Radical Vaginal Trachelectomy - my experience of surgery

Following my 10 day update, I'm at the 8-week post-surgery mark so wanted to share how the recovery experience has been for me. Headline = almost fully recovered!

• Week 1 - As alluded to in my first post, the first week was harder than I expected but I suspect much of that was down to the UTI infection. 
• Week 2 - Movement was still limited and I needed to keep up with the pain relief, particularly at night. Wasn't able to sit for prolonged periods without pain so probably spent 75% of my time in bed. Tummy etc. still swollen. Got the great news that there was NED in the extracted tissues which was a huge relief :)
• Week 3 - Stopped taking pain relief and started going for gentle (very slow!) walks up and down my street. Returned to work at ~50% capacity (I have a desk job so can WFH) - was more tired than usual and it wasn't easy to spend all my time sitting in a chair so I did work from bed for a couple of days! I picked up my 8 month old nephew (who weighs about 8kg) a few times a day, probably shouldn't have done but couldn't resist the cuddles :) 
• Week 4 - This is when I started to feel more back to normal with swelling etc. reducing and walking improving. By the end of the week I managed a 2 hour walk in the park with a doctor friend who didn't seem to notice anything was going on, which I took as a good sign that I was well on the road to recovery!
• Week 5 - Back to work 100%, no real issues sitting and energy levels getting close to usual. 
• Week 6 - 3 out of my 4 incision scars were all nicely healed at this point with the surrounding tissue also back to normal. However one scar has been more challenging and has puckered. As I increased movement (e.g. a 3 hour walk on the weekend) the pain around the scar was quite intense. Otherwise, feeling good. 
• Week 7 - Had my examination at the start of the week, was told I am healing well and hopefully the puckered scar and area around it should improve with a bit more time. My surgeon recommended Kelo-cote to help improve the appearance of the scars, and said it would be okay to start more intense exercise e.g. jogging.
• Week 8 - Am now pretty much back to normal! I do have the occassional spikes of pain in the abdominal area, particularly around the puckered scar, but nothing that interrupts normal activitiesl. The main area of change is fitness. My benchmark for fitness has always been that I can run 10km in about an hour (I'm not a runner but I do this a couple of times a year to check my cardio fitness!). However at the moment I don't even feel like I could run 2km, even walking (albeit long distances) can start to get tiring. I've gained a few kilos as a result of reduced activity levels since my diagnosis so I am definitely keen to get more active again, but appreciate I have to build up my fitness slowly and stay focused on health over appearance so it may be a while before I'm back to my 10km-benchmark! 

Hope this helps, appreciate we will all have different experiences and for many of us taking this route for fertility preservation this is only one of several hurdles. I've seen a few good posts here re: post trachelectomy preganancy that are giving me hope :)

Best wishes to anyone going through the surgery / recovery x

I forgot to mention periods - think I'm having them, but the level and length of flow has changed (lighter for longer). I've only had 2 since the op, the first being only a fornight after, so I need to monitor for a few more months. The surgeon said it's not unusual for periods to be different post-surgery, the positive is that there is flow.