Day 12

This is a bit of a half-way marker for me...between the operation and the day I'm planning to have sex for the first time since. It's looking doubtful at the moment. More about that later.

Generally, everything's healing nicely. I've been checking in the mirror every day, and have definitely noticed it looks better. Actually, from further away you can kind of tell how the end result will look; the inner labia aren't even visible, they're tucked inside the outer ones. Success!

Although there's still that lump/LL at the top, which just looked like they missed a bit!? It sticks out still. And pokes out when I'm standing. You can even see the bump through my underwear!? The stitches around it look slightly different to the rest as well - they're kind of scabbed over. Urgh. I'll wait til it's all healed and point it out in 8/9 weeks at my review with the surgeon. If it's even still bothering me by then; to be honest it still looks better than before.

I'm still having 2 baths (and now adding salt to them) but I didn't take any painkillers today, to see what would happen. Mostly it was ok, I had more itching than pain. And this was only occasionally, like most of the day I was alright. It came on in waves. But when it did...it was unbearable. It happened to occur when I was out in public. In the supermarket. I had to just grimace all the way home. I actually wanted to cry.

And a couple of times today I underestimated the pain and sat down too hard, which killed. I need to remember the area's still delicate, and not push myself. The stitches are all still intact/visible. I forgot to mention, but last night, just after I posted my blog entry, I noticed a bit of blood in my pyjamas. But only a tiny bit, along the middle seam. So I must have caught the edge just a tiny bit.

However, tonight just before I got in the bath, the stitches on one side burst open slightly. I didn't notice as I was just sitting/wandering around normally and couldn't feel much pain. But I felt something dripping down my leg and thought I'd check it out. I had blood running down both legs and dripping on to the floor. I panicked and sat down, initially trying to apply pressure to the whole area as I couldn't tell which part was bleeding; there was blood everywhere. But it really hurt to hold tissue on there. I managed to trace it down to the 3 or 4 stitches holding together the bottom half of one side. They were the ones bleeding last night. They weren't gaping open or anything, I must have just knocked them.

The blood stopped flowing so much so I decided to get into the bath and just relax for a while - I was pretty shaken up at the sight of all this blood. When I got out of the bath, I assumed it would have stopped. But it was still dripping onto the floor. So I dabbed it more with tissue until it had almost stopped. Applying the thrush cream was a challenge, as I did NOT want to get it anywhere near the stitches, but I definitely still need to keep using it if today's itching attack is going to keep happening.

So anyway now it's stopped bleeding and I'm wearing the thickest pad I could find, as I'm afraid more bleeding will happen in the night. But it's worth mentioning, wearing sanitary towels, or even just underwear, makes the itching a lot worse. I'm thinking of opting for a maxi dress tomorrow, and no underwear. It's going to be quite a demanding day as I'm going to work then meeting friends and probably going out as well. We'll see how that goes...so far simple tasks like travelling to work or going grocery shopping have been really difficult. After over a week of isolation and hardly walking, it hurts to walk, and I find everything quite exhausting/overwhelming.