Surgery Tomorrow

12 days after being admitted through the ER and the decision has finally been made: I am having surgery tomorrow.

In a way I guess it’s a good thing we waited, as I have a very clear understanding that we have tried every other option before jumping to surgery, and in fact the lead team on my case, Plastics, has been dragging their feet for several days after the other teams (Infectious Disease, General Surgery, Acute Pain Management, etc) all decided that surgery was the best option left.

Yesterday was the final straw. As I’ve written before, they have put several drains into my abscess in hopes it would deflate on its own, and for the 11 days I’ve been here we haven’t seen any fluid come out at all. Interventional Radiology, the team that deals with the drains directly, informed my surgeon that the fluid inside of my collection(s)  was too thick to drain this way, but my surgeon was stubborn and wanted to try one last time before he gave up for good. They poked a new, wider hole into the collection and then even went so far as to attach it to suction, and still nothing came out.

The surgery is not exactly the same as the one in December in a couple of ways. The December surgery did entail removing an infected abscess but there was a lot more infected tissue that wasn’t incorporated into a collection, enough to require a panniculectomy. When they finished the surgery, they removed some excess skin and pulled my belly up, making it much smaller (technically, a “tummy tuck”), and I had a very large surgical scar that went from one hip to the other. I also had two small grenade-shaped drains (JP drains) that helped suck out excess fluid produced from the surgery.

This time, they will be removing an infected abscess, but the focus is on trying to keep this from happening over and over again. They’re going to re-open a small portion of the scar from December (about a third, or 9-15cm) over the collection, remove the abscess and all the other bad stuff around there, including physically washing the space out. Then, instead of sewing or suturing up the wound (which will be “the size and shape of a small loaf of bread”) like you’d expect, they’re going to “pack” the hole with a special kind of vacuum-bandage. The idea is that if they just sew the hole closed, the hole will sit there empty, and nature abhors an empty space. By packing the wound, it is forced to heal from the inside out, and the scar tissue created will keep it from reforming a new and/or different abscess in the future. By using the motorized system, any fluid that is created from the wound or left behind by the surgeons during the operation will be sucked out in a more efficient method than the drains we used last time. (I have a bad history of having drains “fall out” before they’re done doing their job, no matter how many precautions are used to keep that from happening, and that could very well be contributing to the problem.)

I will likely be in JH for another week or so in recovery, and then sent home with a home-care-nurse visiting three times a week. They’re telling me I should be able to work (including teach classes and stuff), so I haven’t cancelled any of my upcoming gigs. I will have at least one, maybe two, small motors I will have to port around with me, but I’m inventive and will figure out some fashionable way to do it and not look bad.

I haven’t had much more time to ruminate on the spiritual meaning of all of this beyond what I’ve already posted. I’m trying very hard to see this situation as not being all about me, but at the same time not allowing others to use me/my medical situation against me in some way. It’s been difficult, especially lately, but I just keep holding my head high and be the man I want to be and let everything fall as it will.

I asked Alex if he could think of some witty vacuum joke or reference I could turn into the title of this entry, but joking about it would inaccurately convey my emotional state. I’m not depressed or amused; I’m pissed. I’m angry that it took 12 days for the doctors to do what they told me was going to happen 12 days ago. I’m angry that last time I was given all this lead time to prepare, and this time we have practically none. I had a very clear image as to what it all meant, why it was happening both physically and spiritually, and what I was supposed to get out of it. I understood it.

This time I have no idea. I have some guesses as to what it means, but they’re really just shots in the dark – and I’m also willing to accept that maybe it just doesn’t have a bigger meaning to it at all. I understood that the abscesses were something that happened because Dr WLS fucked up my ventral hernia repair that April, but this one doesn’t seem to be directly related to that, either. Last time I was able to garner support not just because of the health crisis, but because it coincided with my husband ending our marriage. Instead, this time, it all just feels like it’s landed on my lap and I have no idea why, or what I’m supposed to learn, or why this would have any meaning at all, other than to make me miserable and in pain and reinforce my fears that I can’t live a normal life ever again.

It reinforces a lot of the fears I was able to squelch last time, stuff about my divorce and my living situation and trying to figure out who really cares about me and who doesn’t. It makes me look really hard at the prediction I received three years ago, that said in year three the game would change dramatically. As my STBX basically disallowed me to talk about the prediction at all, I learned how to put it out of my mind, but these days it is feeling more and more relevant and yet harder to accept as being real. It’s dredging up a lot of inner stuff I was able to bury and/or hide for a long time and making it impossible to ignore. It’s forcing me to really and truly think about the word family, what it means, what the qualifications are, and what to do when someone who used to be an important member of your family makes it clear that they don’t feel the same way anymore. I am thinking about what honesty is, and where honesty is important, and yet where honesty can be hurtful and/or cruel at the same time. I’m thinking about a lot of things.

But at least now you all know that the surgery is for real, it’s happening tomorrow at some point, and you’ll all know one or another that I got out of it safely (or not). I will be spending some time this afternoon updating my will and advanced directives to make sure they reflect my most current realities.

Please feel free to pray for me, to ask your Gods (and mine as well) to look out for me, to guide me through this process, and to bless the doctors with clear heads and deft hands. Please do not send energy or Reiki of any kind; although I do have an anti-Reiki amulet to wear, it just makes things easier if you don’t send it for starters.

Love you all, and see you on the other side.