We can hurt ourselves in overzealous efforts to recover and heal ...a good lesson for those coming after. The week after surgery found me trying to make sense of my new body and learning how to care for myself properly. I was asking myself what is permanent, what is an effect of healing, what needs to be cleaned.
My friend, Jenny, a nurse herself going through the surgery the same week as I, plead with me all week 'just leave it alone Valerie'. But I had a need to create order from the seeming chaos that was relentless as I tried to regain control of my own body ...to feel clean, to understand, to accept, to know that I am okay. That week found me extremely obsessive/compulsive, more so than even usual, which i admit I am. The main question, running constantly in my head that needed an answer, 'am I okay?'
Some things I could not reconcile or be okay with. One was a long vertical, fairly wide very, very dark area ...nearly black, running about three quarters the length of my vagina. When I dared touch gently, after much trepidation, found that area had no feeling. It was completely numb ...or dead. And there were other dark areas. The clitoral area was completely numb, no feeling at all. And ...where is my clitoris? I couldn't see one. That area was dark as well with no discernible shape.
'What was that long black area, is it, necrosis maybe?', I thought, secretly scared. When asking the nurses how I am doing, they all said my result is above average and excellent, even 'beautiful work' commented some nurses. They all said there was nothing wrong. Part of me couldn't believe it. It certainly didn't look like a vagina, and would they tell me the truth if there was a permanent defect. Did they tell all the patients the same thing, no matter what?
Note: I found out later that this is a scab that will fall away, but is very scary looking. It is so embedded, it doesn't look like a scab, but rather that part of you is dead ...which is what a scab is. It's weird looking, at any rate, and nothing I had ever seen before. It still freaks me out.
You are provided a detailed diagram of a vagina with all the major areas clearly marked. With all the swelling, dried blood, dark areas, hills and valleys, shapes didn't make sense. I could not make sense of it. Not even the labia majora. So, eventually, I told a nurse I needed an anatomy lesson ...for my own vagina. And she spent some time with me, answering many questions, and I was told about the dark area, it was only a clot and would fall away on its own with washing and time ...and after that there would be sensation. The long, dark nearly black area was my clitoral region. Dark and swollen.
Her answers helped a great deal, I wished I had thought of an anatomy session earlier. So, good lesson, ask for details, ask for their attention. Because the nurses tend to do a quick check and move on to the next patient. And, they do not examine closely, at least to my satisfaction ...a moment only, actually. That is an underlying cause of some of my anxieties.
Another area that tugged at me all week was the bottom of the vagina, where the skin meets, known as the fourchette. This area is held together by stitches/sutures. It gets coated in something white (glue maybe?), and mixed with the stuff draining from the vagina, doesn't look like stitches at all. At some point during cleaning I decided the stitches were dressing stuck to my body that should be removed. We do have dressing that the nurses tells us will fall way on their own. But my mind wants the body clean and I couldn't tolerate dressing stuck to my body any more ...and pulled at the left side, pulling that side away. They were stitches, after all, and I got real worried I had done something real bad ...I did.
The nurses insisted that everything was okay, I had difficulty making it clear there was something wrong. They weren't taking the time to examine the healing area closely each day. So they didn't know and I knew there was a complication.
I eventually got their attention and they asked Dr. B. to make a special trip to examine me at the end of his long day. he looked at it and said it will be okay, no surgery outcome is perfect. They all have some minor complication and this, occasionally, is one of them. He said it will heal on its own and we couldnt re-stitch the area as we would trap germs inside. The best thing to do would be to leave it, keep it dry as best as possible.
So now a few days later it seems to be getting better, but is painful when pee hits that area or it gets wet from washing/cleaning.
Now I am kicking myself some, why couldn't I have just left it alone? (sigh)
