Unfiltered Story #248836

(I’m severely anemic & a lot of testing shows that my extremely heavy periods were a major factor. I’ve been on multiple birth controls that had tons of bad side effects for me including month-long spotting. I also don’t have and don’t want children. After a long battle with sexist doctors who thought my being able to breed was more important than my health, I’ve finally gotten a doctor willing to do a hysterectomy. I get the robotic kind done which is supposed to be an outpatient procedure. I’m waking up in recovery, mom is there along with a nurse & the anesthesiologist.)

Me: *groggy, obviously, feeling a heaviness in what I think is my bladder* “I gotta go potty.”

Anesthesiologist: “What?”

Mom: “She’s saying she has to go potty.”

Anesthesiologist: “You can’t possibly had to go, you had a catheter in.”

Me: *still somewhat incoherent* “I do! I gotta go potty!”

(After what seems like an eternity of him insisting I don’t have to go he finally gives in and tells the nurse to give me a bedpan. I find myself pushing to try and get the feeling to go away and I do feel and hear the bedpan fill with something. I keep drifting in and out of consciousness, but I can still remember what I heard.)

Mom: *to the nurse* “Should there be so much blood in that?”

Nurse: “Of course. She just had a hysterectomy. There’s going to be some blood.”

(This repeats a couple of times with other nurses. I feel the need to go, they insist I couldn’t possibly have to go, I end up with a bedpan that, while not full, has a good amount of blood in it. The nurses all insist this is normal. Finally my mom gets an older nurse who gets a wheelchair and takes me to the bathroom. There she puts this device meant to catch the urine in the toilet first and tells me not to empty it, then she gives me privacy. It’s full of blood, again.)

Older nurse: *looking at the toilet* “Uh-oh.”

(A few minutes later in recovery the doctor who performed my hysterectomy enters.)

Doctor: “It looks like when we went up vaginally we made a small tear in your vagina. We’re going to have to take you back into surgery.”

(And so my outpatient surgery became an overnight stay. Which included more nurse shenanigans such as giving me insulin every time I ate even though I’m NOT diabetic. The nurse the next morning even exclaimed as he read my chart, “Why did she give you insulin? You’re not diabetic!” But at least my anemia is finally under control and my iron levels are no longer in single digits.)