It took me a few days to get to this point, but I finally was able to post a response. I waited b/c this is important. I am a nurse and had a myomectomy August 6th. I was home by August 8th. Everything was going well. My doc removed 24 fibroids and also taped my surgery and gave me a take home copy. Anyway I experienced most the same issues of most. I was given motrin 800mg every 6 hours for pain only. This is b/c narcotics causes constipation. I did not need that. It worked well. My doctor put a device in my incision during surgery. The "medicine ball" had a pain medication that was released very slowly over two days. The medication went from the ball, down a tube and from the tube, into my incision. It worked so well that I only asked for pain meds twice while in the hospital. After two weeks I was concerned b/c I was not having normal bowel movements. My doctor encouraged milk of magnesia. It helped tremendosly with gas and bloating. After four weeks I can tell that my bowels were slowly waking up. I wish someone would have told me how long and painful that would be. I basically had what is called an illeus. That is when the bowels do not move. The bowels are supposed to be moving all the time. I guess at times they would awake and move some, but I went from having an illeus to having IBS (irriatable bowel syndrome). It was awful. Finally my stomach was better, but the small intestines were not. Then when the small intestines were better, my colon , the large intestine was not. Then when my large intestine was better, my rectum was not. I am glad to say that today was the first day (9/15/2007) that I had a normal bowel movement. All of the spasms and pain were gone. I cannot believe that it took almost 6 weeks for my body to get better. The most important point I want to share is that as my bowels were healling, some of the muscles deep in my pelvic were having issues. I always had this pressure in my pelvic area. Walking did not make it better. It felt like my bottom was going to fall out. It was better when I started kegel exercises. A kegel is the name of a pelvic floor exercise, named after Dr. Kegel who discovered the exercise. These muscles are attached to the pelvic bone and act like a hammock, holding in your pelvic organs. To try and isolate these muscles trying stopping and starting the flow of urine. Once I started that, the pressure started to leave, but not totally. Since I used to exercise before the surgery, my body began to yearn for it. I had an urge to sit on my exercise bench, put my feet on the push out on the foot bar and began doing those leg exercises. The pressure was better immediately. I did that exercise five times a day of three reps of 8. If you visit the url site below, you will see the muscle I was refereing to. My friends asked my why doctors don't tell this to their patients. I think that since most of the doc are male, they just don't know. That is why I want to share this. I did wait for my two visits with my doc before doing these exercises. I had two post-op visits after four weeks. I told my sister that I was so desperate that I was going to lie under my treadmill track because it is the fold up type and let the track rest on my feet while I push the track up and down. I really wanted to exercise that kegel muscle. Well that is dangerous and I am glad that I found a way to do the exercise on my other equipment. I have a friend who is post-op week 8 and is still not better. She had the same complaints with the pressue. I shared with her the kegel information. Anyway good luck and I hope that this helps someone.

Nurse from New Orleans, La.


Look at the image of the Pelvic Floor Muscle. Paste the url in your browser.

http://www.womenshealthlondon.org.uk.../prolprev.html