Nerves

 

Whoa, buddy! I’m extremely tense and anxious tonight about traveling to LA. There are about 30 moving parts that need to get figured out just to get there that I didn’t foresee happening and I’m an over-thinker so me feeling blindsided or not already thinking of something is rare. I really thought I’d just simply book a place to stay and get flights with small possible hiccups of weird flight times, or adjusting dates of checking in to these rooms. 

 

I’m starting to think about all the things that could go wrong. Not just with LA and surgery but the stuff back here, too. I love my husband but like most men, he doesn’t think about a lot of details. My brain is what literally keeps this family functioning on a day to day basis. I know things will work out but how messy they might be without me to navigate. I hate to think about him and kids struggling back here when I’m going to be too far away and physically incapable to help.

 

I was completely thrown off today when I emailed Dr. Tsengs assistant telling me I needed I arrive at LEAST 3-4 days prior to surgery for a simple covid test. 4 days before is Christmas and 3 days before (the day after Christmas) means that as soon as I get to LA I need to get into the clinic for that test.

 

We will have to get groceries/supplies for the place we booked. It’s a fully furnished apartment directly across from the hospital with a shuttle to and from Keck. Though it’s fully furnished we’ll need food, shampoo/conditioner, soap for dishes, laundry soap, all the basics of home.

 

I’ve been looking at pictures of these furnished apartments analyzing it with a careful eye. Wondering what about this place will be difficult for me after surgery. Both bedrooms (one for me, one for my mom, and her husband) have their own bathroom, thank God, but the tub walls are unusually high. I’ll need one I can get in on with my left side and most likely need a shower chair. The beds are also unusually high which will make getting out easy but getting into hard. 

 

Then that brings me to wondering about what WILL I be able to do after surgery… will I be able to be weight bearing on that side at all? If not, for how long? 

 

Then that thought spirals into a million other thoughts about the surgery itself… 12 hours of being put under. I literally have to put my life in someone else’s hands and hope for the best… that’s doctors, nurses, surgeons working on me for 12 hours! What if they don’t get enough sleep the night before? One wrong slip by my major artery, major nerve bundles, and I could very well be screwed. What if they can’t get all the cancer out? What does that mean for after surgery? More radiation? More chemo? A longer stay in LA? What happens if I just plain old don’t wake up at all? Guess I won’t know, right? If in the event that was to happen, did I love you all enough? Did I say everything I could say so you all know how much you meant to me? Who will tell my family? Some poor doctor. How will they tell my family? Gently? Bluntly? Like the doctor, that word vomited the news about Bertha? 

 

My entire body, every single muscle is tight and tense thinking about all this. I know I know I can’t think about the what if’s and I need to “calm down” but telling someone with anxiety to calm down is like telling someone who’s having a heart attack to just knock it off. If we could, we would.  

 

I hate it when my brain gets like this. I’d been doing so good about not panicking and not going there mentally. But the little unexpected things today really just put me into a spiral. That’s all it takes some days. 

 

I also made the huge mistake of looking up possible incisions I might have. Typically, it helps me mentally to know exactly what I’m in for (good or bad) because I don’t like being blindsided like I said before. This though I shouldn’t have done because I obviously have no clue what this surgeon will choose. Some weren’t terrible that I saw and some were super intense. That doesn’t mean the worse ones will be what I get but not my brain is telling me “of course you’ll get gigantic ones, it’ll be so painful, probably get infected afterward, too.” Just shut up in there would ya?

 

I’m so physically and mentally drained from treatments right now and in just a few short weeks I’m going to be having major surgery? I feel like I’ll never get a break or a chance to heal. It feels like I’m physically taking one step forward and two steps back with recovering. 

 

I have to remind myself to breathe. In the end, what will be will be. God has a hand in all of this and even if I don’t know the plan, He does. Right now though, I have to sort out my thoughts and rationalize them as best I can.