounds much more permanent, but supposedly the Yoon ring, except immediately following abortions or birth, is way more reliable than old cutting OR burning or both methods. Takes less time too. But I'll be damned if it didn't still hurt.
Have you had your tubes tied? With what method? What was your recovery like?
Image via Spec-ta-cles/Flickr; tubalreversal.net
