The last day finally arrived. Again, Dr. Schrang was later than usual, but not as late as Monday. It was about 10 am when he finally came in. I made sure that he took care of my roommate first. She had been waiting for a whole week, and it was her turn. I was ok with waiting. All he had to do for me was remove the vaginal packing. One thing I have to say about Dr. Schrang is that he has the bedside manner of a car salesman. He doesn't beat around the bush. He just goes at it. He also likes to sell you on it while he's doing it. When he pulled out the catheter and such, he was saying "You're going to have a great result...great result" the whole time. Tuesday wasn't much different.

He basically just grabbed the external end of the gauze packing and started pulling. Talk about your strange feelings...again, my eyes went wide, particularly when the gauze caught on a stitch. I felt like a clown car. I could see the gauze as he was pulling it, and it just kept coming. After it was finally all out, it was time for my first dilation. He showed me how to do it, which again, was a strange feeling. He started with a smaller one and moved up to a larger one. I then had to sit there for a half hour applying constant pressure inwards and downwards. Apparently I'll lose what I have if I don't do that.

I remember when the dilators came in the mail. I looked at them and saw the big one. I just remember thinking "I'm never going to be using that one, it's just too big." Turns out Dr. Schrang wants me to move up to that one. That surprised me. Once I was dilating, he left. My parents arrived at the beginning of all that and walked in while I was covered with a sheet during my dilating. That was a bit uncomfortable. Then, about five minutes later, my best friend Seth and his girlfriend Hannah arrived. They walked in, realized what I was doing, got uncomfortable and decided to wait outside with my parents. I was grateful.

Finally after the half hour, I was done. I cleaned up, put my clothes on, and got to go home. On the way, Seth and Hannah went with my parents and I to Perkins for some decent food. The waitresses saw I was from the hospital and gave me a free cookie. After that, we all headed home. It was so nice to be in a familiar place again. I spent most of my day dilating, since I had to do it 6 times a day at least. We also went to the store to get maxi pads and some prescriptions. By then I was exhausted again. Just being up and about was very tiring. We ordered pizza for dinner that night, and I went to bed early. It was very hard to sleep in my bed, because the home instructions dictated that I had to sleep elevated on several pillows and on my back. It was not comfortable and I woke up a lot. There was also a lot of bleeding. So, it was just difficult. Eventually that changed though...That's it for the hospital. Now we move on to the recovery.

Luv,

Jess