Pre-Op Post

Stage One of engaging with the elephant in the room is now complete! Pre-Op meeting with Anaesthetic team and bloods done today. I am finally going ahead with the surgery I have been procrastinating about for the last 14 years. D-Day is Thursday, 2 sleeps away. Ready to roll, lock it in,  booked it, packed it, fecking off.

Was a tad nervous when the anaesthetist said he was still waiting for my patient files to arrive this morning, all 4 volumes of them. BP rose a little when the main guy to send me off to sleep was on a day off today so wouldn't get to meet him til the big day. But have to say after an hour of head locking and water torture we're pretty happy with the plan. I particularly liked the "patient controlled Morphine pump" that will deliver my very own cocktail at the touch of a button without having to leave a tip. God I love a gadget me. 

It will be standing room only on Thursday as there'll be 3 anaesthetistanaesthetist (that is such a hard word to spell!) - gonna shorten it to the Airheads, easier to spell. So 3 Airheads, one called Hans Christeien Anderson, 2 plastic surgeons (one who reminds me of Gryff Ryhs Jones, so he'll be Dr Jones from now on), an Orthopod and a Vascular surgeon. Should be selling tickets on eBAY at this rate.

Why all the fuss? It's not like yer Kim Kardashian (can't believe Kardashian auto-populated just then! FFS!). Well, until this week I really thought I was something special. Always being told by Docs that they hadn't seen a case like it. But thanks to FB and the power of my hairdresser I've discovered that there are at least 300 other long term survivors of Hodgkin's Disease who have similar symptoms from radiation fibrosis as me (did you Wiki-it yet??). Anyhow what's going to happen is they'll take....hang on this is the gorey bit so if you're not interested scroll down to the next paragraph...they'll take 3 of my abs and connect or graft it to my neck. Simple eh. Well the complication is that the neck has been irradiated back in the 1970's to try to cure the cancer (Hodgkin's) when I was 2. But that didn't quite do it so they operated to remove pretty much everything on the RH side of the neck. Which did cure me of cancer. Thank God! But the radiation still lingers, forever, in the tissue. Apparently, the radiation sort of boils up the skin and then it reforms with a different structure. It goes rock hard and woody over time and then breaks down exposing the blood vessels - perilously in my case as the carotid is very near the surface. For me, the radiation fibrosis has caused a couple of holes to appear which were manageable for over 10 years with dressings but open to infection, which happened a couple of times. 

So, just before Christmas, the decision was made to make a date for the extreme makeover ASAP just in case I snag the skin while shaving and cut the carotid. End of. Cuts the options down a bit eh. Me and J were obviously shell shocked and decided to keep it on the down low until after NY. Couldn't face going through the story with everyone, near and far. Geminis love to be centre of attention but this one definitely needed a shell to crawl into so my lovely husband provided that haven with his hard, protective Cancerian shell. Stoppit!

And so ends the first hurdle in the race.