Surgery in the Morning

I thought I would share the news that I will be having surgery tomorrow (Tuesday) morning. I usually don't say anything before I have surgery, but then people always say, "Why didn't you tell me?!" or "I wish I would've known!" SO, consider yourself informed! :)

A few years ago when I had my annual x-ray of my kidneys my urologist discovered a kidney stone in my left kidney. When I had surgery to remove it, my doctor found that it wasn't one large stone, but a dense cluster of hundreds of tiny, little sand-like stones. My doctor tried to remove them as best he could, but wasn't very successful because they were so tiny that they kept falling out of the instrument used to retrieve them. (The doctor likened it to scooping up sand in a collander.)

So for the past year and a half those tiny stones have just been sitting in my kidney. It doesn't really seem like they've grown, but they're still there, which really isn't a good thing. For the most part everything has been going pretty, but it's not good to have them there and would be better to remove them, especially before they do start to cause me  problems. I figure it's better to get them before they get me, so to speak, so that I'm not caught off guard where a problem arises that could potentially make me life-threateningly ill (which has happened to me a number of times).

A few months ago my normal urologist referred me to one of his colleagues who specializes in kidney stones.  I met with this new doctor at the end of January. She was really nice said that it would be a good idea to do surgery to remove the stones so that's what I decided to do. The thing that makes this procedure more tricky is that the doctor has to remove the stones percutaneously. [The Latin origin of the word means "by way of the skin." Access to the kidney is made by making a small incision in the back and going in via that route instead of going up through the urethra.]

In 2007 I had a perc (abbreviation for the procedure) and that went terribly wrong, and I almost died. I don't say that lightly or to be melodramatic, it's just the truth of the matter. After the surgery I was delirious for 10 days and no one could figure out why I wasn't coming around. After the fact my mom asked my doctor just how close to death I really was and he said that I was "teetering on the edge" and things could've gone "either way." My mom said that those 10 days were the most terrifying days of her life. It was a very sobering experience for everyone involved (most especially my mom).

I'm confident that things will go much better this go around than they did in 2007, though. I'm not really nervous at all and feel very calm about the whole thing. The other day my sister Kristin asked how me nervous I am to have this procedure and I told her that on a scale from 1 to 100, I'm about a 5. I don't feel like my work on earth is finished yet, so for better or worse, people are just going to have to stick it out with me  a little longer! ;) I have to stay overnight just to make sure I'm doing well, but I'll most likely be coming home on Wednesday if all goes according to plan.

I don't look forward to having surgeries/being hospitalized, but there are a few perks, which I'll expound upon in a post after I'm home and back in commission. But for now, I will leave you with one of the things I look forward to about having surgery... I love going under anesthesia! I'm sure that sounds ludicrous to most people, but there's just something about the "floating away" sensation that I love! I better call it a night before I go any further, lest anyone get the wrong idea about me!

Leave me a comment to read when I'm back to the "land of the living" because they sure make me happy and are the best medicine! :)