Nicole 'Snooki' Polizzi Opens Up About Her Humbling Hysterectomy Recovery

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.