What did I tell ya?

Happenings in my life often tend to come out of left field! This back surgery, of course, left no exceptions. The catch is that this time it was good stuff.



As mentioned, yesterday (Tuesday) was supposed to be my day of pre-op evaluation. The plan was for me to meet with the medical assistants about any tests that needed to be done, get my results checked out and then be free to go until Wednesday. On Wednesday, I would have met with the surgeon and anesthesiologists. However, about 10 minutes after I got back into the evaluation room, a sweet lady stuck her head the door and asked if I'd like to move my surgery to Wednesday, they had had an opening!!

After the initial shock, I exchanged glances with my aunt, we both said "Yes!" and then she left the room. I had about 2 seconds to process it in my mind when the anesthesiologists came in to meet with me. From that point on, it was a bit of a revolving door, as they now had to fit 2 days worth of meetings into a couple hours. I was so absolutely thrilled with every person I talked to there. They couldn't have been nicer and put me at ease. and if someone can put ME at ease when it comes to something like surgery and needles, you know they gotta be good at what they do!!

So they drew some blood as when I had the initial blood work done, one of the tests wasn't made. I wasn't thrilled about that, but the medical assitant was extremely accomodating and understanding and there were no problems.

Probably my favorite people were the anesthesiologists. I don't remember both of their names, but the woman was Kathy and I believe the guy was Mark. They were like a comedy team and SO nice. I wanted to put them in my pocket and take them home with me! I was concerned because the Laser Spine Institute doesn't use general anesthesia, they use sedation and localized anesthesia. In the patient book they mailed me, it described it as a "twilight" sleep which I was very unhappy about it. However, that information was outdated, and as Kathy said, "there was no 'light' in twilight!" I remember nothing!

After being sent down the road to have x-rays, for which a driver was provided, I met with the surgeon and the process of the surgery was explained to me again. Then we said our goodbyes, and the two other people scheduled for surgeries today and I discussed who would be getting the 6:00 AM spot. I lucked out and got 6:30, so one was before me and one was after me. It wasn't so bad!

our hotel!

I will make another blog post later on about the actual surgery and what happened today. For now I'm gonna go konk out for a little bit longer. Staying awake is impossible!! :) Thanking God that everything went well and I am feeling better than I have in a long, long, LONG time!!!