Plans for Surgeries 31 and 32

Many of you may know already from my posts on FB but I've got plans scheduled already for surgeries 31 and 32, yup, two more surgeries.  I was quite surprised to see Poonam (Garrett's MA) calling me the very day after my appt!  Usually it takes like a week and then it's usually me calling them to remind them I need a surgery scheduled.  But oh no, Poonam got me on the books immediately.  Maybe it had to do with me looking right into Garrett's eyes and saying, "So you'll be calling me SOON (emphasis on the "soon") to get that scheduled, yes?"  Maybe that did the trick....

So what am I having done?  When I say that I feel like I'm addicted to plastic surgery and am going in to get something fixed for the millionth time.  But to answer the question, he is doing a lot of contracture releases including, the center of my chest, under my left breast, my abdomen, my right elbow, the sides of my neck and possibly my arms but I'm not sure about the arms.  There are several places on my arms that need some kind of release, not just my axillas.  And it's two surgeries because he's laying allograft down first and that must stay on for about a week and then I go back in for the second surgery and he lays down the grafts.  Now this second surgery is particularly gonna suck cause there's a lot of grafting he's gonna have to do so that means a lot of donor sites and any burn survivor will tell you, it's not so much the grafts that hurt, it's the fucking donor sites.  They hurt like you wanna die sometimes.  They can hurt so bad that it doesn't matter how much pain meds you get.

I'm happy so much is getting done cause it's progress forward but also because my insurance is checked and renewed every year starting in April so I need to get as much stuff done as I can before my insurance changes on me because at some point, it's going to and when one of my surgeries cost $100,000 (just the surgeon expenses, that's not counting anesthesiologist and hospital stay) there's  NO WAY I can afford to pay something like 10%.  That's insanity and call me bankrupt.  (And the insurance thing I just shared with you, not really something to pass around in your gossip circle, please.)

But I am also very anxious as I always get.  I often worry, though I've never really vocalized it, about something going wrong with the anesthesia because I've gone under so many times and never waking up.  Or with this abdomen release, the aorta runs down to your belly button so my wild imagination gets away with me and I think about the doctors or nurses accidently cutting it and I bleed out on the table cause they can't control the bleeding.  I know, crazy but it has happened actually.  A doctor was operating around a man's belly button area and cut the aorta.  So it can happen.  And with my luck, one of those things would happen.

I will be in the hospital anywhere from 10 days to 12 or 14 days.  My first surgery is next Monday the 17th at 7:30am with an awesome 5:30am check in and my second surgery is the following Monday after that, the 24th at the same times.  Surgeries 31 and 32....I'm past 30 now and heading towards 3 dozen shortly and then into the 40's.  Never dreamed this for my life.