Mama, Chaos, Cuss words & Coffee

Okay, but listen. When I tell this story – know going into this story that this is not a horror story, or like traumatic story. In true Sammie fashion…ridiculous shit happens. It’s a bit of a read, but buckle up only shit like this would happen to me.

First up : Why I had a hysterectomy at 36. I’ll TRY to keep this brief, for those of you who don’t care – scroll down a little more for the story time of chaos. You will not hurt my feelings if you skip this.

Ladies, if you’ve struggled with some of these things, know you’re not alone and if you have questions, feel free to reach out to me. Also, if you read below…stay with me, there’s chaos mixed in this whole story.

I’ve struggled with PCOS my entire life, and I’m talking wild ass periods. Heavy AF bleeding, irregular cycles, weight gain, not so much the infertility but more centered around ridiculous cycles. Now, when I say ridiculous cycles, know I’m cashing an 18 count of SUPER tampons in 1.5-2 days. HEAVY A F. Basically world war 3 in my pants when my cycle would come. Hello embarrassing. You’re welcome fellas for that visual…now go buy your lady some chocolates and tell her she’s pretty when she has to deal with this shit.

Now, when I was 19 I found out I’m allergic to the extra estrogen in birth control and caused me to have blood clots. (we found this out because I made a passing comment to my OB about having blood clots after a knee surgery while I was on BC, did some blood work, BOOM – Blood disorder). And I’m not talking the kind of blood clots coming out of my china, I’m talking about the kind in my veins and shit. The scary AF blood clots kind. So after having kids, trying to regulate my cycle has been a DOOZY. So I can only have certain types of BC, but we tried medication first (metformin) and it wouldn’t regulate it.

So fast forward to trying an IUD. Now, said IUD was in for 8 months, and I started to get cramps…mind you, prior to IUD i didn’t really have cramps. These cramps were so bad, I felt like I was having contractions. They were in my back, and DEEP in my back, and I start bleeding. You guys I don’t mean lightly. I’m like W T F IS HAPPENING kind of bleeding. I schedule an appointment, and don’t you fucking know 8 months, post placement my IUD was ACTIVELY falling out. They brought in the ultrasound to make sure the placement was right, I lay back on the table and my doctor said “oh, no I don’t need this…. it’s right here” and proceeds to grab said IUD from my china. (also, yes I call it my china, don’t care what you have to say, I’ve said it since I was a kid. KICK ROCKS) He said “do you know what the chances of that happening is, the IUD falling out?” I laughed and said “slim?”….

5%-10% CHANCE YOU GUYS.

I know, I know….I’m a superstar. Hold your applause.

So, since I was outside the 6 month we’ll call it “warranty” stage…-_- it didn’t make sense to try again. The chances of that falling out were so small, and I obviously crushed that task, I wasn’t about to do it again. So what’s next?

An Ultrasound. An ultrasound to see if I had fibroids, if I did, we’d talk an ablation…if I didn’t we’d talk hysterectomy. I bet you can guess what I didn’t have….yep. Fibroids. He believes I had something called Adenomyosis…basically that my uterus and my muscle wall were merging. It’s fine. I shivered too. So, we scheduled my Hysterectomy.

Now, when I scheduled my Hysterectomy, I picked a date, and later realized that we had planned on taking the kids to WWE the night before…should I have changed my surgery date, eh, nah, it’s fine. WWE was a blast, I had 2.5 hours of sleep going into surgery day and here comes the chaos…

Surgery day: 5:30 am arrival time, everything goes according to plan…I’m in pre-op, I get to keep my piercings in, I’m happy as a clam in pre-op. Annnndddd thennnnn it comes time for my IV. Now, I’m a pretty easy stick, I have some good veins, we can see them in my hands. Miami Valley is a training hospital, meaning, they brought in someone who needed the experience of putting in IV’s. Fine, great, grand. (mind you, my knee surgery last year, same thing happened with a student and she blew my vein before someone took over). So gal comes in, goes to my left hand, blows my vein. Moves to the right hand, BEFORE SHE STICKS ME, I say “JUST SO YOU KNOW, this vein rolls…”. I bet you can guess what happened….

YEP. she missed, and went to the side of my vein, now LUCKILY my gal who was watching over her said “let me in before we blow this one too”. Home girl got it and I’m back in action ready for surgery. They come in and prep my belly with Iodine, anesthesia comes in and we have our conversations, Dr. Morales comes in, we chat. I’m ready to go. Another student from anesthesia comes in and they’re about to wheel me back, he gives me my happy meds to make me feel drunk, I kiss Sean bye, and I’m on my way.

I remember rolling into the operating room…seeing (i think) my doctor put his widdle booties on, and I say hi to everyone, and next thing I remember someone is telling me to take a deep breath in post op. I fucking love anesthesia. It doesn’t give you time to be nervous. It’s great.

This is where shit gets wild.

I woke up in my room and I’m in and out of sleep. At one point I wake up and I’m sweating and I remember touching my hair and it feeling weird. Thinking nothing of it because I’m sweating, I ask Sean to pull it up for me. Sean tells me I have Iodine in my hair, and there’s a bunch. *Insert confusion here* I asked my nurse at one point why there’s iodine in my hair…he has no idea why, he thought it was meant to be like that. Peep them pictures below.

Now, when I started looking at this mess, I noticed I had like a drip directly down the center of my head, a drip on the left side of my face and there were like these hard lines. It was almost like where my hair covering sat, it was a line of just iodine…

The next morning when my doctor came in, we talked about surgery and all of that jazz. Apparently one of my ovaries and one of my fallopian tubes started merging with my abdominal wall and he has no idea how that didn’t bother me, but he detached that and removed the rest so hopefully my little homie of an ovary stays off my abdominal wall. Finally I said…”Do you know why there’s iodine in my hair?” The look on this man’s face told me he had ZERO idea, and he didn’t believe me. So I turned on my light and his face was even more confused. He had NO IDEA how I got it in my hair. He asked me if I puked in recovery…I said “how would I know I was K.O.” I really sent him for a loop on this…either way, clueless, and all is well so I was discharged and set to go home.

Here starts the mystery of my iodine dye hair…

I tried baking soda & dawn dish soap, I tried hydrogen peroxide and I tried clarifying shampoo..

Each time I tried something…the brighter it got. I’m talking BRIGHT ASS YELLOW.

As my mother pointed out…it looked like dog bile. Yeppp…dog bile.

it just gets progressively brighter…

Now, mama Nancy works in an OBGYN as their in house phlebotomist, and this even baffled the doctors in her office.

This has been a TWO WEEK conundrum. BUT low and behold, one of the doctor’s tells her husband about this said debacle of iodine in Sammie’s hair…said husband – who is an urogynecologist – figures out what this mess is in my hair….

(Real quick…Shout out to both Dr. Strauchons. Being the MacGyver’s of this malarkey – if you need a new OB go see Dr. Strauchon at Kettering Health Medical Group in Huber (she’s a delight) & If you need a urogynecologist – Dr. Strauchon in Kettering )

Let’s rewind a bit, before surgery they give me a little pill called Pyridium, it’s to help with UTI’s and change my urine a different color to make sure I’m not retaining water post-op. APPARENTLY, when you have a hysterectomy, once they intubate you, they also stick a tube down your throat and remove the liquid/fluid out of your stomach to prevent it going to your bladder so they don’t knick your bladder during surgery. If they knick the bladder it is no bueno. Now, I was originally told this said tube basically lays on my face/head and when it’s pulled out, they obviously pull it out straight over my head… NOW…as this tube was pulled out…my stomach liquid leaked out of the tube and onto my head and stained my hair….

I wish I was kidding. My stomach liquid…with this medicine…stained my hair…

S T O M A C H L I Q U I D. (Nancy wasn’t far off on the bile comment.)

If this isn’t some Sammie shit I don’t know what is.

Don’t worry…it gets better…

Since this has been a two week extravaganza – the interwebs wanted updates on my hair debacle. The amount of people offering suggestions of how to get it out…laughing with me, the whole nine…I had to update them with this new development of figuring out what this schmutz is in my hair.

I proceed to the Instagram and post a story…except instead of saying Pyridium, I said a different word…the wrong word if you will. Shoutout to my doctor Trisha for texting me telling me I used the wrong word, because I was so focused on the story, I didn’t catch that I used the wrong word. Now, that’s no big deal right? Sure, accidents happen…except…do you know what word I said on accident instead of Pyridium?!

I FUCKING SAID PERINEUM. DO YOU KNOW WHAT PERINEUM IS!?

IT’S YOUR FUCKING TAINT. I TOLD PEOPLE ON MY INSTAGRAM STORY I HAD TAINT LIQUID ON MY FUCKING HEAD. *insert all the face palms*

Jesus Christ in a top hat. WHHHYYY. Why. Why.

I can’t make this shit up. Not only did I get stomach fluid on my hair and it STAINED my hair, I used the wrong word when I finally figured it out and told people I had taint fluid on my head. Jesus take the wheel….

Now, when I told my OB last week my WHOLE conundrum…of figuring out what my hair stain was…I also told him about telling you all that it was taint liquid…he was laughing so hard he had tears in his eyes…now I love my OB…he’s the real champ around these parts. He was laughing so hard and thought it was so great he pulled one of the other doctors in his practice for me to tell her the story. As I proceed to tell her this story, she’s laughing, and my doctor has the nerve to GAG when I tell her that part that I had stomach fluid in my hair. SIR THAT’S WHAT MAKES YOU GAG?! YOU PULLED MY CHILDREN OUT OF MY STOMACH, TOOK MY UTERUS AND TIED MY TUBES…AND THAT’S WHAT MAKES YOU GAG?! Get outta here bud. ha. To say we were all in tears from laughing might be an understatement.

For those of you wondering, no there’s nothing I can do to remove it…the clarifying shampoo seems to be working and slowly fading it out. It’s still REALLLL yellow in some spots…and we’re 5 weeks post-op. Do you have any idea how hard it is to hide BRIGHT YELLOW in my gray hair…you can’t…you absolutely cannot…

So incase you ever need a laugh…or you’re embarrassed about something…just know…I told people on the interwebs I had taint fluid on my head when in fact it was my stomach liquid…from my actual stomach…in my hair…

Until next shit show…

Sammie.