Post-Op Appointment and Additional Diagnosis

I had my six week post-op appointment today with my surgeon and Dr A said from a medical standpoint my recovery, although it's been slow and was rough at first, is now going really well. I'm cleared to have my detox baths again (yay!) and swim but since I'm still spending a chunk of my days in bed and moving mostly only around the house, I need to listen to my body as to when I'm ready for that. While internally it can take a long time to fully heal, it is encouraging to hear from my doctor that I'm at this point at the six week mark.

We also heard that the pathology report confirmed that I did in fact have Adenomyosis. 

While the surgery has helped some of my pelvic pain symptoms (in regards to some I'm experiencing at least 90% improvement!) there are remaining symptoms that are unexplained and have even intensified since surgery. We were able to address all of this with him today.

When I described a particular symptom I'm still experiencing Dr A knew right away what it was that is causing this intense pain. He said I'm describing pain caused by a very specific nerve. This nerve is called the pudendal nerve and is being damaged or entrapped by the obturator internus muscle. And when that nerve is set off it causes specific kinds of pelvic pain.

I explained to him how much intense pain sitting fully upright or on hard chairs causes me and how difficult it is for me to go out because of this. He explained that this is because these particular nerves and muscles are located right beside your sit bones. He said that for all who have this condition sitting is the biggest trigger and if special care isn't taken it can land you in bed for days afterwards.

Treatment for this is unlike typical physiotherapy and is very specific to this condition. Overall, treatment can take a very long time. It consists mostly of retraining the muscles and trigger points to release long before actual exercises to strengthen the pelvis can begin to avoid further damage to the nerves.

He briefly mentioned that only as last resort would another surgery be needed to release the muscle entrapment on the nerves. He recommended I start treatment as soon as possible so I begin specialized physiotherapy for this early next week already. 

It is unclear at this point how big of a role the Lyme and co-infections are playing in this. But we're sure they're not helping the situation, so of course treatment for that absolutely will continue along with the others.

Talk about layers and layers of problems, all the while one playing off the other. Dr A said something about this being such a long haul for us, and figuring this all out has not been easy. He said it's hard for even him to determine what happened first and what caused what - so it's hard to know what to treat or look into first. Slowly, he said, we're crossing things off the list and in time we'll get there. We're just SO THANKFUL to have him (finally) on board!