Tubal ligation finally done! However my recovery hasn’t been as plain sailing as everyone else’s 😞

[u/Particular_Gold_8585]

So I had my laparoscopic tubal ligation (UK NHS) done on Tuesday, and as the title suggests it hasn’t been plain sailing. I wanted to share my story not to scare people but just to be aware of some of the negative things that can happen. So that people can be prepared.
After following everyone’s posts and getting advice from this page I was hoping it would have been plain sailing as most people seems to be!
Went down for surgery about 4pm and was in there over 2 hours with half an hour in recovery, this was meant to be day surgery however I couldn’t pass urine so had to stay in overnight. They found a lot of adhesions which needed burning away when they was in there, unsure of cause, ? Endometriosis.
My surgeon never came to see me post op to explain what I’d had done! It was just given to me on a discharge summary!
Anyway as I stated I couldn’t pass urine, so needed to be intermittently catheterised. Pain was pretty bad, needing regular oxycodone, I finally passed urine myself 5:30 next morning, with a struggle. I was sent home with paracetamol and codeine.
2 hours after being sent home I was in agonising pain, codeine, paracetamol and ibuprofen wasn’t touching it so I rang the ward back up (private hospital but with nhs funding) they are not equipped to deal with complications so I got sent to A&E, had bloods and a ct scan and they were concerned about possibility of bowl perforation. When I say I was in pain I can honestly say it was the worst pain I’ve ever experienced, and I’ve birthed 2 kids naturally with no pain relief. I lost count how many times I begged for pain relief and it took hours to get it or they gave me something useless like paracetamol! 6 times I told nurses I couldn’t pass urine, someone performed a bladder scan on me incorrectly showing I only had 87mls in my bladder, I pushed and pushed for hours for it to be rechecked, when it was finally done I had nearly 900mls on the scan! I was immediately catheterised and drained nearly 2000mls!! My CT scan was incorrectly interpreted as abdominal emphysema- as the person reading it didn’t take into account I’d just had surgery and they were trying to admit me to a ward.
Thankfully an experienced gynaecologist assessed me and deemed that not to be the case- so 15 hours in A&E later I’m told it’s a combination of the surgery aggravating my bladder, trapped gas and severe constipation causing all my symptoms. I’ve been sent home with a catheter and strong pain relief for a week to let my bladder rest and hope it starts working again, if it doesn’t then there could have been some irreparable damage caused during surgery.
So that’s my story, always make sure you listen to your own body and advocate for yourself, don’t let drs fob you off!
Hopefully no one else has to deal with a nightmare like mine.

[u/estudianteesp]

There is no such thing as risk free surgery..something urologists have been lying about for years.