Swollen tummy where the bruising/wound sites are

I had a full nephrectomy last June (approx. 20cm wound) and I started driving 3 weeks after the op. I checked and learnt that so long as you could safely make an emergency stop you were deemed okay to drive.

It was sore driving but quite doable for me, although I remember still getting tired after doing anything, i would have to have a lie down after going out for a coffee, after 6 weeks a noticed an improvement still a bit sore still getting tired but less so.

after 6 months I could do anything as I did before but still got tired after a busy day. Now I am feeling fabulous better than before the op. It is a massive operation don't be too hard on yourself and you will get there.

I agree with DCI. Take it easy and don't expect too much too soon. Personally it took me even longer (but I am 74) to get to each stage of recovery. I had a nephroureterectomy back in December. I hardly walked at all for the first week. I drove after about 6 weeks. I began walking a little more .. about a mile ... after about 8 weeks. My scars are well healed but my abdominal area is still a bit swollen and sore. Sometimes I get quite severe stabbing and shooting pains... the nerves slowly coming back to life they say! The 3 month CT scan was all clear but I am still extremely weary and have to pace myself daily. My GP said I should remember that this operation is a very major one.. and that expecting to recover and get back to normal within weeks as I did with my hip replacement is completely unrealistic! She used the word trauma about what the body has been through. The cancer nurse team at the hospital said it would be "at least 6 weeks before you begin to feel human again". It was about right. The pain for the first 3 weeks was quite intense. I stopped taking oxycodone after 3 weeks and paracetamol after about 6. So.. we all have different experiences but the priority is to let your body heal and most definitely NOT to overdo it!! Good luck with the healing.

PS.. re shopping etc.. I had deliveries from Cook of frozen meals, and groceries like milk, bread, eggs, veg etc from the local co-op until I was driving again. If you go on Just Eat you can find various grocery delivery options in your area. It is amazing how many options there are.

PPS (sorry!) You should be seeing your surgeon and the cancer nurse after about 4 weeks so make a list of questions and concerns. It is a chance to get more clarity. After that it is just phone calls to the nurse team and waiting for them to call back. They are sweet but busy and it isn't like seeing someone face to face.

Hi Maite just read your post I had my nephrectomy a day later than you ie a week today. I too have noticed that if I overdo the walking I get vey tired and my tummy seem to have bloated. My bruising is multicoloured;but assumed this was all to be expected . I would however not attempt to drive at this stage to ensure that the insides heal well as you don’t know if you would need an emergency stop. How long have you been told to keep your dressings on? Do the feel stretched over your tummy? Wishing you a speedy recovery

Hi Justme. I don't know what "overdoing it" means as I am not used to being inactive or having surgeries, so find this a tad frustrating. I was out and about with no bruising, bloating etc by less than three weeks after my only other surgery, total hysterectomy, and I was walking much more long before 2 weeks. I feel I can walk but am a bit afraid to do too much although I'm not sure what "too much" is!, as I have a big driving holiday coming up 1st July - drive from Devon to Folkestone with two stops en route and then three hours down through Normandy; then, the same back two weeks later. After my hystero, I had about 16 weeks before doing this trip; this time, I have just 13 in total. So need to make sure I heal enough as I don't want to compromise my holiday. By "bloating" I assume you mean, swelling? as in what I have. The bruising is subsiding a bit now but the swelling is still there in the areas where the bruising is. I don't understand this thing about being able to do an emergency stop because I feel I could do that now, with no pain or discomfort. My fear is that I might damage something inside that I cannot see, and it appears I won't get a follow-up appointment until 6 weeks after surgery. So I cannot see what my insides look like until they scan me. I guess I just have to be patient. Going shopping as a passenger is going to be worse than driving myself, as the seatbelt will go right over my bruised side when I am a passenger. So I am just trying to be very patient and eat up my two weeks left of freezer and fridge food, and maybe by then my urology team might just have told me it's safe to drive after 4 weeks after all, and if not, I'll figure out a Plan B which will have to involve sending my neighbour out with my shopping list!

I don't have any dressings on. He put in dissolvable stitches and then the glue stuff over the top. So I can see the line of red dried blood along my main incision and the blobs of dried blood in the other three or four holes, and that's a bit off-putting but I daren't cover the areas in case I pull off the glue prematurely when I change the dressings. I also read that skin heals quicker if covered for a bit as the damp helps it to heal, so am a bit concerned that this is taking longer to heal than my hystero holes which were covered with dressings. However, my surgeon is an excellent one, and I trust him to have done exactly what he feels is right for me and for the surgery he has performed, so am not complaining about the glue/lack of dressings - in that instance, I have no doubt he knows best. 

They said the glue stuff peels off on its own in a week or two. 

I just feel this is taking longer in some ways than my hystero healing, which is the only other surgery I have to compare it with, but then I remind myself that it is in a totally different part of my body which may explain the differences.

Wishing you an equally speedy recovery! I keep thinking how fortunate we are to be having such lovely weather so that presumably, like me, you too can sit out in the sunshine (hope your area is getting it too!) and enjoy not having to go to work for weeks but just bask in dry (for now) weather and lovely Spring flowers and sunshine. A neighbour of mine had a radical open and was in hospital the day before Christmas Eve and for 4 days!! so, things could be a whole lot worse for me and I appreciate this and am grateful for it.

Thanks, DC1. I started driving about 3 weeks after my only other surgery ever, my hysterectomy. But this time I am bruised and that's the only real discomfort I am getting now. As I posted in my reply below to Justme, I am worried about my insides maybe not healing enough to drive to France and back in early July, so I would rather be frustrated now and do too little if I can manage to, than risk not healing completely by the time I want to be driving hundreds of miles, swimming, walking etc. in July.

I am not feeling tired. I don't think I would know "tired" if it hit me in the face. I recall only one time in about the last forty years or more that I actually woke up refreshed and felt refreshed the whole day long. I think I live my life on adrenalin as I am always on the go, always permanently tired but always still keep going. This time, for the first two or three days at home I felt I did need an hour's nap late morning or early afternoon unusually, but that was partly because I hadn't slept very well those nights due to the gas pain in my shoulder which was eased but not eliminated by hugging a pillow. Once that pain went, about three days ago, and I started sleeping more like my normal sleep, I haven't felt the need to lie down in the daytime, though I "drop" in the evening, lose the tail end of the 9pm TV programmes, manage the News and then feel the need to be off to bed by 10-45/11, which is at least an hour earlier than normal.

I don't feel the fact that it was a "massive operation" because I wasn't awake in it of course, and all I can see and feel is a few holes and a slightly longer incision. I just feel like my body is becoming full of holes, as I had a total of 3 1/2 of them two years ago for my hysterectomy!

If you had a radical?, I think it seems that that is a slightly simpler procedure than a partial. With the partial, they have to sew up the sides of a very flabby organ, ie the kidney. With a radical (don't get me wrong, I'm glad I didn't have to have the radical even so!) it sounds a bit more like the hysterectomy, where they cut tubes and connections but don't actually have to rebuild the flabby kidney structure as it's no longer there at all. Not belittling your surgery in the least - yours was somewhat even more massive a surgery than mine, due to the incision size and the amount removed. Mine was minimal matter removed but very intricate to seal up the remainder.

I feel better to have had this done. It's been hanging over me for two years since they discovered it when scanning my womb. They couldn't do it for some while after that surgery of course, and then Life kept getting in the way - holidays, then skeleton staff at work, then house problems - roof repair, water leaks from almost every internal orifice, and boiler problems. Then dog care was needed. I was under "active surveillance" having scans approx every 6 months and in all that time it hadn't changed in size or appearance in the slightest as per the scans. But I fine-tuned the timing when all the house repairs were done and I had found suitable dog care and the weather was better so the pipes wouldn't freeze, and we had finally a Manager at work thus an extra pair of hands, and then enough time (13 weeks) before my drive to France, to allow for adequate healing - and then asked him to put me back on the list for surgery and I bit the bullet. It could probably have waited another year or two or longer, but they couldn't do a biopsy (too risky in case it caused spread of a cell or two) and I have been extremely lucky that it hasn't changed a jot in two years, but it could have grown exponentially at any time in between scans and then I would have lost more of my kidney at best. 

There is a 10% chance it isn't sinister, but I will only find that out with the histiology report. With my recent run of luck (endometrial cancer stage one grade one, caught early despite bleeding for several months) and with cancer in my family, it's well likely that I am in the 85/90% that is sinister. I am very glad I no longer have this "when shall I time the surgery for?" hanging over me and can now get on with my life. Not bothered really about the results. If it's bigger or higher grade/stage than the scans have been showing, I will deal with that when I get the news. It's just such a relief now that I've got it out of the way!  

Hi Tilly,

I am 64 but consider myself fit despite creeping arthritis, and am very healthy as I eat a very fresh plain natural diet. (Probably only about 30% UPFS compared with apparently around 60% in the general population) and my surgeon actually said after the surgery, that it looked as if I cope very well with surgery! (Only ever had two - but he saw me a couple hours after and I was already bright eyed and bushy tailed and wanting food and to get off the bed!!) 

That is reassuring that even though your incisions are now healed, you are still getting soreness and swelling. I am very sorry that you are, but thank you for telling me this as it helps me realise that what I am having now, just 9 days after surgery, is very very usual for this kind of surgery.

I am hoping I do get back to reasonable normality in weeks rather than months. I am counting on swimming, walking, lots of driving when we go to Normandy at the start of July. My partner won't drive further than his nearest Tesco and certainly won't drive abroad, so the driving is all up to me, but as with last time I have paced myself and we have two overnight stops each way, with about two hours of driving in between each not counting dog stops or traffic delays, and then 3 hours down to our gite in Normandy but again I can pace myself and make lunch and dog walk stops. 

I came off the paracetamol about two days after coming out - I was in two nights - but have gone back on 4 x daily since this swelling started to increase after my walking on Sunday. Not because I have pain, but in order to try to reduce the bruising (that's working) and the swelling (not working yet) because paracetamol can help with inflammation. I also take turmeric and black pepper tablets - once a day. That was a tip given me by a friend who like me prefers to treat herself with natural things and avoid medications wherever possible, so when she broke her leg badly a couple years ago, instead of accepting the recommended strong pain relief, she carried on with just paracetamol but added in the turmeric and black pepper, and it eliminated her pain amazingly. 

I have just looked up your procedure and it is indeed a major surgery!!

Mine was just a 2.7cm lesion in apparently an easy place to reach on my kidney, so hopefully it will heal fairly straightforwardly, and that might explain why I am having far less pain than you had. I also have a high pain threshhold so pain, unless extremely acute or of a certain type (such as, indigestion pain post-surgery got me last time in a big way about two weeks later), is something I tolerate easily. I cannot say I have had actual pain at all - I have had soreness, the occasional unexpected twinge that made me say Ouch but not again since day two so far, and a bit of soreness on my incisions as well as my bruising - just, a bit sore to touch. My shoulder gas caused me gip for about three or four days but it wasn't pain, but kind of an aching soreness which disturbed my sleeping comfortably as I couldn't find a good position to lie in. 

I am glad you are heading in the right direction now and actually it sounds like you are doing extremely well too, as I can see your procedure was way more major than mine has been. Keep feeling better and better!

Hi again Tilly,

I am five miles from the nearest town and I have never ever had groceries delivered except via French Click (my little treat to myself so that I can get French butter, grated Emmental, coffee yogurts and mousses, and other tinned and dairy goodies that I miss once I've exhausted all my stocks brought back from our previous French trip) - two years ago after my hysterectomy I was living on Kershaws with added vegetables for the first two weeks but I haven't eaten ready meals for several years now, and I have even gone off Kershaws in the meantime as I now try to not eat anything that needs heating up in plastic. I eat a lot of chicken - plain, boiled in a wok with lots of veg. I eat plain fish, and just sometimes a small piece of steak. I have half a freezer of frozen veg and fruit still, and the next things I'll be needing by Monday are Greek yogurt, eggs (I eat two a day) - milk gets delivered in glass bottles by a local farm dairy, bread I eat very little of so always have plenty left in the freezer, and bananas I eat one most days so will need those. I have about enough of everything else for another two weeks approx, so am trying to stop myself from driving until I really do run out of freezer veg, fruit and chicken. I will probably do a French Click order once a week anyway for now, as it will give me my other perishable essentials such as block cheese and fromage frais, and top up my stocks of cans of lentils and cartons of soup. I don't know anything about JustEat but I am always careful to buy sustainably if I possibly can (milk in glass, ham and cheese and chicken and turkey from the Polish deli where they sell loose and wrap in waxed paper not plastic, except I cannot get there yet until I am driving again) so my veg is generally frozen and I top up with fresh only from the monthly farmers' market or the farm shop up the road, neither of which I can get to without a car but atm it's not urgent. 

Hi again Tilly!

Nobody has told me when my appointment will be. Everything I have read seems to be saying 6 weeks. Except the private hospitals and hospitals in the USA where it seems to be two weeks each.

I can email my kidney nurse but she only works about 3 or 4 days a week, plus I know she has two youngish children so I am not expecting a reply to emails until after the holiday, as she may even have taken time off work for the kids and if not, she is busy anyway with only working part-time. She is very good when she does reply, but I know I have to wait a while for her to get back to me.

They don't even know yet if it actually is cancer or not! So there's a very slim chance (10%) that it may not be and that this has been for nothing - except, that it isn't "for nothing" as without the surgery and subsequent histiology, there is no safe way they could have tested it except by removing the lesion first.