Jersey Shore: Family Vacation star Nicole “Snooki” Polizzi is getting candid about her ongoing hysterectomy recovery.
“Day 3 post-op,” Snooki, 38, wrote via her Instagram Stories on Sunday, August 2, sharing a selfie from her hospital bed. “This recovery is really humbling me.”
The MTV personality revealed hours earlier via Instagram that she had a hysterectomy, where doctors moved her uterus, cervix and “some parts of [her] vagina” as treatment for cervical cancer. (Snooki was diagnosed with stage I cervical cancer in April.)
“It’s starting to get dark. [I think] my surgery ended at 9:30 or 10:00. I’m going to be honest with you: not great,” Snooki said in her Friday, August 1, video update. “I told you guys, in general, I’m not good with pain, and I’ve really been trying to be tough, but it’s not great.”
Snooki, a mom of three, tearfully admitted that her recovery journey has “been a lot.”
“The good thing is, obviously I’ve had three kids, so when you have kids, your abs disconnect,” Snooki quipped, referring to diastasis recti, a condition impacting an estimated 60 percent of pregnant individuals in which their abdominal muscles separate in order to accommodate a growing fetus. “[My doctor] ended up putting them back together, which is nice, because they were totally separated from my three kids.”
While finding the silver lining from her painful surgery, Snooki still admitted to feeling overwhelmed by the level of her pain.
“Just dealing with all the pain, it’s not great,” she noted in her upload. “I’m doing my best and I’m trying to stay optimistic. I hope I sleep tonight. I have a heating pad, so that’s helping. We got my fan, I have a ton of ginger ale and, yeah, we’ll see what happens tomorrow. The first couple days is hell, and then it’s going to get better, so I’m trying to stay in good spirits.”
The fashion entrepreneur further acknowledged that she was “being very vulnerable” in publicly documenting her recovery process.
“I feel like in this journey, I’ve been very vulnerable in general,” she said. “I just want to keep it going because it’s a scary thing and a lot of us women deal with it, and no one really talks about it. I’m here to give that platform for all us ladies. … I’m here to show you what’s up. It’s scary and it’s OK to be scared, but now it’s over.”
