Surgery, Surgery, Surgery

Tweet

Last night I posted about how I require a total abdominal hysterectomy with bilateral salpingo oophorectomy to treat the stage 4 endometriosis I was recently diagnosed with. Unfortunately this isn't the only surgery I have coming up in the near future. I've been waiting since January to meet with a general surgeon to see about getting a femoral hernia fixed, and I also need to have venous ablations done on both my legs due to venous reflux disease. This is in addition to two other surgical procedures I already had done over the past 9 months. I had never had any type of surgery before last year. Well, not unless you count getting a mole removed when I was 16 (and if mole removal counts, then I've had three surgical procedures in the last 9 months!) I have been so stressed out over everything and just want it all to be over and done with. I know that things could be far worse and that I could be in a position where I require high-risk major surgery, so I'm grateful that that's not currently the case. (Not that a TAH/BSO isn't major surgery; it is. But I think having open heart surgery or brain surgery would be far scarier.) I just hate everything about surgery. I hate being put under with anesthesia, and not having any control over my body. I hate having to sign consent forms stating that I acknowledge I could suffer bodily damage or even die during the procedure. I hate the pain afterwards and not being able to do much, and I hate worrying about blood clots forming (which is always a risk.) And today I found out that there's a risk of that happening even with the venous ablation procedure and that they will have to do ultrasounds to monitor the veins in my legs afterwards -- it hadn't even occurred to me that deep vein thrombosis would be a possible risk of closing down the bad veins in my legs. After reading the packet of information the vein specialist gave me at my pre-op appointment earlier today, I don't even want to go through with the procedure. But, I know if I don't treat this issue, I will likely wind up with Chronic Venous Reflux Disease, like my mom has, and I've seen how she suffers and all the complications that come with it. So it needs to be taken care of. And then on top of everything, I still don't have a diagnosis for all the symptoms I've been having over the past year. One neurologist suggested Fibromyalgia or Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, maybe both, but he wasn't interested in ruling other things out to come up with an official diagnosis. So now I'm waiting to see another neurologist, but my appointment isn't until August. And I requested a second opinion last October. Navigating the healthcare system -- especially when not feeling well -- has definitely been frustrating, to say the least. It seems like my calendar is always filled with doctor appointments. May is going to be a busy month. But, this stuff needs to be taken care of, and I'll be glad when I'm on the other side of it all and don't have to worry about these issues anymore.