I feel like I too would have probably still had the surgery -but by a different method. I wish I had asked more questions.
Very interesting. I guess we’ll know more after the ultrasound. My sister lives alone in MO - no spouse - no children. She already told me she has a friend lined up to bring her to and from the hospital. I alternate between feeling sorry for her for being alone in handling this and reminding myself that moving away from family was a choice she made decades ago. We are not close, but if she lived near me I would certainly go to dr appt with her and be there to help her out post-surgery.
My sister and I had a huge falling out last year over her unwillingness to provide any assistance with our elderly parents. She basically told me they are my problem and she has her own life. So - she was not really asking for my help or advice on her medical issue, just notifying me and assigning me the task of dealing with our parents when she tells them.
Another physician here. No need to “slow down” (she already is taking the time for an ultrasound). Sometimes gyn exams/tests are dependent on the menstrual cycle and this could be a reason for the timing as well as scheduling. No need to get other opinions. Presumably she has chosen a competent (like most are) gynecologist who can easily do the surgery. Removing a uterus does not remove tubes and ovaries so hormones are still the same. Removing the cervix can make a difference but does not mean problems for enjoyment. Getting all of my parts out (several coexisting problems) meant a world of difference in my endometriosis- worth the lack of estrogens! I do not need to worry about cervical cancer (or uterine) plus removing my ovaries (indicated for me but not everyone) means no ovarian cancer. No periods was great- the best side effect of a hysterectomy.
Do not overthink this. Do not encourage her to delay and continue to suffer.
As an anesthesiologist I sat in on many hysterectomies in my time. Most are routine and problems encountered are often the result of the fact that bodies do not come off an assembly line- there can be solvable problems easily taken care of.
@wis75 - you are so totally right
Since yours turned out so well -everyone elses’ will too. Don’t research, don’t be informed. Don’t look at the complication rate. Who needs facts right? Quit thinking so hard -just leave it all to the perfect physicians. They know best
I’m the type that likes to question, research, ask opinions, etc. But I realize there are differences of opinion on the need for that. She is not suffering as far as I know, I believe she went in for routine checkup and this diagnosis was a complete surprise.
Thank you for pointing out menstrual cycle @wis75 - maybe that is why the ultrasound is a few weeks off. I have no idea.
My concern is this is major surgery, she is alone with no family to help, she has not been complaing of pain or heavy cycles, so I do think she should proceed slowly and cautiously. I have always thought it was standard procedure to get a second opinion before surgery.
Wis is absolutely correct about the scheduling of the ultrasound around certain time during the cycle. I just had a fibroid evaluation and that’s what the doctor said.
There is a forum called Hystersisters. Lots of good info. Google it for your own education.
I read the post above about having complications and second guessing your decision. I obsessively read hystersisters and went into the surgery telling the doc not to take out anything unnecessarily, and yet also hoping to not have ovarian cancer, so it could have been nearly anything. We did not expect my one hour surgery to take six hours. I would say I recovered quite well and yet still, it was not easy. So, I did not have any scary icky complications, but I had 12 weeks no sex, 12 weeks of being careful with exercise. I walk a lot, miles every day, and it took me the full 12 weeks before i could walk normally. I had many weeks where I could only walk slowly and only by holding a pillow to my abdomen as it was so tender. Again, literally hundreds of spots of endometriosis removed. I cancelled a planned trip for 5-6 months post-op as I did not feel I had my normal stamina and vitality, but none of those things were big problems, they were merely part of the healing process.
For me, one of the worst things to come out of the surgery is that I went in not needing even reading glasses and came out with much worse eye sight, I could not read the big stack of books I had stacked for my recovery. My eyes improved, but never back to not needing reading glasses. Maybe @wis75 can speak to this, but I was told all the anesthesia can affect the lens of the eye!
Like the above poster, I would not want to blithely go into this surgery, assume everything would be fine and then have a regretted complication. I researched the heck out of it, thank you Dr Google & HysterSisters, and knew what I was getting into. If the chance of a complication is 1/10,000 and you are that 1, it is 100% happening to you, so it’s a big deal to understand what could go wrong, even if everything was done the proper way.
I feel so much better I wonder why I waited ten years and it would have been great to feel this much sooner, except it would have been a different surgeon and different procedure and possibly different results.
@somemom - “all the anesthesia can affect the lens of the eye!”. OMG. That is terrifying. Never heard that before.
What’s the downside to getting a second opinion and allowing a few weeks for that? Are there situations where a small amount of time will make fibroids life threatening?
Agree. I am going to make that strong suggestion after she has the ultrasound, assuming dr is still recommending surgery. I just googled eye problems after anesthesia and was floored at the number if reports of this. Some temporary, some permanent. All the more reason to avoud surgery if possible.
Almost 100% of people over 40-50 need reading glasses eventually (or right away). Even if this was a possible outcome of anesthesia it would have been minor to me. I know no one my age who doesn’t need them. When I think of the events where I was worried-to-terrified that I’d need to rush out to change a super max tampon after thirty minutes or less (concerts, my kids’ graduations, weddings, even movies), of the super stressful plane rides (trying to plan trips to the lav to change tampons/pads, fear of bleeding into plane seats), the many clothing issues and embarassments (argh)---- I regret all the stresses and the wasted energy, worry and, well, life. My surgery was totally worth a [possible/potential] increased need for reading glasses. No contest (and I have had major vision issues my whole life).
I understand the risk makes sense for someone who has real quality of life issues. As far as I know, my sister does not. I think it is kind of crazy to take someone who is feeling fine, having no issues or complaints, and tell them they need major surgery for a problem they did not know existed. If that happened to me, I would move very slowly and have a second opinion amd maybe a period of watch and wait.
Yes, I know, complaining about my eyes sounds so trivial! But it was the most frustrating after effect. You know how you can hit control + to enlarge your font on your screen, well, I had to hit that 3-4-5 times above normal size, so it was significant.
This was several years ago so my details may be fuzzy, I feel like they told me that as you age your lens is stiffer, in lay terms, do does not dilate and contract with the fluidity of a younger person and that being under for 6 hours meant a lot of drugs that would affect that. The surgeon told me to wait 6 months and see how it did, I did improve, but I think I was teetering on the edge of old age reality and this shoved me fully into that spot 
Not terrifying @rockvillemom, just a minor thing that felt major to me because what might normally have happened gradually was an all at once experience
I’d urge the second opinion, too.
Maybe she is getting used to the idea while she waits for the ultrasound? Could she be doing research? How is she about getting health information? Does she do what the doctor says, no question? Does she look stuff up on her own? Is she someone who is dogged by regrets? Some people like to be told what to do by the expert and don’t want to question. I do think you should at least raise the issue of a second opinion with her, however. You are her sister, raise it. She can always say no. You may know more after the ultrasound and sister may be more receptive to the idea then.
My GYN found a mysterious, large, previously undetected growth when I was fifty. I have a family history of reproductive cancers so i was scared. She didn’t start by telling me I needed a hysterectomy or to have the growth out. She said let’s do an ultrasound, when that was inconclusive told me the growth would need to come out and be biopsied. To her credit, she told me she could do it and described how, but also told me I could see a younger colleague who used a new method that would be easier to recover from. I made the appointment. Younger colleague had a top notch ultrasound tech and better equipment than the first lab. Just on that initial visit, she was able to rule out most of the really terrible things the growth could be. She scheduled an MRI and then surgery a week or two after that. The MRI results took away 95% of my fears. The surgery was a breeze. I was very grateful that my doc suggested a get a second opinion.
I will add that we did investigate doing nothing as I had no symptoms. No one was comfortable with that option. But we found the easiest way to get it out.
I have a lot of vision problems so anything having to do with eye issues completely freaks me out. Never had surgery so that also freaks me out. I procrastinate on anything medical. I’m actually way overdue for gyn visit myself and now I really do not want to go.
Trying to focus on my sister and what I can do to support her long distance.
I guess I’ll just have to wait and see what happens with my sister’s ultrasound and whether she is still recommended to have a hysterectomy afterwards.
@Lizardly - thank you. I think I may call her back in a few days to check in and see how she is doing and maybe discuss further. If she want my input, that is. She tends to get angry and defensive pretty quickly.
RVM, she may be “feeling fine, having no issues or complaints,” but the doctor detected something. That’s the arc here. Not every med issue is recognized first by the patient. The fact we’re sharing tales of bleeding or swelling is just one or two manifestations. And something concerned the doc about the impact on kidneys.
And it’s too soon to know more. Just bear that in mind. Cross the ‘who helps her’ bridge later.
Good advice, thank you.
I’m sure some of you are thinking I sound like a broken record because I’ve shared my story so many times here. So I will give you the shortened version (yea, right!). I was one of the ones who had a life-threatening complication after my complete hysterectomy, but not until 7.5 weeks AFTER the surgery, from which I recovered well ahead of the curve. My complication had nothing to do with the surgeon or hospital… it was just a stupid fluke of bad luck and circumstances. Anyway, I developed an internal abscess in one of my lower left ‘incisions’ (my GYN-ONC used the robotic surgery, so I had five small (less than 1") ‘incisions’ (more like puncture wound) across my abdomen. The only reason we discovered this abscess is because in a matter of a few hours, I went from feeling fine, to wanting to die with a high fever, chills, achyness, and very high heart rate. I seriously thought I had a bad case of the flu, but because it had come on so suddenly, I thankfully paid attention to my gut instinct and called our 24-hour BCBS nurse hotline (it was midnight). She listened to my symptoms and told me to get to the ER within two hours, but didn’t tell me what she was suspecting. When they did the CT scan there (after ruling out a UTI) and it showed an abscess, I was in denial; I didn’t have any tenderness to the touch or pain in that lower area where the highly infected abscess was. But it was already so bad that when the cultures came back the next night (I was admitted to the hospital that first night and spent five nights there) that it had spread to my blood stream (sepsis), I kept thinking they had it all wrong. Yea, I felt sick all over (which is what sepsis does), but I didn’t have any pain in the lower quadrant (well, I did when the sepsis news came in because they had inserted a drain by that point, which was not exactly comfortable).
So there can be lots of things going on with someone that don’t match up with symptoms they are or aren’t reporting.
I am a grateful member of HysterSisters although I don’t post there any longer. I think it was someone on CC who warned me that there are a disproportionate amount of posts with complications… because really, people who have an easy surgery and recover without any complications, most likely aren’t going to stick with the site that long - they move on with their lives (well, as long as the potential surgical menopause isn’t too bad). I probably stopped posting around 6 weeks post-surgery, then posted a few times when I had my complication. Of course, after having sepsis, I was knocked off my feet for quite a while, and I’d be bored just sitting on the couch, so I participated more on the site. Once I was more active again (2-3 months), I stopped posting, and I think have not posted since. So take what you read there with a grain of salt and don’t let it overwhelm you. You’re getting a skewed group of women there.
After the ultrasound, when she talks to the doctor again (or when she talks to a second-opinion doctor) she should make this point loud and clear and ask for details on what the postoperative restrictions will be. The logistics could be formidable if, for example, she can’t drive for a period of time. She might need to hire a home health aide just so she can send that person to the grocery store (which is what my mom did after hip surgery).
Agree wholeheartedly with teriwtt’s comment above re Hystersisters (I may have been the person who warned her). There is good info and support there, but also a lot of hyperbole and personal ranting/vendettas. I put off my surgery partly because of the stuff there, and very much regret that.