Pre-surgery thoughts and fears

Surgery this morning. I am tired, nervous and hungry - a bad mix of things to feel before any big day, not to mention one where someone cuts you open and tinkers with your insides.

If I wasn't always so damn cheerful, I would be pretty cranky right now. Instead I am filled with jittery energy. Everything can be turned into a bad joke, anything is reason to be morbid and twisted. I think that it is a coping mechanism. I can't sleep. I can never sleep before surgery. As always, there are thoughts of just not going. With the last surgery, the big joke was that mum and I would just keep driving. Just stay on the highway until we hit Barrie. Then what, who knows... We joked about it for weeks. We didn't do it, of course, but the running joke did make us laugh and that definitely eased some anxieties. But there is no joke about skipping surgery this time, just the knowledge that when I wake up the fixator will still be attached to my leg.

I was so sure that the next surgery I had would be to remove that shiny blue frame. So long monotube triax! The thought of anything different is almost incomprehensible, unbearable. I am ready for my leg to be mine again, not heal together with pins, clamps and rods. in a striking contrast, I don't think I can imagine my leg with out the fixator anymore. Those half pins have become part of who I am. I Aside from this, it just seems wrong that it will still be there, through my tissue and into my bone, when I wake up from surgery. But the ex fix will stay on for at least six more weeks. Some people recover from a broken ankle in that amount of time. I wish I had healed that quickly, all those years ago.

I am tired and I don't want to do this anymore. I am so worn out. I am too young for this. This experience ages some one so so much. I am doing things my peers don't even know exist all in the name of my health. Ironically,  surgery makes me feel like a child - a scared little child, powerless. I have to do something I don't want to because it is good for me, because someone else says so. That makes this sound like a child having to eat their vegetables. I wish things were that easy. But surgery doesn't just leave a bad taste in your mouth; it causes pain. Loads of pain; pain I cannot adequately describe. The reward is so much better than getting dessert; it is a lifetime of being able to walk. I need to be able to do that one simple thing. This whole thing has been so incredibly traumatic. Even if it has become normal, that doesn't change. Nothing will undue how this has affected my life, changed me, denied me a normal young adulthood, but being able to walk again will be a pretty good consolation prize.

And there are the thoughts - What if this doesn't work? What if the infection returns? What if the new bone doesn't heal properly? What if this heterotopic ossification wrong odd kind of bone comes back? On a side note, it's getting less fun to say that. The seriousness of it and the surgery looming ahead have sunken in. What if I don't get the feeling in my foot back? What if I get a new infection? So many questions, so many fears.

But I am a big girl. No, I am a gown woman. I might not fully realize it yet because so much of the last decade has been filled with medical things rather than focusing on the things young people do as they move from childhood to adulthood, but it is true. I am smart; I can take care of myself: have lived alone: I have a university degree; I am mature and perfectly capable just like my peers. I am a grown woman and I will do what I have to, even though it is unpleasant, because I know it is good for me. I don't need someone to tell me that anymore, not like a child would. As surely as the sun will rise, I will walk (erm... hop with my trusty crutches) into that OR this morning. I might not like it, but it will be okay. I has to be. Even if it isn't, we will make it okay somehow.

But then, I am still afraid.