Bowel resection & partial vaginectomy for Stage IV Endo- your experiences?

[lou840]

Hi, have any of you been through surgery for bowel resection & partial vaginectomy for Stage IV Endo and able to provide your honest experience of it for initial recovery and how you are doing now however many months / years on?

The partial vaginectomy worries me the most as i really cant find much info on it but I know the bowel resection is far more risky and with a high chance of stoma bag post op.

I have consultations with my colorectal surgeon tomorrow and back to the Gyno/ endo specialist the following week to get further information on the surgery and want to go armed with questions!

Please PM me if you dont feel comfortable posting direct on here.

Thank you x

[lou002]

Hi - I had a vaginectomy during my lap 6 weeks ago (which was a surprise when I woke up!). Grade 4 endo, removed a massive endometrioma which had grown through the vaginal wall, how delightful!. Along with the ovary and both tubes, and excision elsewhere. The bit in my bowel he left, as symptoms from that not bad at the moment.

Initially the stitches were uncomfortable, but then so was everything else! I wouldn’t say recovery from the vaginectomy itself was worse than recovery from the lap in general. It’s not troubling me 6 weeks down the line. I can understand why you’re apprehensive though, it feels psychologically very invasive (weirdly, since they’re rummaging around inside you anyway). But it was ok.

General recovery took about 2.5 weeks before I could really walk to the shops etc, and about 5 weeks before I felt energetic again. Take it really easy and let your body recover.

I had a friend who had a bowel resection, and she said recovery from that part took the longest (ie quite a few weeks before she didn’t have to get to the loo quickly!). Apparently the consultant told her the bowel gets very sulky when it’s messed around with, and takes a while to get back to normal. But she’s fine now.

Hope it all goes well xx

[lou840 in reply to lou002]

I’m sorry to hear your experience of it and am some what grateful that I have a bit of time to get my head around it. Yes the invasive feeling is what I’m worried about the most, I’ve been poked and prodded so much over the years that I just feel this might be the part that tips me over the edge.

Really appreciate your response- thank you x

[LCI1 in reply to lou840]

How was your recovery experience?

[lou840 in reply to LCI1]

Hi there. I had a fairly slow recovery. The surgery was approx 4.5 - 5 hours long and i was signed off work between April- June and went back part time hours until Sept. Saw a pelvic floor therapist just before surgery and then for the the first few months after surgery and then moved across to a physio who i still see mainly for my on- going hip issues now. The pelvic floor therapist helped massively especially with some bladder issues i had post surgery and with helping me slowly get back into having sex. There was a lot of swelling from the partial vaginectomy side of things that i wasnt prepared for but all the swelling went down in time and i had my ovaries strung up out of the way which had to be released a few weeks after surgery to avoid them getting "stuck" during the healing process. I went in to surgery expecting a bowel resection and ended up having a very deep bowel shave along with the partial vaginectomy.