The other day my mom was sitting on the computer and I was sitting on the couch moaning about my life and she said, "You know what I don't like? When someone starts a blog and then totally abandons it." Point taken. Thank you, Mother.
Now, if you haven't been following my life story, first of all, why haven't you been? I'm only the most fascinating person in the world. Right! But if you haven't, you might be wondering what I'm talking about how my mom and I were having a conversation face to face. Because I'm in Chicago and she's in Spotswood, right? RIGHT?? Wrong. :(
I believe my last blog was about the terrible back problems I've been having. and how my mom found a spine surgery place that might be able to do the surgery and what would I do, etc. well turns out YES, they can do the surgery. YES, they believe they can totally fix my back up. YES, I have to have it done ASAP. Unfortunately that meant I had to leave my precious Chicago behind for this semester and get myself all taken care of before hopefully going back in the spring. Yes, I said hopefully. We'll cross that bridge when we get to it.
(I took this. It's a bridge. ;)).
In the meantime, my surgery is scheduled for this Thursday, November 3, 2011. (side note: November 3 is a traditionally sucky day for me, so I'm not surprised that this is the date my surgery was scheduled for). It's happening at the Laser Spine Institute in Philadelphia. I am going to be using my Blog to keep track of my recovery, etc. I decided to do this because I am absolutely bugging out about this surgery. It seems that at this place everyone either has a brilliant experience and their lives are better than ever or they have a miserable experience and are back at square one. "Why would you risk that?" you might ask. Well, let me explain that to you.
The odds are very much in my favor. This is a very straight forward laser surgery that they're doing on my back. The objective is clear, what needs to be done is clear, etc. I am very young, one of their youngest patients, and I have only had back problems for about a year. Because of this, my ability to heal is much greater than that of the 90 year old who has been dealing with her back problems for 56 years. The surgery itself is very common. I have Spinal Stenosis, which is THEE surgery that they do at this place. They do other surgeries too, but this is their money maker, so to speak. So when you wrap all of this up, odds are that I will benefit greatly from this surgery.
On the off chance that it's not successful, here is how I'm justifying it to myself: They can't screw up. They can't make my back any worse than it already is. If it doesn't work, at least I'll know that I tried with the most minimally invasive option that was presented to me, and if it's not successful then I can go on to the next one. I see no reason to begin with drastic measures such as open back surgery when a thing like this is out there for this specific back problem.
So I'll be keeping track of this experience either to ease the minds of people who are nervous about having surgery done at LSI, or to tell people stay the HELL away from LSI. We'll see what the conclusion is as we go through this!!
Right now, I'm staying over my aunt's house. Tomorrow I head into Philadelphia for my pre-op evaluation. I have no idea what to expect, so we'll see what happens. I'm just praying to GOD (literally. I'm serious. Praying), that they won't have to tell me that I am for some reason ineligable for the surgery. I definitely shouldn't be. They've already reviewed the MRI, all blood work came back normal and I have no health problems. But I've been known to have balls come out of left field in my life so I'm putting it out there that that is a possibility. We'll see what happens!!!
I'd be lying if I said I'm not scared to death, but my life has been so drastically affected by this that it is well worth the risk and the fear. I'm just praying that it'll be worth it.
No comments:
Post a Comment