I really hate hospitals. Who doesn't? Every time I go to one I see something I wish I hadn't seen. After I see it I can't just unsee it so there it is burning an impression in my mind until it finally fades away and I move onto something else to obsess over.
I was there for an MRI. Gosh those machines are huge and loud. I had dye injected in one arm and an organ relaxer in the other. I'm so glad I didn't know that MRI's can come with shots or else it would have been one more thing for me to worry about. I didn't find out until just before I changed into my lovely hospital gown. I survived and then I headed to the lab to do my blood work and went back to work only to feel like crap about 30 minutes later and have to leave early. I guess it was all just a little too much for me. When I got home I laid between the cool sheets burrowed under the covers and thought to myself that this time in two days I'm probably going to feel about 10x worse then this. Maybe 50x worse even. I napped and was thankful to feel like my old self again in a few hours.
Do yourself a favor and don't google your surgery before you have it. I mean, it's a good idea to be well informed and the internet is nothing if not informative but the two weeks that I spent obsessively dredging the internet for every possible horror story known to man was pretty exhausting. I mean, chances are you can't
not do it but just know that it's probably going to freak you out more then anything. It's really, really hard not to think of all the things that could go wrong but at some point you must take a chill pill and let it go.
If you are reading this right now it means I'm on my way to the hospital and it's
taken a lot of soul searching, anxiety and second guessing to get here. It's a hard decision to make when there are no solid answers. About anything. I haven't mentioned it to anyone I know outside of family. Telling it makes it real. Your last day at works makes it even more real. I'm sort of in denial that it's happening because technically, even up until the moment I arrived at the hospital I could change my mind and bolt. I never saw myself doing that but you can't tell someone that you are having surgery one day and then show up for happy hour the next. You don't tell someone something like that unless you know for certain that you are which I did; except I like to keep my options open until the very last minute. I have a very difficult time making decisions about even the smallest most insignificant things let alone the slicing of my skin. If you are reading this right now it means I waited until the very last moment to hit publish just in case I changed my mind even though I knew that I wouldn't.
I wasn't sure if I'd mention it here, but it felt really weird not to. Not that I tell you everything because I don't but this is a big deal and this is my blog and it really just felt like I should. I don't know if or when I will feel comfortable talking about what kind of surgery I'm having but I know that today is not that day. This is my first "real" surgery anesthesia and all so I don't know how I'm going to feel or what to expect. If I'm not active in blog land you'll know why.
Oh, and that thing I saw at the hospital that I wish I could unsee was a deceased person. Not exactly the kind of thing you want to see on the eve of your first surgery or EVER for that matter. Lying on a stretcher snugly wrapped in a blue blanket from head to toe was the unmistakable form of a person who had taken their last breath. The worst thing about it is that the guy was lost. He rolled that stretcher up and down the hallway right past me twice trying to figure out where he was going. The MRI's are done on the basement level and I think that's also where the morgue is.
I can't unsee it but I'm desperately trying to push that image out of my mind. It's routine surgery. The people who love me tell me that I will be okay and as terrified as I am I believe them. I am young. I'm healthy. I'm strong. I plan on taking lots of drugs. I'll be okay.
Please send good thoughts my way. I'll check in when I can.
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