Ovarian Drilling- Maybe too little information…

When having PCOS (Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome), Ovarian Drilling can be seen as a last ditch attempt treatment. It was with me. Once other fertility treatments and diet changes have failed to make PCOS better Ovarian Drilling maybe an option.

Ovarian Drilling is a surgical procedure where you have a general anaesthetic and a small incision is made via your belly button. A tube is placed in which then inflates the abdomen (more about this later in my tips!!!) The surgeon then looks around your abdomen and uses a large hot needle to burn holes into the ovaries. This in turn destroys the testosterone producing lining of your ovary.  On average the holes will be made 3mm long and 3mm deep in the areas where ‘cysts’ are present- as this area is shown to be the area producing high amounts of testosterone. There are normally between 4 and 20 holes made into each ovary.

The success rate of this surgery to cure fertility problems is between 53% and 92%. Unfortunately it didn’t work for me. Now for my tips from someone who has gone through ovarian drilling.

TOP TIPS FOR DRILLING;

• The doctors say you can continue as normal after 24 hours- Don’t always take this as gospel. Five days was my recovery time and it hurt like hell.
• Ensure someone is around at home. Moving can be painful if stiches are tight
• MINT- Get mint oil and mints to suck- throwing that much air into you gives you painful wind mainly between the shoulder blades but mint oil in drinks and sucking mints helps a lot.
• Don’t put everything on it working- it didn’t work for me and I wasn’t told about the success rates beforehand
• It Is surgery! don’t take it lightly. I don’t react well to anaesthetic, take the time to get over it.
• Consider side effects- Since Ovarian drilling takes away the testosterone- that’s what assists with your sex drive and it can dip drastically after drilling. So considerations need to be made.

I didn’t know about any of the above tips before delving into drilling so it was a little bit of a shock when all of the above occurred. It’s one of those things- do you research and learn from my mistakes. If this can help one person understand drilling a bit more without watching hellish drilling videos on YouTube. Good Luck in your journey x