31st Surgery Eve

It is the evening before my 31st surgery (my 32nd will come on Halloween day) and I haven't really been thinking much about it until about an hour ago.  I mean, I've been suffering over it for two weeks but as for the day before, it's only been about an hour so far that I've really started occupying my mind with all sorts of thoughts with it.  So many things have either gone wrong or have not gone to plan in the past and not because of my doctors.  My doctors are brilliant.  It's my body.  I used to be horrifying to intubate for the anesthesiologist because my neck was so contracted so they were trying to get a tube down a bent neck basically and then my mouth didn't open very big so they had that challenge to face as well.  At least now, the intubation process is not so worrisome for either of us, the anesthesiologist, my family and myself, because my neck is able to lay flat now.  The only challenge they still face is the opening of my mouth.  That's gotten a little better but it's still pretty tight from scar tissue around my mouth.  They still have to use a tiny camera to help guide the tube down my throat but I don't worry so much anymore that it's gonna take them an hour and a half just to get me intubated.  They have encountered problems still but it's not like it used to be.

Then my body is a bleeder!  lol.  But seriously, I do lose a lot of blood surgery.  So I get to thinking about how much I must bleed during an operation and what that must look like and does it make the doctor's nervous or do they just think, "oh it's SB and she's a bleeder.  Just keep the transfusion going."  Or does it worry them sometimes?  If it does, they never tell me.  My original doctor who continued the fight to save my life on the operating table told my parents that I lose a lot of blood but that's been the only time it's ever really been mentioned so do they not worry or do they just not want to worry me?  I have a feeling it's the latter.

Then there's the fact that I was burned more than 45% of my body so finding skin for grafting is difficult, especially for a surgery this major.  Is he going to find enough places to take skin from to graft?  All I ask is not my ass.  I'm dead serious.  That's no joke.  I once had to have a FULL THICKNESS donor taken from my ass during a very major emergency with my neck and I have never had so much pain from a full thickness donor cause I was always sitting on it and the stitches were killer.  So please, even if you have to take it from the middle of my back which will suck as well, I'd rather have it there than my ass cause I know the pain of a donor site on my ass.

Then there's simply will everything go to plan or will they encounter any kind of problem(s)?  My mind races with all sorts of possibilities as well as all those I just explained.  And I hate, I absolutely hate being put under anesthesia.  I hate the sting of it when it hits my veins and I hate the feel of it flowing in my veins cause it feels kind of warm, like my blood is heating up.  And I hate how at that moment, when I feel the sting and the warmth in my blood that I have absolutely no control cause in about 4 seconds I'm going to be out and my mind will be put into darkness cause there's no dreaming.  So the next thing I know is waking up and that first wave of pain that hits me when I do.

Well, good-bye for tonight.  But keep posted for what I am about to go through...I will be writing about it.  There's a lot I want to change with this surgery being the beginning of that change.  I just hope I can make that change happen.  Prayers, even though I don't know how I feel about praying anymore, and keeping me in your thoughts are greatly appreciated as well as helping with my Amazon Wishlist IF you are in the position that you are able to do so.  Thank you everyone for your wonderful support.  You help me more than you will ever know.  I hope I come through this OK and I don't give my surgeons too hard of a time on that operating table.  Oh God, I hate this.