Recovery Timetable
- Women remain in the hospital for up to a week after surgery
- Movement is encouraged as soon as possible to aid recovery and help restore bowel function
- Patients recover at home for at least another week
- By the third week many women are feeling better
- Complete recovery can take up to eight weeks
As difficult as it may be for women to think about having surgery for ovarian cancer, what can be even harder to imagine is what life will be like afterwards. Especially if you've never had surgery before, you may be nervous about what to expect after the operation is over. How much pain will you be in? When can you get up and walk? When will you start to feel better? When will your recovery be complete?
You may be surprised to see that recovery from ovarian cancer surgery can happen much more quickly than you think.
Read More First of all, you can't always get exact answers to these questions before surgery, because doctors don't really know how extensive your surgery will be until you're actually on the table and they can see what's happening inside. "We don't always know exactly what we're going to find when we open the abdomen," says
Dr. Kimberly Levinson, Director of Johns Hopkins Gynecologic Oncology at Greater Baltimore Medical Center. "We have to evaluate when we get in and be prepared for anything." Generally, during the pre-counseling you have with your doctor before the operation you'll talk about what kinds of things the surgery might discover, and how you would like them handled. Of course, not every possibility can be accounted for. "We counsel our patients that there may be something that we find that we didn't talk about specifically." For instance, says Dr. Levinson, the surgeon may not realize in advance how much bowel has to be removed if tumor is found there. So a lot of thought and consideration goes into the pre-surgery counseling, since surgeons want their patients to be as prepared as possible. "I would say that's kind of the biggest thing that's different about ovarian cancer surgery," says Dr. Levinson. As a general rule, patients are in the hospital for about a week after the surgery. "During that time we try to get patients up and moving very quickly," says Dr. Levinson. "We know that getting patients out of bed, getting them moving, helps them recover more quickly. And depending on how extensive the surgery was, that may be as early as the day after surgery."
Doctors need to be sure that a patient is breathing well and has tubes and wires disconnected appropriately before they will give the go-ahead for a post-surgery patient to get out of bed. "And we need to make sure that their pain is well-controlled to get them up," says Dr. Levinson. "The goal is early mobilization with early walking and moving. We know that helps bowel function. We know that helps patients recover more quickly."
The second week after surgery many patients can continue recuperating at home. "You're still really recovering from surgery and reorienting to being back home, and doing what you can at home," says Dr. Levinson.
The rest of the timeline, according to Dr. Levinson:
- By weeks three and four most patients are beginning to feel better.
- By the fifth and sixth weeks there may still be some fatigue. At this point doctors are thinking about how well the patients are rebounding so they can begin or resume chemotherapy.
- After six to eight weeks recovery is usually complete.
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Dr. Kimberly Levinson is the Director of Johns Hopkins Gynecologic Oncology at Greater Baltimore Medical Center. Read More
