Bartholian Cysts (Old Journal Entries)

~*~ January 20th, 2008
REAL facts about Bartholin Cysts
I got my first bartholin cyst when I was 12 (!!!). I was definately not sexually active. I have had them recurring ever since, at first it was only one cyst every year or so - sometimes more. I am now 25. I have been with one man, my husband, and he with one woman, me. I definately do NOT have STDs. I do NOT wear tight pants. I DO have GREAT hygeine.

When I was 20 and had recently give birth to my first child, another cyst showed up. By then I was averaging about 2-4 every month. Usually they didn't go away for months at a time. The pain is unbearable, it was worse than pre-labor pains for me.

I went to the family medical center. We are army, so we were seen immediately as soon as I put in the appointment. By then my one cyst had been around for about 4 months continiously growing to the size of my daughter's head! No lie, it was about the size of a small ball. It was HUGE!!!

The MALE doctor didn't know what it was. He snickered at the pain I said I was having. I told him to look carefully because the thing is pretty huge and I need something done about it. Then I told him to imagine his nuts to swell that big, that stopped almost all the snickering.

He went to go look up what it was, when he came back it was to tell me what it was. He suggested we put a word catheter in it. (I now regret this) He told me to keep it in place for 14 weeks (another mistake, after much research it's only supposed to be 4 weeks max).

He drained my cyst/tumor. The smell was awful. My mother was there crying, holding my hand telling me it was disgusting. Know how he drained it? He jsut shoved a needle into it and it popped. Excruciating pain. He was trying to numb me up. It didn't work. So there I am screaming my head off, my mother crying, and this jerk has the nerve to say "gee look painful".

Weeks pass, the catheter falls out at 13 weeks. I go through a good 3-4 more cysts and draining before I make a resolve to get this completely fixed. I go back in to the doctor, I see a female doctor this time. She tells me she's had it before. She refers me to a specialist. We find out I'm pregnant. I go through an entire pregnancy with another huge cyst. It stays there for over 13 months. Never draining, never stopping the pain. I'm popping pain pills like nuts. I recently moved. Just had my 2nd daughter. FINALLY I can do something about this again.

As of about 3 weeks ago, I saw another specialist. She told me the statistics.
- Women dealing with this under 30: 2% of all women in the world
- Women dealing with recurring cysts: .001% of those previously mentioned 2% women.

I am a rare breed, apparently. She goes on to tell me that it has been rumored that it is actually GENETIC, or so she thinks. My mother has had ovarion cysts, my grandmom has had bartholin cysts. This makes complete sense to me. She tells me she wants to do a marsupialization on it.

I am currently scheduled to have mine done tomorrow. As for the up and walking around in 2 days, that's a lie. There is a high risk for nerve damage (50%), and a high risk of recurrance (45%) with just the marsupialization when it's done on women like me. With the excision (removing the gland) the recurrance will drop to 15%, they will be doing this if the gland becomes a problem during the surgery.

Since some of these posts are old, I thought I'd throw that information out there. I've tried everything I could find on the internet to get rid of these cysts. Herbal rememdies, pain killers, antibiotics, none of it worked. Those sitz baths btw, they prescribe that for everything...and seriously, never worked for me not even post-childbirth.

Here are some facts some of you may want to know about Marsupialization that my doctor told me.

- You have a risk of hemoraghing (spelling?)
- You may need a blood transfusion
- You need to pick out your anethetic, and there are over 100s to pick from (how you will be doped up)
- You will have a therapist assigned to you afterwards
- It is a walk-in, walk-out same day proceedure lasting total 3 hours
- You DO have a chance of recurrance, but this helps lessen it
- They MAY need to do some minor surgery on important parts on you, like your uretha/uterus/etc, IF the cyst has grown so big and up that far
- They MAY need to remove dead tissue (they do with me)
- You will be on required bedrest for at least a month, some women take up to 3 months to just be able to sit down
- It MAY cause nerve damage, resulting in ghost pains
- It MAY affect your future sex life, not being able to get wet etc
- It WILL help you stop getting pain when you get turned on (happens to me), will stop the fevers (happens to me), will stop problems getting wet (happens to me)
- They MAY need to repair your bartholin cyst tube (leading to the cyst) or remove it all together
- As for the clown that stated that they were nauseous because they didn't eat before the surgery, I'm going to call junkies on that. You are told not to eat after MIDNIGHT the night before, and the surgery is usually scheduled at 6am-9am. Not that long without a snack, eh ladies?
- Do not take any pain pills within 10 days of your surgery because it will dillute your blood.

Because I am such a rare breed, I have dead tissue outside of my labia. They will be removing a part of my vagina as well. Apparently the recurring cysts caused dead tissue, and that tissue needs to be removed.

Overall, I believe the nuts that talk about herbal remedies...are nuts. There are SOME things that can be fixed with herbs. This is NOT one of them, at least for me.

There is no common cause for this. Don't let anyone tell you that you are dirty/disease filled. I have told every single one of those doctors off when they asked me that question. You will have worries about looking like a freak, you will be VERY depressed because this is a lifelong thing that will never go away, and you will DEFINATELY at some point consider this surgery. In a few days I'll let you know how I'm feeling then.

I'm one of those chicks that would rather limit the chance of recurrance than know for a fact I was going to have this for such a long time. Like I said, everyone is different, but these are ALL the facts that I was presented with myself. I wanted to personally put a stop to all of the fake rumors going around about this surgery and the cysts in general (which are also referred to as benign tumors).

By the way, my word catheter was inserted completely wrong by that MALE doctor. I have since been told it will take ANOTHER surger to repair the damaged tissue.


Thought I'd also add that it's also called a TUMOR because if they drain it and do NOT remove ALL of the cyst, it WILL grow back.

They CAN use lazers on it, but prefer not to because obviously lazers are not that reliable in this day and age. Especially for such a SMALL, SENSITIVE, easy to mess up proceedure.

The dead tissue occurs when your cysts POPS (like other women have said they purposely done to themselves, bad idea). The icky fluid inside will leak into other various parts of your body and fester..make it worse and destroying your tissue in the process.

That's all I was told, as of this morning at my appointment with my anethesiologist.

~*~ January 21, 2008

I've had the marsupialization done. Like I promised, I'm going to update for you. The pain is nothing compared to SVD, severe vaginal delivery, of my two kids. This is completely managable pain. I'm sitting down, walking some-what, and even attempted to play with my eldest today.

Basically surgery went like this, went in did my vitals. They amazingly lost my lab work (gah!). I had to give more blood. After that it was a bunch of waiting in about 3 different waiting rooms. I showed up at 5:40am. Because I am allergic to latex I had to be first one to have surgery that day. At about 7:30am they were inserting my IV and giving me pain medication.

I don't remember a thing. I was asleep the entire time from 7:30am till noon. I went home at noon, my husband drove. Don't bring your kids to wait around like we did, it's a major hassle for you.

They have me on vicodin, perceset, and motrin. The vicodin has been make me have hot flashes and puke like once an hour. It helps a lot with the pain though, so I'm dealing with it.

It doesn't hurt to pee as much as it did before, and I'm actually sitting down in my computer chair with a pillow under me while I write this.

Compared to stitches after childbirth, this is nothing. Just tired of the puking. lol

~*~ January 26th, 2008

I'm back to basically normal. I've slowly adjusted to the vicodin. Bad reactions all over the place. Now, I'm used to taking it. I don't bother taking it if I'm not much pain, and don't take it at night. It does make me blurry and sluggish, so I can't drive. I don't take the perceset (spelling?), or the motrin. Just the vicodin when I need it.

I am chasing my girls, and barely having to rest. This is a LOT better than giving birth. ;P I feel like I was worried for nothing now. The stitches itch but that's about it. Oh, and I need to be really slow/careful when I move around. Learned yesterday that when I tripped on a toy, it hurts like hell.

They told me no sex for another 3 weeks, but I feel ready for it in about A week. They said no lifting anything more than 2lbs for a month, yet I was lifting my 6month old the day OF with no problems. I'm now at the stage to start picking up my 3 yr old with barely a problem.

So far healing is great. There has been some discharge, and the bleeding stopped within 2 days. I noticed I'm not having any more pain when I get turned on, no problems peeing even after the surgery (TY GOD!), and no problems getting wet - it's like I'm a constant fountain!

Only complaint...wish they would have told me it was going to be this easy and other women didn't act like it was the end of the world to get this surgery. This is by far the easiest thing I've done in my life.

Childbirth is about 100% harder than this. ;P Anyone that compains about this surgery really needs to try giving birth to two kids, pre-labor pains hold much more pain than this. And post-labor stitches. Wow. Don't even go there with me. This is completely EASY to handle.

Pain has gone down from pre-cyst 11, to about a 1 with the medication. Without medication it's about a 3-4. Not really bad at all.

I expect to be back to normal next week. No complications, no problems. If I do get another cyst, I'll consider just removing the other gland. It's the same thing I'm going through now. No biggie. Don't know why others had so many problems. I can honestly say this is the first time in a long time that I feel normal. It's great.

~*~ February 1st, 2008

It's been about two weeks. I ran out of vicodin within a week and a half. (30 pills, just in case I was a pill pusher or something..dunno?) The motrin was completely worthless, and didn't bother taking any of the other pills they gave me. I'm living off of advil.

Pain is small. About a 1-2 daily without even advil. I did have a hiccup after surgery. I started bleeding randomly, a lot. Almost went to the emergency room. Waited it out a few days, and it's stopped again.

Stitches are really starting to itch. Have started having sex again. Hurt the first few times (started 2 days ago), otherwise it's just a little tender.

Back to normal activities. Moving a little slow, but not much. Picking up things, bending over, peeing , sex. Everything is about normal.

The hole where they cut for me to drain inside is getting smaller. It's about the size of a pencil eraser now (the very small ones). Have been having discharge, bloody, brown and gross. Nothing major. It'll stop in another week I'm told.

I'm like a fountain, can't stop getting wet down there. Kind of odd. Otherwise no complaints. It was a great, and very sucessful surgery. Stitches are water-solluble so they should come out on their own in time. Sitz baths are awesome to just relax in but otherwise don't really help much, and kind of hurt to put myself in the water.

Vicodin reactions were the worst. Puking every hour, I lost a good 20lbs (I look like skeletor now), and couldn't keep anything down. I ate a piece of pizza yesterday and kept it down, was proud of myself. Besides the vicodin and my hubby having to take off a few weeks of work, this wasn't that bad.


~~~~~~

Obviously, this was several years ago, and I was having false hope. I have now come back down to earth and realized the reality of the situation. The marsupialization did shit.