Krystal's SILS Hysterectomy Story

Krystal Sherwood, 42, SILS hysterectomy patient, Piedmont Medical Center 

Now, I am looking to the second half of my life and looking forward to feeling really good. I am a totally different person now. 

Krystal Sherwood, 42, was born with polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCS) and knew she might never get pregnant.  But that didn’t stop her and her husband from trying, and after five years of fertility treatments, they were overjoyed when she became pregnant – only to be heartbroken three months later when she miscarried.  

But they tried again, and later that year she became pregnant with twins. 

“Sadly, I came to find out that not only could I not get pregnant, I couldn’t stay that way, and I had my twins at 25 weeks,” she says. Her son, just 1 pound 12 ounces, only lived for nine days, but her daughter, even tinier, survived and was released from the hospital 95 days after she was born.  

Ecstatic to have her daughter, Krystal was still having issues related to her PCS years later, serious enough that her doctor recommended she have a hysterectomy. At 41, she had been hoping to hold off on the procedure a few more years, but the pain she was in was just too severe.  

She was scheduled to have a hysterectomy in July 2012, but by the end of that May she was back in her doctor’s office, crying and in tremendous pain. Her doctor was one of the few in the practice who offered the single-incision option and moved the date of the operation up.   

“I really wanted to be at least 45, because I did have the mindset it was going to make me an old lady, and I wasn’t done having children,” she says. “But the choice was made for me. My body made that choice, so I ended up having a single-incision hysterectomy.” 

A quick recovery 

Krystal had the procedure at Piedmont Medical Center, and her recovery was quick. In fact, she was on her feet the same day, and home the next, which is key for a mom with a busy 8-year-old. 

“I liked the idea of having a single incision because I felt the recovery was going to be faster, and I do feel like my recovery was a little easier and a little faster,” she says. 

“I feel so much better,” Krystal says. “I have lost 52 pounds in a year-and-a-half with very little trying. My body doesn’t have that poison in it anymore. So physically I feel fantastic. Now I am looking to the second half of my life and looking forward to feeling really good,” she says. “I am a totally different person now.”