My spine surgery journey: from preparation to recovery

[bellbird]

You go girl! :hug: Please let us know when you are going in.

I would be nervous too but you sound so dam good... I'm thinking of you! :)

Naww, b. Thank you!
I definitely will :hug: :hug:

 

[bellbird]

Guess who just got her surgery date?!!

February 28, provided some doctors strikes don't go ahead, which the hospital will ring me on Monday to confirm.

I saw a private number pop up on my phone this morning.
could this be it?
*answers phone*
"Hi, it's ... from ... hospital"
yep, definitely it.

For some reason I was insanely calm on the phone, and afterward. As though someone had rung to give me the weather report or something.

I rang my dad after to give him the news and he had quite the chuckle at how subtley I slipped this (pretty big deal) news into the conversation as thought it was.. a weather report or something.

After that, the excitement came on hard.
I was sitting at a train station and felt like jumping up on the platform seats and dancing.

My highly unpredictable brain never fails to amuse me.
Excitement is a nice and quite novel emotion to me though, so in this instance it's not an unpleasant unpredictability :)

Going to take today to start sorting some loose ends that need tidying before surgery.

Need to book a dentist appointment which I've been putting off since my last appointment a year and a bit ago, fell on my birthday where my abusive ex (boyfriend at the time) spent the whole day sending me random messages about what he was doing and totally ignored the fact it was my birthday, and then at about 11pm sent me a message along the lines of "happy bday", and then proceeded to send me message after message of verbal abuse and gaslighting mindf*ckery that I didn't care about my health because I hesitated when he told me that he had developed a new treatment plan for me that would leave me "So f*cked that I wouldn't be able to get out of bed for three weeks".

Yep.

So now the dentist has been wrapped up with all those fun moments, but I really really need to go before surgery to have a check up as it'll be a while before I can comfortably sit in a dentist's chair again, and my health needs to be in peak condition for surgery too.

Sigh. Time to be brave, bellbird.

 

[Deleted member 42984]

Good news and good to see you excited about it! Alive and sparkling ?

 

[Wendell_R]

So now the dentist has been wrapped up with all those fun moments, but I really really need to go before surgery to have a check up as it'll be a while before I can comfortably sit in a dentist's chair again, and my health needs to be in peak condition for surgery too.

Sigh. Time to be brave, bellbird.

Good luck! Think of your trip to the dentist as a chance to create a new memory of the dentist that is completely devoid of your ex. One more way to erase him.

 

[blackemerald1]

Oh wow.. that's not far away at all... I am pleased and excited for you @bellbird... :)

Yep definitely time to tidy up loose ends. :hug:

 

[bellbird]

Righto, have had confirmation from the hospital this morning: Feb 28, we're all systems go!
Eek!

Before getting the phone call, I'd been out for an 8 km run and come home and showered.
After getting off the phone, I had so much adrenaline rushing through me that it felt like I could run another 8 :laugh:

It all feels very surreal, and I don't think it will have fully sunken in until I'm sitting in the chair on the morning of surgery and having my IV lines put in.

 

[blackemerald1]

It's so real now bellbird! So only SIXTEEN days to go!

I hope you are eating sensibly along with those mini marathons you are running!

How are you going with tidying up things?

I think I'd be having adrenalin rushes too.. this is life changing for you. :hug: :hug:

 

[Wendell_R]

Do you have a little calendar to cross off the days?

 

[bellbird]

only SIXTEEN days to go!

You got it!!!

I hope you are eating sensibly along with those mini marathons you are running!

Thank you for bringing this up :hug:
Yes, I have been doing really well with my eating.
Tbh, between my running and my (university) research (mini marathons for my brain), I've had the biggest appetite that I think I've had in my entire life. But I think that's a good thing as it means my stomach and my brain are communicating effectively to one another, unlike throughout my history with eating disorders.

I ended up having quite bad nausea after my iron infusion in the end. It didn't start till the day after, and peaked the day after that, and then it slowly reduced over the next week. But I cut back my exercise over that week, and made sure to make good use of my nutribullet to make smoothies since the nausea made eating really hard. So I had smoothies wherever I could, and packed them with berries, fruit, veges and wholegrain oats for sustenance to keep me going.

I told both my T and GP about the nausea and its effect on my eating to keep me accountable, and also kept checking in with myself to make sure that I wasn't eating because I couldn't not because I didn't want to. And I was pleased that every time I did, it was really because I just couldn't stomach proper food. Disordered eating-me from 6 months and back would have not gone for smoothies at all.

GP also took my weight to make sure I wasn't dropping, and the difference between my weight during that week and my steady weight from prior was within what you'd expect for a normal fluctuation which was good.

I've now been nausea free for a few days, so am back to eating lots of food which is good.
I make sure I always have a range of food at home; fresh fruit and veges, carbs, protein, and healthy fats. I've found that works best for me; to minimise all potential barriers between me getting well fed so I have no excuses :)

How are you going with tidying up things?

Getting there. It has been slightly impeded by not having had my student loan weekly payments for the last month or so (many of my loose threads involve 'buy .... for my hospital stay'). I've been able to borrow money from my mum a couple of times, to pay my rent and buy food, which has been very helpful.
Fortunately I've spoken to the student loan provider yesterday and everything is settled (there was a misunderstanding from their end: the '9' of '2019' that my doctor had written on one of my medical forms to support my application had apparently looked like a '5', and so they'd thought I'd just submitted the same application from 2015 ??? I wish I was joking but I'm not).

So I should have a nice back-payment by the end of this week, which will help a lot with tidying loose ends.

I did ring the dentist yesterday to see when they have a next available appointment and they had availability within the next day, which is good. I do need to still make this appointment, but I'm nervous AF about going just because of my last experience which I mentioned here previously. But I guess it's one thing I've just gotta do.

Today's tidying has been letting all the relevant people know about my surgery date, and I -think- I've got through everyone I need to tell! So that is good.

I think I'd be having adrenalin rushes too.. this is life changing for you. :hug::hug:

Thank you :hug: yeah, it really is. Hopefully, I should have a much better quality of life throughout the rest of my life because of this, and that is a pretty exciting thought.

 

[bellbird]

Do you have a little calendar to cross off the days?

Not a physical one, but definitely a mental one :)
Every morning when I wake up, I cross off another day and think of how many there are left!

 

[blackemerald1]

You've probably tried this but there is a well known brand of Ginger Bears which are small lollies. Low in fat, sugar - a healthy lolly? lol Major two supermarkets seem to have dropped the ball with stocking them though they may be in the cooking aisle... god knows why!? I have no idea :rolleyes: The secondary supermarkets may stock them. Or try a pharmacy. You can also buy them online direct from the Australian manufacturer.

I found them really good for nausea, bringing up wind and settling my extremely irritable stomach. Have you tried ginger in your smoothies? Fresh in smoothies and baking. But the lollies are so good to pop into the mouth if suffering from dry mouth due to anxiety etc. They are easy to stuff in a small container and carry around. They do pack a punch but that's also really good for settling down one's head as well as the belly rumbles.

I'm so excited for you! You sound so organised and grounded and I am thinking of you preparing for this big, life changing event. :hug:

Ginger Bear lollies etc

 

[bellbird]

Have you tried ginger in your smoothies?

I have! This morning I made a smoothie with beetroot, orange, carrot, fresh ginger and frozen raspberries.

Ginger Bear lollies etc

I hadn't heard of these, thank you for the link!

I'm so excited for you! You sound so organised and grounded and I am thinking of you preparing for this big, life changing event. :hug:

Ohhh, thank you so much b :hug:
Your kind and supportive words, and thoughts, throughout this journey really do mean a lot to me.

--
Righto: dental hygienist booked for tomorrow, and dentist for Friday. No going back now.
Is it weird that I feel more nervous for those appointments than for the surgery itself at this stage? bleurgh.

Been ticking off a lot of "lasts":
Today I had my last T appointment before surgery
Tomorrow will be the last time I see my university supervisor before surgery
And tomorrow, it'll be two weeks!! Fourteen days. Damn. I started this countdown at 21 days, so we're already a third of the way through that.

Accommodation arrangements have been made with my family.
Dentist appointments have been booked.
Tomorrow morning I've got to discuss where I'm up to for my current objective in my research, and then once that's out of the way I will:
-make an appointment for a hair cut
-shop for any remaining essentials I'll require while in hospital/post-op
-fill all prescriptions required when I see my GP
-finalise my list of things I need to pack for the hospital

I'm hoping to have most things finalised by the end of this weekend, so that my last full week before surgery can be as calm as possible. I've never had a major surgery before, but I assume anything I can do to stay as 'stress-free' as possible before the surgery will serve me well in the long run.

That's the plan!