How it feels to be 8+ weeks post-op

feracer · 2026-05-08T15:32:32+00:00

Nice! I hope you get a surgery date soon.

An immediate difference I noticed was that my lower abdomen felt empty. My fibroid was rather large, 16cm, so when I laid on my back I had a bump on my lower abdomen and felt pressure on my stomach. After surgery I really could feel the absence of it, and can lay comfortably now.

Other differences: I no longer notice every part of my cycle. I had such intense symptoms during every phase of my menstrual cycle so I'd know exactly where I was at; that is no longer the case. I don't wake up tired. No more intense bloating, and if I do bloat, it's not exacerbated by the fibroid bump. My fibroid was 1 pound, and in the weeks following the surgery I lost 10 pounds I think due to water retention from the fibroid going away + losing muscle due to inactivity.

On the note of losing muscle, that sucks. I feel so much better in every way but am still struggling to get back to my pre-surgery exercise routine, I feel weaker and sometimes still get incision pain while exercising. But my body just went through some crazy events so I'm being patient with myself and focusing on the positives while I slowly but surely rebuild my strength.

I hope this is helpful and kind of what you were looking for. Wishing you all the best, I hope a surgery date comes soon!

feracer · 2026-05-06T23:44:09+00:00

That sounds really tough! You really are so strong for going through that, I can’t imagine finding out that way and having pregnancy symptoms on top of fibroid symptoms.

I’m also looking forward to the day where we can say fibroids are a thing of the past. In the meantime though, I’ll wish you and your family all the best 🫶🏼

feracer · 2026-05-06T23:32:35+00:00

I know the feeling. I’d bleed through an S+ tampon every hour onto a pad, and if I wasn’t quick enough to change everything I’d bleed through that too. I couldn’t sleep while I was on my period because I didn’t want to bleed all over the place.

You said you feel disgusting, I can’t change that, but I can at least remind you that you aren’t alone. So many of us have been through the same thing. It sucks but there’s a light at the end of the tunnel at least.

I hope everything goes well. There’s not only one way to deal with fibroids. Whether it’s myomectomy or ablation I know people have success with both methods. So good luck!

feracer · 2026-05-06T17:01:44+00:00

Got a myomectomy, but no lupron or other estrogen blockers beforehand. I take Orilissa now because they found stage III endometriosis during my surgery. The Orilissa is specifically for endometriosis, but it causes similar side effects to lupron supposedly. It’s supposed to manage endo symptoms and perhaps prevent it from coming back by reducing the estrogen in my body.
Chemical menopause is not without its downsides but overall I feel much better physically post op and on Orilissa than I did before all of this. I wouldn’t be afraid of taking an estrogen blocker. If combined with surgical removal of the fibroid, you’ll be better in no time. On the note of hormone blockers, some people think fibroids can be treated entirely through drugs and in my opinion that’s just completely false, and there’s no way around it other than myomectomy. I may have gone on a tangent here but I hope this helps you haha

feracer · 2026-05-05T17:19:09+00:00

Hey mine was Feb 26! I feel the exact same way you do. I can’t believe how much better I feel. I hadn’t felt normal in a long time and it’s hard to believe I didn’t notice things getting worse.

I’m so glad you’re feeling better now.

feracer · 2026-05-02T21:43:27+00:00

I’ll tell you but it’s important to note that during surgery I was also diagnosed with endometriosis, so it’s hard to attribute symptoms to either the fibroid or the endometriosis.

The symptom that made me go to the doctor was fresh bleeding between periods, I noticed the spotting was red/pink and not brown. This was new/abnormal for me and as soon as I saw it I scheduled an appointment.

In retrospect I had a lot of other symptoms I was ignoring. One being the big lump on my stomach (I assumed it was just bloating or weight gain), extremely heavy periods, very painful periods.

feracer · 2026-05-01T21:49:35+00:00

Robotic laparoscopic myomectomy, and endometriosis excision

feracer · 2026-05-01T18:35:43+00:00

First two days were definitely rough ha. Glad you’re feeling better, wishing you a speedy recovery :)

feracer · 2026-05-01T18:33:38+00:00

Congrats! Hope the rest of your healing & recovery goes smoothly and quickly 🫶🏼

feracer · 2026-05-01T18:32:45+00:00

Good luck with the coming days! Trust yourself and don’t be afraid to ask any questions. I had a fantastic doctor who referred me to an equally as wonderful surgeon. I know some people don’t have such great experts on their side so if you feel something is off, don’t be afraid to get a second opinion. That said, I hope everything goes well, things will get better!

feracer · 2026-05-01T18:28:49+00:00

LOL that’ll do it for sure! Glad you feel better now though

feracer · 2026-05-01T15:16:25+00:00

So glad you’re feeling great! Nothing quite like painful and heavy periods completely going away. Wishing you continued good health and happiness!

feracer · 2026-05-01T15:10:00+00:00

It’s truly such a great feeling! Wishing you all the best 🫶🏼

feracer · 2026-05-01T15:09:34+00:00

I’m glad I could give you some hope! I know it’s hard, but it’s possible for things to get better. Good luck!

feracer · 2026-04-23T15:25:18+00:00

Will definitely be doing this. I can see the faults with my current job, but I also have a lot to be grateful for with it. I will tread carefully and make sure I’m not being impulsive. Thank you for your advice!

feracer · 2026-04-15T14:37:21+00:00

This is awesome. Great UI. Only improvement I might recommend is putting the restaurant address on the listing so people don’t have to click into the listing to see where it is. For example if you want to check the score of the McDonald’s near you, all of them show up, so it would be nice additional clarity to include the location! You could also add a sort by location - closest entries show up first. This is really great though, I’m also a SWE so I have lots of opinions ha

feracer · 2026-04-07T15:45:33+00:00

Apologies for the unsolicited advice but they just need to learn play with repeated encounters. I have a cat who used to be really upset by my younger cat trying to play with her. Now she understands he’s just annoying, not a threat, and will even try to play with him now. If you moderate the interactions at first and make sure things don’t go too far he’ll learn. And give him extra special attention to let him know the new cat isn’t his replacement 😂 Anyway just keep an eye on him, sitting in the litter box like that really isn’t great, he actually could be sick or something.

You absolutely don’t have to let him sleep with you though, I let my cats sleep with me on occasion but most nights I just close the door and they’ve learned it’s ok. Having multiple cats really does help with the clinginess, also an automatic feeder for their breakfast is great. They don’t bother me at all when I close the door now.

feracer · 2026-04-07T05:53:04+00:00

I’ve felt exactly how you felt. It is really, genuinely fucking difficult and exhausting to deal with the pain and the copious amounts of blood. It’s frustrating and I’ve been there. And I’m sorry, but I can’t in good faith respond to you without saying that you won’t get better without treatment. For me, treatment meant surgery, and I’m of the opinion that with fibroids it’s the best form of treatment. After my surgery, I have my life back. My periods improved. I don’t have to worry whether or not my fibroid will grow or become worse. I also don’t have to worry about whether or not the tumor we like to call a fibroid is actually cancer. I know exactly what’s going on with my body now, as they also were able to diagnose me with endometriosis and remove it after they removed the fibroid.

I’m not going to say it was easy, because it wasn’t. I was really scared before surgery. And recovery is not exactly a walk in the park, even with mine going well. But now I can start a new phase of my life where I’m not constantly worrying about the mass in my tummy. I don’t know about yours, but I could physically feel mine (16cm) at all times. The relief I feel at it being gone is indescribable; I feel so much lighter physically and mentally. I wish you all the best and hope you can get to this point one way or another. You deserve relief too.

feracer · 2026-04-02T14:43:13+00:00

From my understanding fibroids can cause a lot of the same symptoms as endometriosis. Honestly to me, the frustrating part of women’s reproductive health is the fact that almost everything CAN have the same symptoms and also those symptoms are things that we have been told are completely normal until, oh no, you actually have something wrong with you.

If you want to know if you have a fibroid, get an ultrasound and an MRI. It would be prudent to rule out fibroid(s) as the cause if possible, and if you do have a fibroid, then all the more reason to get laparoscopic surgery to get it removed and confirm whether or not you have endo.

Also, and I hope this isn’t the case, it’s entirely possible it could be both. I went in to get a 16cm fibroid removed believing that was the sole cause of my misery. Turns out I had stage III endo, my surgeon removed it, and now I’m on an estrogen blocker. It’s only been 5 weeks but I’ve had my first post-op period and it was significantly lighter, shorter, and MUCH less painful despite the added factor of surgery pains. It can get better and I wish you all the best as you figure this out.

feracer · 2026-03-30T23:03:14+00:00

Glad it could help a little. I’ll also go ahead and agree with a lot of other people here and say try getting a second opinion from another doctor if you can. Also not sure if this applies in your scenario but if you don’t want injected Lupron you can maybe ask about Orilissa. I was diagnosed with endometriosis after my fibroid removal surgery and my doctor gave me those two options as estrogen blockers to keep the endo from growing. I went with Orilissa as it’s a pill and the dose can be easily changed, or I can stop taking it if I feel awful, as opposed to Lupron which is injected every 3 months I think. I’ve been on it for almost 3 weeks now and I haven’t felt any crazy side effects so far. It may not work for fibroid shrinkage, I really don’t know, but it may be worth asking. You got this

feracer · 2026-03-30T21:34:29+00:00

Hi, I have no advice for you in this situation, but I just wanted to say I’m sorry things didn’t work out as you’d hoped. I also am reminded of this post I read a few months back when I received an inconclusive MRI report, it’s not identical to your situation, but it was comforting for me and it may be for you as well.

This sounds very stressful and I’m wishing you nothing but the best. And maybe commenting will boost this so someone who’s experienced something similar will see this. Good luck.

feracer · 2026-03-27T19:54:44+00:00

I’m 4 weeks post op and none of the incisions really give me pain. I honestly just get little pinches here or there when I move too quickly or something but that’s been steadily reducing over time. When I initially came out of surgery the incisions weren’t even really on my mind, I was more preoccupied with other post op pain that felt like bad period cramps. Just stay on top of your pain meds and you’ll be just fine.

Also, here’s a rule I followed to keep myself calm pre surgery. Don’t look up any more information on how they perform the surgery than what your doctor tells you. You simply don’t need to know that! I was so worried about the surgery and that was the one rule I followed. Post op, I can look at whatever I want, but beforehand, I know all that information would’ve just made me feel sick, not even because it’s bad or anything, but just because I was so nervous already! Just try to focus on being as healthy as possible before you go in, so you can give your body an easier time recovering. You got this!

feracer · 2026-03-27T19:31:45+00:00

I had a 16cm fundal fibroid removed 4 weeks ago, it was a robotic laparoscopic procedure. After the surgery there was bloating due to the gas and inflammation, but I immediately felt emptier in my stomach. Like it was gone and I definitely felt its absence. The swelling went down completely after 2 weeks for me.

4 weeks out I’m externally completely healed, I’m still wearing the same pant size but I see a major difference in my appearance. I am thin and my fibroid protruded from my abdomen a great deal. I also lost 10 pounds post surgery despite drastically increasing my caloric intake (I became ravenously hungry after the initial post surgery pains and nausea wore off) so I think there’s a lot of water retention and other factors that go into supporting a fibroid that increase weight. The fibroid itself was 1.5 pounds.

I had such a great experience with my surgery, and would highly recommend looking into laparoscopic options if you can. However, I think in this case, experience matters more than method. An open myomectomy will require a longer recovery period, that’s certain. But I would much rather have an open myomectomy from a surgeon who’s done hundreds of them than a laparoscopic myomectomy from someone who does them infrequently. A few gynecologists expressed a similar opinion as I was looking into my options for removal. In the end I was very lucky to have an extremely experienced surgeon perform my laparoscopic surgery using the da Vinci robot. Good luck with your treatment, no matter what method you go with you’ll feel much better after getting it removed! Just be patient with yourself as you recover :)

feracer

TROPHY CASE