by Rena Sherwood

Created on: April 28, 2008   Last Updated: April 29, 2008

A hysterectomy sounds scarier than it really is, but you should still take steps to prepare yourself for this routine surgical procedure. Your recovery time, as well as your stay in the hospital, will be more comfortable when you follow certain steps. Since you will probably feel very nervous before surgery, making a check list and following it in the time leading up to your hysterectomy can keep your mind focused on something positive rather than dwelling in worry and fear.

Checklist For Packing

Your surgeons will be incredibly skilled, but you still want to give them all the help you can get. The surgeons can't do it all for you. Getting physically ready for surgery will help lessen your hysterectomy recovery time. Be sure to ask and ask again about what they want you to do or bring to the hospital. Each hospital might have its own requirements.

Generally, in the days right before your hysterectomy, you will be asked to:

Stop smoking
Remove any nail polish
Stop taking any medications your surgeon recommends you stop taking (such as blood thinners)
Start getting in the habit of eating smaller, regular meals
Line up someone to drive you to the hospital and back. You will not be able to drive for weeks after your hysterectomy.

The night before, you should get these things ready:

A list of any medications you are allowed to continue to take
A few nightgowns that are loose at the waist
Eyeglasses or hearing aids
A book or other amusement
Hard candy
A large, clear label on your luggage or day bag
Take off all jewelry
Don't eat the night before
Take purgatory medicine to clean out your bowels if prescribed
If not, douche or have an enema
Shave your pubic hair

Picturing yourself going through your hysterectomy can help lessen your anxiety about the surgery. It becomes less mysterious and you feel a bit more in control with your knowledge of what is happening to your body.

Information On Laproscopic Hysterectomy

This is a huge advance from the usual abdominal hysterectomy. The recovery time is much quicker, the three incisions smaller and your hospital stay is shorter. With the help of small instruments including a tiny camera, the ovaries, tubes and uterus can be safely removed. With this procedure, there is much less of a chance of a prolapse of the pelvis than with the usual abdominal hysterectomy.

Hysterectomy Fibroids

Fibroids might not be cancerous, but these growths in your uterus can cause terrible pain, anemia, bladder problems and bleeding. Hysterectomy for fibroids is the only way to permentately get rid of them. Your ovaries might not be removed only your uterus.

Cancer Cervical Hysterectomy

Cervical cancer is the third leading cause of death in women from cancer. Cervical caner tends to develop when you are between 35 55 years old. This is why you should get a PAP smear (also called cervical smear) regularly. Hysterectomies to remove cervical cancer work best when the cancer is in the early stages. Check with your surgeon for exact recovery procedures, which will take at least six weeks.

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