How many keyholes do they make in your stomach? I had 3 - one in my belly button, one just on my pubic hair line and one half way in between.

Who has had problems with the gas afterwards (eg shoulder pain etc)? I had shoulder pain from the gas, it was more of an awkward discomfort rather than being painful, lying down helped alot.

How long did you have off work? I had 2 weeks off.

When did you start feeling normal again? Physically about a month, emotionally a lot longer.

Do the keyholes have stitches? It depends on your surgeon...my incisions were glued.

Does your stomach get bruised? No bruising here (my surgeon was fab!)

How long does the procedure take? It depends on what they find. It is normally day surgery. They ended up finding severe endo in me so the surgery took a good couple of hours and I think I was in recovery for about an hour or so before I woke up. I stayed in hospital overnight.

The laparoscopy is essentially the keyhole surgery. They make one hole (usually in the belly button) for the camera and other holes for the tools used to look around and remove endo, scar tissue etc. The hysteroscopy is when they insert the camera, etc vaginally and go in that way to look inside your uterus.

They flush your tubes out with a special dye which shows them if your tubes are blocked and how badly.

For pain relief, I had pethadine and had some other painkillers to take home with me. It really knocks your stomach muscles about and it will be painful to sit up, get out of bed, move around a bit for at least a week. So don't hesitate to take as much time as you need to recover. Take it slow and easy for a couple of weeks at least.

Good luck with it, I am sure you'll be fine!