Thanks, Shimmy! I'll be honest: I'm really stressed about the pain and the nausea. I've had vicodin and codeine before, and I don't think either does much to relieve pain for me--they just make me sleep. (Which is a blessed release from pain, certainly, but at least during the hospital stay, they wake you up all the time. Awake-time is pain-time. And my team wants me up and moving around every hour during the day when I'm home, too, which I plan to do my best to do, even though I know I'll be groggy.) Plus, people have these horror stories of hospital staff who won't administer their pain meds, and I'm not usually a good self-advocate.
Being the kind of person I am, I have written down all of my passwords and put them in a sealed envelope with a letter for my spouse, just in case, because surgery always comes with risks. Doing that was painful--the letter, I mean, not the passwords--but I feel better knowing it's done, and if the worst happens, he'll be able to access our bank accounts and everything else. (I'm the organized one.)
It's rational to be a little worried about the risks and about the pain and nausea and other potential negative side effects, I think. But it's also hard, with almost a month to go, when I know that the worry isn't helping anyone. It's just releasing unneeded cortisol into my system, and I can feel my arthritis acting up as a result. I need to chill.
So I appreciate reminders that the risks are low (I do keep telling myself the stats and that my surgeon has never lost a patient and only had three leaks in the thousands of surgeries he's done), that the awfulness is temporary, and the new life on the other side of those days-to-weeks of misery is a good one, for the vast majority of people. ❤️
