Ive had 3 laps. Ill tell you about my first and if you want i can tell you the others too :) i just didnt want to leave a novel here for you.

I was 16yrs old

They started with an incision in my bellybutton, then another 2 inches below my bellybutton. They removed adhesions from both ovaries, side wall, intestines and another on my right fallopian tube. They also burned away endo in and out of my uterus, on both ovaries, abdominal wall, and colon (phew! i was ate up with it)

I woke up in ALOT of pain, they gave me meds and sent me home. My first night was awful, second night was pretty bad, but after about 3days bedrest, pain pills, and a heating pad, i was able to walk around my 4th morning. (idk if this means anything but my first day home, i passed out evry time i stood, my little sis had to go to the bathroom with me for a couple days otherwise id hit the floor)

I was out of school for a week, i cant lie, i was still pretty sore my first week back, had to pace myself and push a little harder each day. I wasnt 100% back to normal (no incision aches) for 3-4weeks.

warning, tmi, but to be honest, i didnt have a bowel movement for a week and once i finally went it was painful and there was alot of blood. The blood stopped about a day or two after my first movement, but they were still very painful for awhile (now, they still hurt, but its only horrible during my period)

I was put on birth control after, but barely 3weeks after all my symptoms were back (now, after my second, i didnt get ANY relief from my pain) and i have all the types of pain you described.

If you want to hear the others feel free to ask :) because my last 2 were...how do i put it...awful to say the least.

I had my lap almost a year ago. I was diagnosed with stage 2 endo. I had it removed using the davinci robot from my tubes, uterosacral ligaments, bladder, bowel, etc. I believe there were 7 spots altogether, along with adhesions. I was out of work for 8 days.

I recovered like you would expect from any lap. I was genuinely feeling better a week later and not in a lot of pain after the first few days. About 3 weeks after my surgery, however, I would have shooting pain. I had painful episodes of either shooting pain or bad cramping almost on a daily basis for about 2-3 months following my surgery. My dr told me it was the endo growing back, but I think it was my body healing from the surgery. I think the surgery aggravated my body or something. I still have pain, which I do think is endo, but it is not nearly as bad as it was in the immediate months after the surgery.

Here's MY story ... so sorry long!

My battle with Endometriosis (Endo) started in early 1997 after a strange visit with a new ob/gyn for my annual pelvic exam. The doctor had trouble inserting the speculum for some reason and a few days after that I started feeling funny. Soon after I started have pelvic pain attacks which I never had prior. I had my daughter in Oct 1994. No problems with the pregnancy other than she was born 6 & weeks premature. She was healthy and everything was developed properly.

Before all of this started I was a mother to a four-year-old, a girlfriend, a full-time college student and worked part-time. A few months later, I dropped out of school because it was too hard to concentrate in pain.

By May 1999, I had had enough and demanded surgery to see what was going on after months of trying different birth control pills and pain medications to control the pain. On June 16, 1999 they did a Laparoscopy (Lap) and found adhesions. They cut those away and sent me home with 800mg Motrin and no real answers.

I was fine after that until I got pregnant in August 1999. I terminated that pregnancy and soon afterwards started having pain again. I decided that I really wanted to obtain my Bachelors Degree and since I was in risk of losing my part-time job I figured I would quit my job and enroll in college full-time and take out the maximum amount of student loans each semester to help support my family.

In December 1999, I had my second Lap and found Endometriosis. At last I had an answer. I started school in January 2000. I had pains all the time. Sometimes bad and sometimes not so bad and I was always tired. Around this time I got a tattoo on my left arm of a Japanese symbol that means Eternal Strength. It reminds me to be strong no matter what Endo sends my way.

In 2002, I applied for Social Security/Disability because I was unable to work because of the Endo and the amount of pain meds I needed daily. It was an almost three year process but I won all by myself in 2005, after two lawyers said I didnt have a case. That same year I tried Lupron, a medication that puts your body into early menopause. For a long time I had refused to try Lupron because I had heard it had horrible side effects but I was at my wits end with the pain so I decided to give it a try. I did the double dose, once a month for three months. The only side effects I had were minor night sweats for the first week and some short-term memory loss I still have today. After graduating and after have had four Laps at that point, I was still having lots of pain and miserable. I knew I couldnt work a normal full-time job so I worked from home doing about two or three different jobs.


In August 2007, I started working in my chosen career field and am still at the same job today five years later.

Since working full-time Ive had two more Laps and a few more rounds of Pelvic Floor Therapy. My last Lap was November 5, 2010 and it was done using a robot and it has been the longest pain free time Ive had going on 24 months.

Over the past14 years Ive had six surgeries, three rounds of Pelvic Floor Therapy, tried Acupuncture twice, did two rounds of Lupron and tried numerous birth control pills and pain medicines to control my pain.

Ive been blessed to find great doctors who believed me and allowed me to be an active participant in my course of treatment and never had a problem giving me the pain meds I asked for.

While the road has been VERY rough, I guess it happened for a reason. I will always have Endometriosis but it was Never control my life.

Thank you for your stories. Doctors will have us believe our pains are in our heads or uncommon.

I just knew I wasn't alone in this one. Surgery introduces new issues if you asked me...they just refuse to fess up to it.

you're welcome endowife. Yes surgery can open new issues but for me since i have a history of adhesions and endo i am comforted in knowing that after each of my 6 laps that old adhesions were burned away and any that grew after that were new.

True, true. You have a good team. I was frustrated/scared that the adhesions came back so quickly and were more extensive than before.

My surgeon claims that chances are high that my OB gyn saw the adhesions and did nothing because they mostly are not trained to deal with the problems found.

I know that first hand as she (the OB gyn) told me she did not feel skilled enough to remove my cyst in April without damaging my ovary. Still, I saw the pictures after the first surgery and I may not be a trained eye, but I didn't see adhesions?!? Hmmmm....were they new or newly formed? Good question.

Three weeks out isn't very far. Your body is still healing. I have had three laps and very little done each time. I was off work for one week the first time and ten days for the second and third ( I had those done around thanksgiving do I had some extra time off then). It took me at least 6 weeks before I started to feel normal. Most of my pain was gone after two weeks...still had soreness when I moved to quickly ( bent over, picked up a kid,etc). I got tired easily for hose 6 weeks ( it gradually got less as time went on.) I've read and heard that it can actually take your insides 6-9 months to be completely healed.

@ Endowife, I thank GOD everyday for all of the doctors that have treated me during my journey with endo. All of my doctors have been gyns but i made sure they also treated endo so that they were able to treat me themselves in and out of the operating room. It saddens me that alot of you all have not be able to find that. I can be a bit of a bitch ... lol so I always would tell them in pre-op to not see something during surgery and not remove it and wake me up and tell me i have to come back for another surgery because they couldn't do anything. Before each surgery i had ultrasounds and MRIs to make sure other things were fine so there wouldn't be any reall surprises during surgery. Every surgery i've had adhesions that stuck an ovary to a side wall or something crazy like that. My issues are alittle endo, adhesions and ovarian and chocolate cysts. My uterus was getting larger over the years but not large enough to alarm them and their were no visual signs of adenomyosis. I could've sworn that my uterus needed to come out but pelvic floor therapy stopped that particular pain.

For my first lap the surgeon made two incisions (one in my belly button, one below the bikini line). He separated my right ovary from the back of uterus, but left my other ovary adhered to the bowel. He didn't remove any endo implants because he said it was beyond his skill (this guy was pimped out as my area's top endo specialist).

After my surgery he didn't give me any pain meds so I was in agony, and he didn't return any of my phone calls. My primary doctor took me and said he ripped some muscles along my bellybutton, which was why I was in so much pain.

I returned to school after a week, but I couldn't do any dancing or heavy lifting. My primary doc did my post-op visit since the surgeon wouldn't even talk to me.

It took me about 6 months to recover completely from my surgery, but that was only because my surgeon botched everything he did. i initially only had the lap because my GYN and my primary told me an ovarian cyst could be cancer and I needed to have it biopsied right away. I should've waited, but I was rushed into it with a cancer-scare.

The surgeon ruptured the suspected cyst in my abdomen, spilling it all over, and then he didn't even run a pathology on it. So at the time I had no idea if he spilled cancer cells all over my abdomen or not. That guy was a misogynistic arsehole.

So lingering pain I guess depends on the skill of the surgeon, or what happened to you. I remember I showed two specialists my surgical DVD and they were so appalled by it they asked if they could use pieces of it in their lectures (basically the "What NOT to do in surgery") and they told me no one would do surgery on me for at least six months (they guessed my recovery time pretty well).

So six months recovery for me. I'm completely fine now. I get kind of jealous when I hear someone recovered in like 2 weeks. My aunt had her gallbladder out and she was zipping around pain free within a couple of weeks. She had an awesome surgeon.

Hope you feel better, endowife!

I have always heard that the more thorough a surgeon is the harder a lap recovery is, so maybe your surgeon was particularly thorough! And of course everyone recovers differently, I hear some women go back to work less than a week later and I just don't see how...I couldn't. Even if it was a low key job so I was not in a lot of pain I would be a total zombie because of exhaustion. I imagine if it means feeding your kids or not though you make it work.

Anyway I have only had the one lap and he did not do much as it was mostly exploratory. He drained my cyst, freed up my appendix cause it was adhered to my sidewall, and biopsied and cauterized my uterosacral ligaments where the endo was the worst. He left endo on my bowel, bladder, and ureter cause he was not trained to do excision and you cannot cauterize there really. I think the left side of my uterus is still adhered to my peritoneum too. So it's tough to tell what lingering pains I have/had are still from endo instead of the surgery itself. I will say I could have gone back to light work after 2 weeks (I am unemployed so it wasn't an issue....) but nothing heavy! By 3 weeks I could have gone back to normal work but still had some stiffness and soreness as well as an occasional shooting pain in the incision that was over my left ovary. The shooting pains were really bad for the first week, still annoying the second week but drastically dropped off and eventually stopped after that.

I had surgery in mid-August and I still have pain now but I am pretty sure it's just endo pain from all the stuff that was left. It isn't severe, but frustrating and frequent.

About the adhesions - My gi dr who I see for non-endo issues was more helpful than my gyn when explaining adhesions. He says that they almost always grow back as part of the healing process...not necessarily becasuse of endo. He says drs remove them so they can look around and get all the endo out, but it is normal for them to grow back.

I've had two laps. The first one was the worst for pain after the lap. They cut open both my ovaries, removed endo from each of my organs, and removed adhesions from my ovaries and my bowel. I was in pain for two months after my lap. I had pains like you described. My RE said that the pain is normal and the more they touch while they are in there the longer you are in pain. He said everything has to heal. It took me 3 weeks to go back to school, but I was still in pain. I hope the pain gets better soon!

Hey endowife!

I always thought my recovery after my lap was prolonged too.. but I guess I'm not alone!

During my lap, they removed adhesions from my bladder, ovaries, and intestines. I was told that I would return to school within 3 days of my surgery.. but was mistaken. I tried to go back to school in this time frame.. but found that I was too exhausted/in too much pain to manage. I actually went on bed rest for almost 2 months.. sleeping close to 20 hours each day. Getting up to pee was like running several miles.

I found that the pain took almost 2 months to resolve itself as well. One of my incision site continued to hurt for 6 months.. we never figured out why.

After my lap, I lost 40 pounds (which probably needed to go) in the span of 6 months because I was always nauseous! And I was on a high dose of stool softener for a month before the bowel pains went away.

Sadly, after the 2 months recovering, i was only given about 6 months with minimal symptoms before my endo decided to become present with a vengeance. I hope you have better luck!

My lap was fairly easy. I only had one. I had swelling and bloating afterwards. Felt quite sore and didn't lift anything. Was fatigued for quite a while afterwards. Otherwise, pretty easy.

I'm sorry others have found them so awful!