I am not a dog. How my spay surgery was much more difficult than my patients!

I got spayed 6 weeks ago, well actually I got a hysterectomy due to some medical issues that were thank goodness NOT cancer related.

When I started discussing this surgery with my doctor over a year ago, I was floored when she told me I had to take 6 weeks off of work for recovery! 6 weeks!

I send my patients home within hours of surgery and they usually act like nothing happened the next day. We try to have owners reduce their activity for 12-14 days but I know in reality that does not always happen. So, I was shocked that I had to sit at home on my bum for 6 whole weeks! When I expressed this to my doctor, she just looked at me and said, "Well my dear I am sorry to tell you that you are not a dog." 

Ok, I guess I can concede to that!

It took a year with our insane schedule to figure out how sitting around for 6 weeks would work with our lives and my career. 

And here we are in the home stretch of my healing. It has honestly been a great break to be able to be home for the summer and not have a lot on my plate due to the necessity of needing to heal. I have been able to binge watch some shows (Julia, Bridgerton, Amazing Race, and House of Dragons), crocheted some super cute little animals, made some earrings, organized my kids rooms, watched my kids swim, did some light gardening, and finally hired a cleaning company to do our deep cleaning! This was just the post-op staycation I needed.

Actually, after the last several weeks I decided I need to plan shorter times like this throughout the year in which I do not have high expectations for my time and am able to just chill and recenter.

Medically I feel pretty good. I still have some mild soreness but the majority of my pain is gone, my stamina has been the last thing to fully recover, and I am not back to 100% full energy yet but getting closer.

Here are my human 'spay' tips for any ladies out there preparing for this really common procedure:

• Have the least invasive procedure possible-I had a robot assisted hysterectomy, I had 4 small incisions that were only mildly painful. 
• Stay in the hospital if possible. I stayed overnight and had the nurses be in charge of my medications and monitoring. It gave me much-needed support to get through the worst of the pain.
• When you do go home set up alarms on your phone for your medications, so you do not miss any doses in the first 72 hours. even wake up to take them the first couple nights. Controlling pain right off the bat with alternating ibuprofen and tylenol is key to prevent a windup pain situation.
• Have a recliner you can sleep in and be in for the first couple days post op. Laying down and sitting up hurts to engage your abdomen. Having the recliner push me up when I needed to get up helped a bit.
• Wear very loose waistbands.
• Do not plan on showering for a few days-dry shampoo is your friend.
• Take it easy-overdoing it will slow down your healing. 
• Bloating post-op is common, have gas-x around and try star anise tea.

Now I am healed I can go back to helping dogs again, which are way more stoic than us human patients!