What's a hysterectomy?

On Monday last week I had a hysterectomy! Since finding out my surgery date a few weeks ago I've done a fair bit of googling and asking questions on a hysterectomy forum to find out everything I need to know. I'm going to write up a few posts collating what I learned in case it's helpful to anyone else.

First of all, having discovered there's a whole load of different kinds of hysterectomies and for different reasons, I thought I'd better specify what I've had done and why...

Types of hysterectomy
I have had a Total Abdominal Hysterectomy (TAH) with Bilateral Salpingo Oopherectomy (BSO).
Total hysterectomy means the whole womb/uterus including the cervix. Abdominal means I had open surgery with everything removed through a cut in my abdomen. (Mine is a horizontal cut along the bikini line. Some women have vertical cuts.) Salpingo refers to removal of fallopian tubes. Oopherectomy refers to removal of ovaries. Bilateral means these were both removed on both sides.

So in short that is TAH BSO and means I have had uterus, cervix, both fallopian tubes and both ovaries out through a cut along my bikini line.

There are many other types of hysterectomy- some women have the womb out but the cervix left in (sub-total hysterectomy) , some have both of those out but the ovaries and tubes left in, some have the womb and one ovary and tube out and the left rest in etc etc. 

Also, some women have whatever bits are being removed through a cut in their abdomen like me, some have them removed vaginally, some have them removed laproscopically, ie through keyhole surgery, and some have a combination eg laproscopic and vaginal. Sometimes women won't be completely sure what kind of surgery they'll end up having until after it's done (eg the plan might be to try keyhole but if it ends up tricky for any reason then the surgeon may change to abdominal).

Reasons for hysterectomy
One of the reasons there are so many kinds of surgery is because there are so many reasons for having it done in the first place. We are all different and need the kind of surgery that is most suitable for our own situation. Common reasons include endometriosis, adenomyosis, cancer or suspected cancer, PCOS, prolapse, fibroids and many, many, many more. (It honestly appears to me that the list of crap women have to put up with is actually never ending).

My surgery was prophylactic which means preventive. I am at a high risk of ovarian cancer due to my personal history of breast cancer, having a faulty PALB2 gene, and having a family history of cancer which includes ovarian. So I needed my ovaries and tubes out (many ovarian cancers are actually thought to start in the fallopian tubes) to reduce/eliminate my risk of ovarian cancer. But in addition to this, the tablets I take to reduce the risk of my breast cancer returning (Tamoxifen) increase my risk of womb cancer. So it made sense for the uterus and cervix to go too.

I have never had any other health complications in this area so in that sense my surgery was quite straightforward.