Hysterectomy

[hystersister]

Hello everyone, this is my first time here, am finding the information helpful. My situation is: I had a TAH in November of 2006 and I'm still not feeling back to my old self. When I went in for my 1 yr post op ck up in Nov. of 2007, my dr. told me I'm "still recovering" but am finding this hard to believe. (no one ever mentioned it would take a year or longer to recover from this, not to mention the ugly "side affects")
I have always been athletic all of my life, always been in shape, loved working out. (I should mention here that I was 47 at the time of surgery, am now 48. Pre surgery, I never weighed over 125) And now here it is over a year later and I still have lower GI "issues" (constipation) occasional lower ab pain (due to scar tissue from surgery, so I'm told) I have what appears to be a permanent inner tube (that is my gut) which, pre surgery, was a flat belly. I've gained about 20 lbs in what seems like overnight. My Dr. reassures me that all of this is normal after a hysterectomy I'm finding this new belly of mine to be quite uninspiring when it comes to wanting to work out, or being ABLE to work out as I still at times have pain, not to mention, the belly itself literally gets in the way of trying to do crunches/ab work. Has anyone else had a prolonged/painful recovery after a TAH? I'm hoping that someone else out there has experienced something similar and would be willing to share their story. I do have an appt scheduled with an internal medicine doc within the next few weeks but I am already afraid that I may get the old "party line" (ie. you're getting old(er) this is normal after a hysterectomy) I feel like I've gone from zero to fifty overnight, and not in a good way. Can anyone give me some good news? (Oh, if I can insert a little humor here: at my one year post op, my Dr's prescription for me was for "Miralax" (kind of like a laxative) he literally said: "all's you need is a good poop every day and you'll be fine.......... well......... I'm NOT fine......... even with a good poop every day) ; )

~Hystersister